A friend sent me an email today expressing frustration with feeding her kids at dinner time. She doesn't like to cook, they don't want to eat anything when she does go to the trouble. They have family dinner time, but dinner is often a bowl of cereal. It made me realize that we all have our own challenges when it comes to the dinner hour.
My challenge is generally time and/or scheduling. Our life is broken up by sports seasons, this season Thursday is the night we're all home for dinner together at a reasonable hour. Tuesday is generally something in the crockpot so everyone can eat when they're ready, before and/or after skiing, CCD, and/or basketball games.
My friend's family is still getting the benefit of family dinner: catching up with each other, bonding, and fostering strong, independent, well-adjusted young adults. But she'd like to take some of the food-related stress away from the meal time.
Now, my kids eat a lot of what I ask them to, but not everything, and they're getting worse as they get older. The school schedule doesn't help either. Too hurried and/or tired to have a decent (or sometimes any) breakfast, lunch at 10:30, when they get home, they're starved and have a sandwich or bowl of cereal (or if I'm not home, bag of cookies or chips or box of crackers).
When I get tired of the "I'm not hungry, I don't feel like this, I don't want to try this" merry-go-round, I give it back to them. What will you eat? And NOT complain about? I usually do this armed with a few index cards for each of them to write their top choices on, then I use those to shape the meals for the next few weeks. I know that some the things that never cause fights are chicken pot pie, meatloaf and mashed potatoes, hamburgers (as long as I don't do anything creative), hot dogs and baked beans (ditto on the creative), chili, Lebanese stuffed grape leaves (I know, but my husband is half Lebanese, and they've grown up with this one), pasta (depending on my sauce). The kids like mac & cheese, but my husband doesn't, so that falls into the category of what we eat when Dad's out: mac & cheese, tuna noodle casserole, breakfast-for-dinner, and salmon (he's allergic, but the kids love it).
My husband grew up in a house where Monday was chicken, Tuesday was steak, Wednesday was pasta, or something like that. I like more variety than that, but I think it may help to get kids eating if there's a pattern.
What's your trick?
I go TRY to plan my meals for the week and try to plan some of what the kids really like, and some more of what G and I will like. I always always have things in for a pasta or quesadilla night, depending on how the day has gone. My kids will always eat those. Several days I try to prep my dinner early in the day while the 3 bigger kids are in school and the babe is napping. Those days I like things that can be reheated later or kept warm in a crockpot or at least cooked up quickly.
ReplyDeleteOne of my current things has been to try to take the things they love and add more veggies to them. I do this with one of my kids' favorites, stuffed baked potatoes -- I bake the potaotes and scoop the insides out, and boil some broccoli and cauliflower that I mash with the potatoes. Then I mix in milk and butter and place them in the oven to heat through. This can be served with different toppings, which my kids also love -- bacon, cheese, sour cream, chili, or plain. I usually serve it with a salad and everyone is happy. They know the broccoli is in it, and don't mind. I've never needed to tell them about the cauliflower, so I haven't. I have now taken to adding mushed cauliflower to other potato things as well -- mashed potatoes, potato soup.
I also recently made mac & cheese with butternut squash in it.
My son doesn't really like much of anything except tortellini, tortellini soup, baked potatoes (with bacon), pizza (especially make your own) and breakfast for dinner. I've given up really trying to please him. If he is hungry, he'll eat. My 4 yo and 19 month old will usually eat a little of whatever I've made and not complain too much. My 8 yo is hitting a point where she has really been enjoying food, and my cooking and it helps give me a boost. This past week, she loved linguine with clam sauce, fish tacos made with tilapia, chicken stir-fry, and potato and broccoli soup -- she had 2 more bowls of it after swim team practice! Last night, time got away from me and it was coming to be dinner time and I hadn't prepped. I decided to do pasta, but didn't want our standards of a plain red sauce or butter and cheese. I tossed the pasta with a little melted butter, added ricotta and fresh tomatoes and basil. It was good, and so simple. My kids decided it was like an inside out tortellini.