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Fall Meal Ideas
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I have one picky eater and she is now 17!! She has gotten better over the years, but is still fussy. I have to say I was a fussy eater as well, and I was away from home before I started to really enjoy food, now there is little I won’t eat, except fish and that is due to an allergy. I never forced my daughter to eat the things she did not want to, though I would encourage her to try – I also used to and still give her small portions of everything, and from time to time she will try the new thing, other times she will leave it. I never felt it was something worth battling over, especially with all the eating disorders out there. She now eats some things she never used to, but still has things she will not try. She loves vegetables and so that is great, neither she or her sister like fruit, except apples – I think that came from me, I never saw a vegetable I did not like, but I am also not fond of fruit except berries. I don’t complain, they don’t eat junk food, they don’t drink any soda or sugary drinks, only water and milk and an occasional natural pressed apple juice – so I let them be. I don’t end up wasting food (which I don’t like doing) because I give her only a tiny amount of the offensive food, and if she does not eat it, it is only a teaspoonful or so, and oftentimes her dad will eat it!! Perhaps others have more ideas. I just don’t worry about it too much. This has been a fun post, so glad you started it. Recipe exchange sounds good.
csmamma.. I also am a picky eater and a vegi as well. I have a couple picky eaters and the only really good advise I could give is these 2 suggestion : do not be a 2nd hand cook & don’t let them make there own meal. What I mean is make your meal and let them try it or eat it, but don’t make them something else and don’t let them make there own. I am not telling you what to do so I hope it doesn’t come out that way. What I will say though is the 1st I think is obvious, the 2nd one about letting them make there own, is this. My mom let me do this until she met my “dad” (who I call dad) then he said NO MORE (maybe because all I ate was PB&J’s?? LOL) anyway, doing this made me if I was hungry try new things and this was the best thing ever. I now like califlower, peas, pears and kiwi. Things that I would have never tried but because there was no other option I tried it and realized I liked it.
I agree with missing though about making sure then there are not getting other things to fill themselves with that are unhealthy. Put out the basket of apples and bananas and that might be snack, celery and carrots for snack at night? Think outside the box to encourage them to eat or at least try new things.
I would love a spot to share receipts!! Misty
Bridget, I would love to have some tried and trusted vege meals – we try to eat vege a few times a week, my husband is a meat man, but us girls are more on the vege side and are trying to have less meat in our diets, so any recipes are welcome here.
Misty, I agree 100%, I refused to make the girls a different meal, or to let them fix themselves something. I always insisted they did there best with the food that was served, and if that did not suit, there was also bread and butter! My one daughter eats most everything and the picky one accepted house rules, she never did actually ever have just bread and butter! I was just happy that they ate. One mistake I used to make when they were little was, to put too much on their plates and it was unrealistic to expect them to eat it all – I had to remember they were not adults! I then let them serve themselves and I could see then that I was really over estimating their eating talents, so I always let them do it, as long as they had a little of everything. Linda
I have a household full of picky eaters, and we’re all picky about different things!!
I agree with what Misty had to say, I do not make second meals, nor do I let the kids make their own meals. I feel like I try to work very hard to accomodate everyones individual tastes, and sometimes someone won’t like something. I always have them eat at least a little bit of what they don’t like, no matter what. Even if it’s just a bite. I try to make sure when planning meals that if I know somenone won’t like one thing, that I inculde at least one dish that they will like. But, I will say, my youngest ALWAYS hated buffalo wings, which is a staple in our house. When we made the wings we would make some, and not put the sauce on it (I don’t feel like this is making him a second meal), but he always had to have one bite of someones wings first. At first, he despised them. Now, two years later, he LOVES them and asks for them for dinner. In the rare occasion that there is something that the kids absolutely cannot eat (for example, my youngest hates apple dumplings which we will sometimes eat as dinner, it will make him sick) I will give them leftovers only. No mac and cheese or PBJ, or anything else special. Just reheated dinner from the previous nights. Anyways, that is how we handle it in our house 🙂
You’ve all been so kind as to respond in such detail. Thanks for all your great ideas and sharing how your family deals with picky eating! No more short order cooks around here.
tomorrow some friends and I are going to attempt a Big Cook. Basically a once a month cooking plan, the Big Cook has you gather all together, with the shopping lists and recipes and combine meals for the freezer. Four of us cooking and we each end up with 26 meals for the freezer. We have been gathering food and planning for a week, since we live very rural, but now the day is here and I am SO excited, can’t wait to have meals I don’t have to think ahead about. I will let you know how it goes..the book is from Crossroads Ministries and the site is www. thebigcook.com
Heidi
Heidi,
How did your Big Cook day go? I checked the link and it looks very appealing! I’m considering purchasing the cook book. Would this be something that I could still do on my own without gathering with others? Thanks so much for sharing & I look forward to hearing how your day went.
Blessings, Heather
I was also wondering how it went for Heidi today. I checked out the link yesterday and looked at the sample recipe, from looking at that it looks like you could do it on your own. Did you look at that?
CarrieHi Ladies
Well we are DONE We had a fantastic day and finished in under 6 hours. So, for some of your questions, yes, you could do this on your own, but its way more fun with friends:) Every recipe has divisions for 1 meal, 3 meals, 4 meals, 8 meals. Today we used the sample cook she had set up in the book so we would know what we were doing. We used the 8 meal plan, so each of us took home 2 each of 13 different meals. We had some choosy eaters but not much. We chose to skip the canned mushrooms for example, and just use fresh on the day we pulled that meal.
I prepped some ahead, maybe 2 or 3 hours, just cutting up the chicken and beef and bagging it ahead. I even made the sauce and finished one of the recipes a day ahead and threw it all in the freezer already bagged, just because it went so fast and I had everything right there. The other moms cut and grated some cheese and veggies ahead, but 2 of them did it all here, it didn’t take long with a few hands.
Most of the groceries I already had on hand,there were very few ‘exotic’ ingredients which I appreciated. The smells are wonderful and I am cooking one of the recipes tonight so I will let you know how it went.
Cost? we live FAR away from wonderful stores like Costco and Superstores etc, so I am sure your costs in the States will be better than mine. I know even when I am in Alaska I can get meat cheaper than what I pay down here. Even so, and all things included I put 26 meals ( each serving 4 to 6) in the freezer for less than 200$ Way less. The meat cost was the most and it was 149.39 CND $ each for the four of us. We each brought our own ingredients ( I had gone through the included grocery list and broke it down into 4 so we could each buy our own and pool it on cook day) the most pricey thing after the meat was the cheese, there was a lot of that:)
If you wanted to do it on your own you would have no problem, it is laid out so simply and the recipes look really tasty. I am tired, and my feet hurt, but it was worth it!
The only thing I would recommend is have lots of clean tea towels/dishcloths, several sets of measuring spoons, a few BIG pots( i used my canner a few times) and take turns with someone washing up steadily. It worked well to have everyone bring coolers and a few bags of ice because I didn’t have enough room in my freezer to put all the food as it was put together.
There is very little cooking involved- just some ground beef that needs to be cooked, and some meatballs in the recipes we chose. Everything else is just chopping, combining sauces, filling big zipper freezer bags and thats it. It was really fun:)And I am SO stoked to have a month worth of meals in my freezer right now! Now the meals do need to have veggies and some times the potatoes or rice added to them, but I like that because now I can concentrate on nice salads and or veggie dishes, plus maybe even desert sometimes, instead of just trying to figure out dinner.
I’ll let you know how it tastes tomorrow:)
Heidi
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