My picky eater

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I'm going to link up with Holly at When Two Became Four, and post some of Madison's latest meals/snacks. Holly is a mom of twin toddler girls, so I asked her to blog about her mealtime/snack favs. Every mom is different and believe it or not, it's hard to come up with healthy ideas for toddlers, without feeding them the same thing all the time.

Madison will love something one day and hate it the next, so I always need 2 ideas when it comes to meal times. Mostly for her lunches, we will both eat leftovers from supper the night before. She doesn't seem to like meat so we don't force her to eat it (or anything for that matter). I think it's important to let M try new things without forcing her to eat them. She's just like adults and knows when she does or doesn't like something. The two things she seems to hate are eggs and green beans. I'm not a huge fan of eggs myself, unless they are on a sandwich or in something. Alan despises green beans. So she has a little of us in her :)

For breakfast, she always eat a whole banana. I will then give her a couple of strawberries, orange or toast.

On this day, I spread peanut butter on a wheat tortilla, rolled it up and sliced it. She seemed to love it.

For lunch, she eats leftovers. If we don't have any, here are my go-to meals:

• sweet potato fries (sliced, sprayed with olive oil spray and baked)
• chicken nuggets (chunk chicken breast, dipped in butter, rolled in Panko bread crumbs and baked)
• frozen peas and carrots or beans
• mac and cheese
• crescent dough topped with cream cheese and chopped broccoli(Holly mentioned this and Madison loved it!)

 For snacks:

• Goldfish
• Cinnamon pinwheel cookies (sold in the baby food aisle)
• Homemade Vanilla Wafers
• Puff snacks
• food puree pouches
• string cheese
• yogurt 

I will leave with a cute video of Madison moaning while she eats. If you've ever been around her when she's eating, she does this just about every time she eats and has done it for as long as we can remember. It's so cute so turn your sound up to hear it!

 

What are your go-to snacks and meals for your kids? 

Homemade Vanilla Wafers

As said before, I would rather make something homemade than buy it. Have you ever looked at the ingredients or sodium in boxed, canned or bottled things? I was looking for some snacks for Madison and came across Weelicious. This site has a ton of great toddler friendly foods and snacks and also some regular recipes as well! I made these earlier in the week and Madison seems to love them! They are actually pretty good, even though they taste more like sugar cookies than the store bought boxed vanilla wafers. Sorry these are phone pictures so they aren't great. Full recipe at the bottom.

• 1 1/4 cup all purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
• 1/3 cup sugar
• 1 large egg
• 1 tablespoon vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350 F.
Place the first 3 ingredients into a bowl and combine. Place the butter and sugar in a standing mixer (or bowl using a hand mixer) and cream for 3-4 minutes until the butter is light and fluffy.  Add the vanilla extract and egg and mix for another minute, scraping down the sides of the bowl as you go. Add the flour mixture and mix until combined. Refrigerate the dough for 30 minutes.

Roll 1 tspn of dough into a ball, about 1 inch, and place on a parchment or aluminum foil lined baking sheet.
Flatten each ball into a disk then bake for 15 minutes.

Cool and serve. Mine aren't nearly as pretty as theirs.

Vanilla Wafers  (Makes about 4 dozen)

• Prep Time:35 minutes,
• Cook Time: 15 minutes,
• Total Time: 50 minutes,

Ingredients

• 1 1/4 cup all purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
• 1/3 cup sugar
• 1 large egg
• 1 tablespoon vanilla extract

Preparation

Homemade baked chicken nuggets

I made these for Madison to freeze as an easy lunch. I also made some last night for supper and Alan said they were good. He says that about everything, even if it's horrible. He's a great hubby. Everything is really depending on how many you want to make. For a meal, I'd say 2-4 chicken breasts would be enough for 2 people with some leftovers.

Ingredients:

2-4 boneless skinless chicken breasts

1 stick melted, unsalted butter (1 cup)

1 cup grated/shredded parmesan cheese(not that cheap kind in the canister)

1.5 cup Panko bread crumbs

Directions:

Preheat oven to 450.

Pour melted butter into a bowl. Put cheese and bread crumbs into another bowl.

Chop your chicken into nugget-size pieces. You could always do strips if adults are eating these. Dip the chicken into the butter then roll in bread crumb mixture. Lay out chicken on foil lined baking pan and bake 20 minutes or so, depending on the amount of chicken you have.

*To freeze, once the pan is cool, transfer to freezer. Let freeze at least 1-2 hours and then take chicken off pan and put into bag or container. To reheat, just put amount of chicken on baking sheet in 350 degree oven for 15-20 minutes.