Home-made food to tempt a 5 year old?

[nancy]

Hi all, I was just wondering if any of you have any good recipes to tempt a fussy 5 year old boy?

William was such a good baby eating all my home-made dinners but over the past couple of years he's been getting fussier and fussier. If you ask him what he wants for dinner he says "chips and waffles" everytime which obviously I'm not going to give him lol.

Everyone else in the family will happily eat all my home-cooked food but it's a battle almost every meal time, unless it's a night when I just grab something out of the freezer. (ie/ burgers, sausages or fish fingers with waffles or oven chips usually once a week)

It would probably be helpful if I list the things he absolutely hates but it would be good if you know any ways to disguise these foods lol.
veggies (any kind), eggs, gravy, baked beans, fruit (unless it's raisins or currants).

I can usually get him to eat most meat, pasta, potatoes, rice, cheese etc and he likes things on the spicy side.

I'm sure I'm not the only one with this problem so please don't feel you need to restrict your recipes to my needs if you know a good one which isn't going to suit William necessarily.

Thanks in advance.
Sarah x

 

[Mamafy]

Hi hun

I put this up the other day in the toddler section but it's very adaptable for older kids. I looked at it bearing my youngest kids ages in mind which are 2 and 4

http://www.pregnancyforum.co.uk/feeding-nutrition/115683-i-can-cook-recipes.html

I think at this age, they can be so picky but involving them in recipes and letting them cook their own food can actually encourage them to eat

 

[nancy]

That's great, thanks Mamafy. I quite often catch parts of that show so it's good to have the recipes to do with my kids.

I got him to help me make a stew this morning which he enjoyed but he looked horrified when he realised it was for dinner tonight. We'll see if that works later. x

 

[Terrie]

you can make such a great tomato sauce for pasta etc by blending the veggies in a food processor so your son wont even know theyre there!!!

basically if you saute some chopped veggies in a pan like courgette,onion,peas,peppers then add a tin of chopped tomatoes, then you can pop it in a food processor and *voila* the veggies disappear into the sauce

also for eggs you could make pasta with a carbonara sauce (you can look up recipes online) and you cant even see the eggs

fruit you can encorporate into most curries/spicey food by blending it and adding it to the sauce, for example apples, apricots and currents work really well.

 

[nancy]

Thanks Terrie, you've given me some food for thought!

I usually blend up tomatoes before using them as OH can't stand lumps of them in sauces, it won't hurt to blend some other things in there at the same time...I hadn't thought of that.

I love carbonara but never make it as OH doesn't like white sauces, now I've got an excuse!

William ate a little bit of the stew he helped cook. I strained the gravy off his and managed to get him to try the dumplings which he enjoyed, he also ate the beef, potatoes and 1 piece of carrot. He still isn't convinced but we all thanked him for cooking us a lovely dinner and he was really proud .

 

[DonSelf]

Hi, try juicing! Make it sweet enough with carrots and apples. You can hide some even more healthy stuff there too, like spinach etc.! Good luck!