Menus

This section is a bit like a blog of the meals we actually eat.  I'll record my plan for the week, what we actually end up having, and comments on it.  These are meals that are aimed to please a 4 and 5 year old who are both super-fussy eaters (almost no vegetable or fruit type kids), and also to please me - very quick and easy.

You'll probably find quite a lot of repetition in our menus - like most people have, so you'll find you can just skim through them for anything new.  And particularly the first lot of menus - April, May and June - are very, very quick and simple.  I have a baby due towards the end of May, so I've really had to pull back with cooking a lot with just being so tired yet very busy.  In the first part of the year I made lots of pasta (ie from scratch), various nut balls, gnocchi, etc - a lot more interesting main meals.  Now I've had to make things a lot simpler for myself, while still trying to give the kids healthy meals.  As the year moves on I'm sure our main meals will gradually get a lot more interesting again, although a tiny bub can really take it out of you!

Most of the pics at the start are lunches, as they're the most interesting bit, but as our main meals get interesting again I'll add recipes and pictures of them too.

Recording of our menus will probably happen in bursts, so don't be too surprised if it goes quiet for a while or if some days are missed!  Mostly I haven't recorded weekend meals.

Hope this helps to give you a few ideas.

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I started rethinking our meals because it has been so hard to get the kids to eat fruit and vegetables.  And I figured they must be getting a bit sick of the same lunch everyday.  Inspired by "Vegan Lunch Box" - the blog at http://veganlunchbox.blogspot.com/ I decided that perhaps if I could get some healthy food into them at lunch times at least that would help.  I also found that they were so tired at dinner time, that it was silly to have a battle with them every night to try to get them to eat a sensible, well-rounded dinner.

So I talked with my daughter (who is 5) about this, and told her that if she could eat some other things like fruit and veg with her lunch, I'd start putting in some tiny treats - like tiny bikkies.  Up until now I'd avoided putting in any bikkies or treats, as any time I did, that was all that got eaten.  I also showed her the pics of lunches at Vegan Lunch Box, and she was very keen to try it.

My plan then, was to revamp her lunches, adding in a couple of serves of fruit and veg there.  You'll see that after the first couple of weeks I have also been trying to give them a substantial afternoon tea straight after school, doing the same - adding a couple of serves of fruit and veg, along with something that is more of a treat.  If they eat some of the fruit and veg at lunch/afternoon tea, then I can go a bit easy on dinner.  It means they can have the dinners that they really love, like macaroni cheese or noodles.  And I'm not constantly trying to sneak veggies in.  We do usually have reasonably healthy dinners still - like rice balls (that include veggies in them), various veggie soups, etc, and even when we have noodles, they're organic noodles with some fried tofu and shoyu.  But if they refuse to eat something it doesn't really matter.

How's it been working?  Well, you'll see my comments in the menus, but generally I've been pleased.  Although my daughter can sometimes leave some or even most of her lunch, she's still getting more fruit and veg then before, and generally eating more healthy food and variety.  The afternoon teas have been a big success - I guess that's when they're really hungry!