Making food fun - Mini Cottage Pie in a ramekin dish
Often parents tell me ‘My three year old only eats spaghetti hoops, chips and chocolate biscuits’. Is this parent saying that their child takes the keys of the car, drives to the supermarket and fills up the trolley with junk food and then drives home? It’s always going to be more difficult to get your child to eat something healthy if there’s a tin of spaghetti hoops and chocolate cake in the fridge.
Food is the fuel that powers our children. It makes them grow strong, gives them energy and plenty of opportunities to wind up their parents. If your child refuses to eat anything other than junk food, chill out, he will soon find there’s not much point making a fuss if you don’t react. Let your child be hungry sometimes. A hungry child is a less fussy child.
During the Summer holidays and at weekends, most children are so busy doing fun and exciting activities that they generally come home starving. The trouble is most children dive into the biscuit tin or grab a chocolate bar. Have something ready prepared on the table. Cut up fruit on a plate is much more tempting than fruit in a fruit bowl, children like raw veg with a tasty dip. Its quick and easy to make delicious wraps, pitta pockets or pasta salads and it’s a good idea to have a low shelf in the fridge where children can help themselves to tasty healthy snacks.
Remember food is not just sustenance, food is fun. Manufacturers are clever. Children like cheese strings and squeezy tubes of fromage frais so we too need to be a little inventive in how we present our healthy food too. Mini portions of foods like mini cottage pie in ramekin dishes looks far more appealing than a dollop of food on a plate. You can puree fresh fruit and freeze it in ice lolly moulds to make your own fresh fruit ice lollies. Children love Chinese Style food like Chicken Chow Mein and you can make it fun to eat by giving them child friendly chopsticks that are joined at the top.
Looks like it’s going to rain all day today so if you are struggling to think of something fun today with your little ‘junk food junkie’ perhaps you can play a game. Blindfold your child and give him several foods to taste, some old favourites and some new, and see if he can identify what they are without looking !
♥ Happy Saturday
