When moms get together for a chat, we inadvertently start discussing our child's diet, his/ her likes and dislikes, and sometimes share our exasperation to make the little one's meals more interesting, and how to get them to eat. Chubbs is definitely fussy when it comes to food. To name just a few, he hardly tolerates egg yolk, will sniff out a single flake of fish in his rice and abandon the whole bowl of food, green leafy veg are almost always too tough for him to chew and swallow, and he hates formula milk; so I have to feed him using a teaspoon, 480ml of it everyday. Not the most enjoyable thing.
To get fresh ideas for his meals, I often look at blogs and cookbooks for inspiration. A lot of them use fancy presentation, lots of ingredients, and frankly, quite a bit of time. However, if Chubbs is willing to eat the food at the end of it all, I'd happily do as told. But I've come to realise that with him, simple is best. So I'd like to start sharing some of Chubbs' winner dinners with you guys, and hopefully, they'll give mummies out there some new dinner menu ideas. Everything is prepared with minimal ingredients and seasonings, to make cooking really easy and quick. The few guidelines that I have for myself, is that his three main meals of the day have to at least consist of a carbohydrate (wheat preferable only once a day), a protein and a lot of fruit. Veggies are a big bonus.
His daily time-table for food goes something like this.
9am- breakfast: A bowl of wholegrain cereal with fresh milk and fruit.
11am- 240ml milk before school.
He skips lunch in school everyday, preferring to play with toys undisturbed while other kids eat.
3pm- heavy snack: 1 piece of cheese/ boiled egg, 1 slice of wholemeal bread with jam/ honey, fruit and 240ml milk.
6pm- dinner.
7pm- snacks on whatever Fuzzy and I are eating for dinner. Usually some rice, veg and fruit.
So here's what he had for dinner over the past few days.
Wednesday: Oven-baked red-skinned potatoes, with egg omelette and ketchup. A big handful of grapes.
I leave the skins on the potatoes because the skins contain half the fibre in a potato. I cut them to resemble French fries, pat them dry, toss in extra virgin olive oil, and bake them in an 180C oven for 20min. He finished everything except for a few of the chips.
After dinner, he still managed to eat a scoop of vanilla ice-cream, and a small bowl of rice, and Stuffed his face with some freshly cooked potato chips.
Thursday: Steamed corn on the cob, with honey soy grilled chicken wings. A bowl of yellow watermelon.
As corn is a grain, I treat it as the carbo component to the meal. He ate all the meat (sans skin) and fruit, but couldn't finish the corn.
Friday: Chicken stew with potatoes and carrots; accompanied by a bowl of yellow watermelon.
He finished everything, and also had some choy sum when Fuzzy and I had dinner later. He had lots of energy to help Tai-Gong water all the plants in the garden after.
