Daily menu: Friday

Woo-hoo, my last day of tracking the makeup of Sly’s meals. For this week, anyhow!

Breakfast: The usual oatmeal, with applesauce and cinnamon. Plus graham cracker bits smeared with cream cheese.

Lunch: I took the leftover pasta from the other day, mixed it with spaghetti sauce, and heated that up for Sly’s lunch. She also ate a passel of sweet potato fries — man, that girl looooves her sweet potato! About half the pasta she threw overboard, though. (Sigh.) The daily yogurt came at lunch today.

Dinner: A ridiculously enormous amount of broccoli, rice and cheese casserole. Plus some applesauce.

She also got a mid-afternoon treat of some Annie’s Organic fruit snacks, after I took her for a much-needed haircut and she didn’t shriek her way through it.

Thanks for putting up with food minutiae this week! I’ll do a recap and analysis soon and then get back to fun-ner things!

Daily menu: Thursday

Okay, these were today’s specials:

Breakfast: oatmeal with smooshed up blackberries. What she threw off her tray last night, Sly was fine with eating in oatmeal. Also, most of a banana.

Lunch: Leftover chicken pot pie, about a quarter of a grilled cheese sandwich, and some diced pear.

Dinner: The other half of the avocado she had for lunch the other day, plus most of a mixed fruit cup and a cup of yogurt.

Today felt like a bit of a cop-out, cooking-wise. I was exhausted and pretty much made do with whatever came to hand, especially when it got to dinner. But I do feel good that Sly ate her avocado — lots of good fats! — and avoided throwing things on the floor today.

Daily menus: Wednesday

Another day, another three meals!

Breakfast: Oatmeal with blueberry-pomegranate sauce and a handful of frozen blueberries. Plus the last of the nectarines (Sly devoured the whole thing) and some Yogurt Burst Cheerios.

Lunch: half of a peanut butter sandwich on whole wheat, half an avocado, and most of a cereal bar. That was a really good lunch (in terms of her eating almost everything)!

Which is good, because dinner was pretty much a FAIL.

Dinner: I offered some diced colby-jack and blackberries while I was finishing up cooking. (Sly was begging to go in her highchair, which means she’s hungry.) But she threw all of it to the dogs. (Argh! Those berries were organic! And so juicy that they went SPLAT all over the kitchen floor. Sigh.)

Her main dinner was whole-wheat fusilli pasta (I like the Archer Farms brand from SuperTarget) mixed with olive oil and peas, and sprinkled with parmesan and parsley. She ate some of the pasta, nary a single pea, and then amused herself by hurling still more food to our dogs. I distracted her with a yogurt cup, and then dinner was over.

That very frustrating meal is still fresh in my mind, and I’m grinding my teeth a little. Gah, some days this whole food thing just completely gets the best of me. It’s really irritating to watch that food get tossed on the floor and/or go to waste.

At least I made enough pasta for her to have another partial meal of it tomorrow. And dog-toddler relations are probably at an all-time high.

Daily menus: Tuesday

Yet another day of chronicling Sly’s meals. So we started off with …

Breakfast: Scrambled eggs! (I bet you were expecting oatmeal, hmmm?) Made “dadda-style” with half-and-half and some shredded cheese. Plus most of a banana. She adores bananas and would happily wolf down down one entirely on her own — but I try to limit her intake a bit. If I don’t, her otherwise-regular-as-clockwork poops get … delayed, shall we say?

Lunch: Fish sticks (right now I’m using Van de Kamp’s sticks made from whole fillets); diced pear; corn; a cup of yogurt; and some colby-jack cheese. Sly took one or two bites from each of the four fish sticks (Sigh. I don’t get this. What makes the second half inferior to the first half?), gobbled the pear and corn, and played with the cheese.

She used to make any kind of cheese disappear like magic. Now I’m lucky if I can get her to eat a slice of American, and she seems to have completely forgotten how much she loved cheddar, colby, jack, and mozzarella. I keep offering it, but it’s kind of discouraging when all she wants to do is throw it to our two dogs.

Dinner was chicken pot pie — only this time it was “grown-up” pot pie, not the pot pie muffin she had last night. Made with peas, carrots and corn — lots more veggie than crust. She ate everything on her plate and then wanted mine, so I gave her seconds. Plus more cheese (I gave up and offered a slice of American this time; she ate it all). And another cup of yogurt.

Overall, a pretty good eating day!

Daily menus: Monday

Breakfast: oatmeal with diced nectarines and a smidge of vanilla. Big hit! (In case it’s not obvious from the fruit selection over the past few days, I bought a bag of nectarines that I’m trying to use up before they go bad.) Sly had no interest in the Yogurt Burst Cheerios or BabyBel cheese that I offered for finger foods.

Lunch: we split some macaroni and cheese (straight out of the Big Blue Box), and Sly plowed through some of the sweet potato fries I baked last night (recipe is on wholesomebabyfood.com, under their finger foods section). Also, she ate an entire apple-cinnamon cereal bar. She had a big lunch!

Dinner: a chicken pot pie muffin (recipe here), some broccoli rice and cheese casserole (recipe here) and a cup of yogurt.

I never would have thought it’d be hard to remember what your kid had for her meals, but after a day chasing around a toddler, I’m lucky if I can remember my own name!

Daily Menus: Sunday

Breakfast: oatmeal flavored with blueberry-pomegranate applesauce from Motts. Finger food: Rice Chex with peanut butter and dried cherries. Sly has eaten dried cherries in the past and loved them, but today she just wanted to feed them to me.

Late-morning snack: apple-cinnamon cereal bar, before heading off to a festival at one of our local museums.

Lunch came late today, because she wore herself out at the festival (and got a few bites of her first snow-cone and even a little cotton candy) and napped early. I offered a piece of cheese, diced nectarine bits, and half of a peanut butter sandwich on whole wheat. She only ate the sandwich — but she ate the whole thing.

Dinner: Broccoli, rice & cheese casserole; half of a meatloaf muffin. (Whenever I make meatloaf for dinner, I make an extra-large batch of the mix and then cook some of it in a cooking-sprayed, foil-wrapped muffin tin. Then I freeze the meat muffins. Sixty seconds in the microwave and voila, main course!) She ate the casserole and maybe a bite or two of the meatloaf.

When I asked Sly if she wanted yogurt (which she usually answers with an emphatic nod or the sign for “please”), she shook her head no. So I took her at her word — but I also offered her usual yogurt cup about 45 minutes later, and she happily devoured it. I’d hate to have her skip that entirely, since it’s a big part of her calcium intake.

She finished up with snacking on a few of the sweet potato fries that I baked tonight. I froze the rest for later meals. And wow, two sweet potatoes make a ton of fries!

A week of daily menus: Saturday

For the next week, I’m going to try my darndest to record what Sly is served — and what she actually eats — for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

I’ve been meaning to do this for awhile. I want to get a macro-view of her diet, plus I feel like we’re in a bit of a rut and I haven’t introduced many new things lately. After a week, it should be pretty obvious if I’m serving peas too often or whatever.

So, here we go:

Breakfast was: old-fashioned oatmeal made with half-and-half. I added a bit of banana drinkable yogurt, and some plain applesauce.

Finger foods: caramel mini-rice-cakes smeared with cream cheese. Plus she begged for some of my cinnamon-raisin bagel, which seems to have become a sort of second-breakfast for her lately!

Lunch: Some leftover breaded porkchop bits from dinner last night. I don’t think she actually ate any of this — maybe a bite?

Plus a bunch of green beans (canned, no salt added — the only canned vegetable that I use regularly. My pediatrician actually recommended them because they’re not as chewy and stringy as fresh green beans can be. And heck, it’s a green veggie she’s willing to eat! But I have to admit, these don’t taste nearly as good as the salty ones. ).

Plus, most of a grilled cheese sandwich on whole wheat.

Dinner: steamed broccoli with butter (ate a few bites), diced peach, some pieces of my pizza cut down to bite-size, and a cup of Yobaby yogurt.

Mini-Chicken Pot Pies

Since I’m on the subject of muffins, I’ll throw in another recipe that I made for Sly’s dinner tonight.

I got this recipe from a friend as part of a collection she made for me when I got married. It makes eight mini-chicken pot pies. I’m including the original recipe, and then my modification.

Mini-Chicken Pot Pies (original)
1 (16.3-oz.) can of Pillsbury Grands refrigerated biscuits
1 (19 oz.) can of chicken noodle soup
1-2 tablespoons butter
1 tsp. dried Italian seasoning
1/2 tsp. garlic powder
1/4 cup shredded mozzarella cheese

Heat oven to 375. Lightly spray a regular-sized muffin pan with cooking spray (you only need to spray eight of the pockets). Separate each of the eight biscuits into two layers. Place eight of the halves into the sprayed muffin cups, pressing to cover the sides and bottom.

Drain the soup, then spoon the drained soup into the biscuit-lined cups. Place the remaining biscuit halves over the soup and press gently to seal.

Spread the biscuit tops with butter, then sprinkle with the Italian seasoning, garlic powder and 1/2 tablespoon of cheese.

Bake at 375 for about 15 minutes or until golden brown. Run a butter knife around the edge of the muffins to remove.

In my version, instead of the chicken soup, I use:
- approx. 1 cup of frozen mixed veggies, thawed
- 1 can cream of chicken soup (regular or low-sodium)
- 1 small can of canned chicken

I mix those together — using about 3-4 spoonfuls of the cream of chicken soup and most of the canned chicken — and use that to fill the biscuit cups.

The cooking directions are otherwise pretty much the same. Sometimes I top the muffins with the spices and cheese, other times I just leave them plain.

These are a pretty biscuit-heavy (not a lot of room for the veggie filling), but I haven’t found a satisfactory substitute that cooks up as nicely as the Grands. When I cut them up for Sly, I tend to only give her the pieces with veggies & chicken, so she doesn’t just fill up on crust.

But these still make a nice meal or even a side-dish for a toddler.

Apple-Squash-Turkey Meat Muffins

If you haven’t checked out the site wholesomebabyfood.com, you should! This is the best site I’ve found for a huge variety of information and recipes on baby and toddler foods. For older babies and toddlers, check out their Baby Finger Foods section in particular.

Sly loves their sweet potato fries and broccoli-and-cheddar-cheese nuggets. I also do my own version of their apple-turkey loaf — the original is listed in the finger foods section linked above.

Apple-Squash-Turkey Meat Muffins
1.25 lb ground turkey
1 whole egg or 2 egg yolks, beaten
1/2 cup canned (preferably organic) butternut squash or pumpkin
1/4 cup applesauce
1/4 cup wheat germ
1/4 cup bread crumbs
pinch of basil

The original recipe calls for pureed carrots instead of the pumpkin or squash, and wheat bran instead of wheat germ (I usually have wheat germ on hand, but not wheat bran; both add an extra nutrient boost to the recipe). Using the canned organic puree is easier than cooking and pureeing a bunch of carrots, unless you already have pureed carrots on-hand. I’ve also doubled the bread crumbs if I’m out of wheat germ, but obviously you miss out on some of the extra nutrients if you go that route.

This list of ingredients works out perfectly with 1.25 pounds of ground turkey (which for some reason is the size of one package at my local grocery store) — you’ll probably need to bump up the dry ingredients slightly if you’re only working with a pound of meat.

Mix everything together and then bake it for 40-45 minutes at 350 degrees. I use a regular sized, unlined muffin pan to make this, after coating it with cooking spray first.

A 1.25-pound package of ground turkey makes about 11 meat-muffins, and they’re just right for a toddler-size serving! I cover the pan with tinfoil before baking it, otherwise the tops end up tougher and chewier than the rest of the meat, especially after being frozen and re-heated. A butter knife or large spoon works well for getting the cooked muffins out without destroying the shape.

I made a batch of these last night using canned organic pumpkin and froze all but one, which Sly had for lunch today. She ate every bite!

The basics are great

The past couple of days, I’ve really appreciated how appealing simple, classic meals are to toddlers. It’s a good thing on two levels: my daughter will eat what I serve, and I’m not cooking a separate meal for her.

So we had grilled cheese sandwiches and veggies for lunch. Spaghetti with meat sauce and garlic bread was dinner one night — I’ve been experimenting with different pasta shapes, trying to figure out which ones cook up to a good shape and size for toddler eating. Rotini is good, although sometimes I still cut the noodles in half to make sure she doesn’t choke on them. Elbow macaroni are perfect. I tried orecchiette (the little “ear”-shaped pasta) this week, and most of the pieces are still just a bit too big and thick for her to easily chew.

We had chicken pot pie last night (I use this chicken pot pie recipe, unless I’m feeling like doing more involved cooking), and although Sly plowed through the crust first, I was thrilled when she didn’t neglect the peas and carrots.

She also actually ate the cooked chicken in the pot pie and the ground beef in the spaghetti sauce — which makes me want to do a little happy-dance, because Sly usually just leaves meat on her plate untouched.

So as much as I like introducing new foods and new variations, it’s nice to get back to basics. It renews my faith in the fact that Sly does, in fact, enjoy eating.