Kitchen

[Poodlepet2]

Happy, I think you've been given some great advice. I'm not diabetic, but I'm watching my A1C and I basically follow a diabetic diet. There are some excellent magazines and on-line resources for us that are chock full of great recipes that the entire family can eat.

As far as your daughter goes, I was in the same situation with my 19 year old daughter. She was off the charts on the low-end and I was given the worst advice by our pediatrician-but I was frightened too because she was globally developmentally delayed and was classified moderate to severely autistic. Our pediatrician's advice was to give her what she wanted and over time, she would eat normally.....that did not happen...."Sara" would not eat if she did not like it-which of course caused us-her parents- to panic. We tried to keep the drama down and not cajole or make a scene-but it's not easy.

Make life easier on yourself. Listen to your inner chef: prepare what you believe to be healthy and if she doesn't like it, oh well. That's hard for you to swallow-it was hard for me, but the result is, to this day, my daughter is an incredibly picky eater and has horrible dietary habits. I kept junk food out of the house, but when she was old enough to start cooking, she would create food heavy on refined carbs, sugar and fat....

Oh, in addition to the diabetic magazines and cookbooks out there, there is a fabulous magazine called "Clean Eating"....no artificial anything there, but great whole food that is truly not fussy to prepare at all-and delicious. Best of luck to you.

Poodlepet

[fthunt]

Spanish Rice Casserole - ground beef w/onions/grn peppers - can tomatoes - rice (of course)

Boiled Dinner - either chunk of ham or corned beef w/boiled onions - carrots - cabbage - potatoes

Italian Casseroles - lots of food websites with great recipes (stock up on bottled sauce - pasta)

Grandma Brown's bakes beans (can) - to go with hamburgers - toss salad or whatever

Baked Chicken w/BBQ sauce or Italian sauce - w/salad or rice or pasta

Tuna Noodle Casserole - w/veggie on the side

Split chicken baked - anything can go with that

There are thousands of options - go through a few recipes and jot down what you'll need at the grocery store to make those tempting dishes!

Enjoy your adventure!

[BLH]

Woman's Day magazine has a whole month of menus. I use it all of the time. Also our local senior citizen center serves meals and they list the menu in the newspaper. I get good ideas from that. They are always healthy meals.

[Sameaslast]

Just cook what you want to cook...catering to a child is a very bad idea unless there is a serious physical issue which you didn't mention...catering to a husband is also a bad idea...you are not a hired cook, and my family would quickly get the message if I were treated like one, believe me! The red meat eater is old enough to know there are other kinds of food out there that won't kill him...and the little one is young enough to learn...the last thing I would do is spend my time shopping for and cooking 3 separate meals...I have more respect for myself than that...and my family would know better than to expect it!

[Lipstickdiva]

I don't have any children but I do have a picky eating DH. His normal work hours get him out of work at 3:00 however, he often has to work overtime and is on-call for his job one week a month which means he may be home and have to leave again, he may get home at his normal time and stay home or in the case of last night, he got home at 8:45.

I completely sympathize with you being in the kitchen still cleaning things up at 9:00 at night because I'm often the same. My DH works very, very hard at his job, outside in extreme weather conditions and there is no way I'm going to cook a meal when I get home from work at 5:15 and then expect him to eat it heated in the microwave. Blech

Maybe it's because neither of us really eat leftovers and I rarely heat anything in the microwave that I feel this way.

[Allegheny]

i've been curious about something, perhaps someone could enlighten me. In my husband's family there are six great nieces/nephews who we see frequently. These children range in age from 4 to 11. I am appalled at what they eat. At family dinners something different always has to be prepared for the kids, i.e.., mac & cheese, hot dogs, pizza, noodles, french fries. The sweets run rampant.

The parents and grandparents are all healthy, balanced eaters, yet they cater to the children just to get them to eat. At what age should parents get a handle on this? I never had children so I don't know how I would react.

Growing up my mother never made us special meals. If there was something we didn't like, we avoided it and ate the other items served.

[151949]

On 2/18/2014 Allegheny said:

i've been curious about something, perhaps someone could enlighten me. In my husband's family there are six great nieces/nephews who we see frequently. These children range in age from 4 to 11. I am appalled at what they eat. At family dinners something different always has to be prepared for the kids, i.e.., mac & cheese, hot dogs, pizza, noodles, french fries. The sweets run rampant.

The parents and grandparents are all healthy, balanced eaters, yet they cater to the children just to get them to eat. At what age should parents get a handle on this? I never had children so I don't know how I would react.

Growing up my mother never made us special meals. If there was something we didn't like, we avoided it and ate the other items served.

According to my niece the pediatricans now a days tell the parents to make the children whatever they want to eat - and not to make an issue out of eating vs not eating because as they get into their periods of growth spurts they will be hungry and they will eat. her oldest was horrible about not eating - he would not even eat the special foods she made for him that he liked - til he was 8 then , all of a sudden , he started eating everything she gave him. IMO - they just do this as a attempt to manipulate you anyway.

[Allegheny]

On 2/18/2014 happy housewife said:

On 2/18/2014 Allegheny said:

i've been curious about something, perhaps someone could enlighten me. In my husband's family there are six great nieces/nephews who we see frequently. These children range in age from 4 to 11. I am appalled at what they eat. At family dinners something different always has to be prepared for the kids, i.e.., mac & cheese, hot dogs, pizza, noodles, french fries. The sweets run rampant.

The parents and grandparents are all healthy, balanced eaters, yet they cater to the children just to get them to eat. At what age should parents get a handle on this? I never had children so I don't know how I would react.

Growing up my mother never made us special meals. If there was something we didn't like, we avoided it and ate the other items served.

According to my niece the pediatricans now a days tell the parents to make the children whatever they want to eat - and not to make an issue out of eating vs not eating because as they get into their periods of growth spurts they will be hungry and they will eat. her oldest was horrible about not eating - he would not even eat the special foods she made for him that he liked - til he was 8 then , all of a sudden , he started eating everything she gave him. IMO - they just do this as a attempt to manipulate you anyway.

Thanks happy housewife, I never had the nerve to ask the parents. I didn't want to appear critical.

BTW, bet you're glad you're not in Pittsburgh today! Everyone up here is pretty much out of salt and streets and highways are a disaster. Temps are warming up though and conditions are improving.

[ChynnaBlue]

Sometimes my mom made what I wanted to eat, sometimes she made what my sister wanted to eat, sometimes she made my dad's favorite - but we all at the same thing, whatever it was she made that night, picky or not. Some nights you got your favorite, some nights you ate someone else's favorite - as long as I got a turn, I didn't really care. Kids who are catered to grow up to be adults with limited food experiences and get stuck. My parents traveled the world and I grew up eating international dishes, which I still do today. I've never been a meat and potatoes person because I didn't grow up that way. Limiting kids when they're young is setting them up to be limited for life. I am always surprised at how many of my adult friends refuse to go to a place that doesn't serve hamburgers or won't try Thai, Indian, Cuban, Greek, Brazilian, etc food because they're not used to it and it's weird. I took one friend to a chain Italian place and he claimed that the only things he recognized on the menu were spaghetti and lasagna because those were the only Italian dishes (besides pizza, I guess) that he'd ever been exposed to. You do your kids no favors when you only serve what they like and don't expose them to new things.

If people eat at different times, you might want to consider a slow-cooker. There are healthy and light crock pot cook books, so crock pots don't mean unhealthy. You can start it and have it finish for your early eaters, then keep it warm for the later eaters. It also means fewer dishes to wash, which I love. You can look for one that has removable dish-washer safe interior to make clean up even easier. The last person eating can rinse it and put it in the dishwasher or put it back in the fridge if there's enough for tomorrow.

You should also check out Meatless Mondays. Meatless Monday gives meat-eaters an easy way to eliminate meat from their diet one day a week. It's good for you AND good for the planet. Google Meatless Monday and you'll find lots of information and recipes.

[Lotus]

I'm always in a rut too.....I always seem to make some variation of chicken...maybe chili...salmon and once in awhile steak.

I never made different meals for my family.....they got what I made and if they were hungry they would eat. I grew up that way too.....and it actually expanded my tastes.

I was never a short order chef.