Easy Meal Ideas for My 1 Year Old Twins

Soft tortillas, hard cooked egg chunks, applesauce, avacado, chunks of fruit, blueberries, scrambled egg, canned veggies cut up, banana, rice, potato, Aim for a protein, a fruit, a veggie and a starch at each meal.

Sometimes you give them really small amounts over and over again before they try/like things. Just because they refuse it once does not rule it out forever!!

Do not become a short order cook. What ever you are eating they will eat. Eventually they will eat because they are hungry. My first child was such a battle. I stopped battling. This is what you eat, you get nothing else. They learn quickly and now a healthy 5 yr old pretty much eats everything!

my daughter always loved veggies so I would buy the canned green beans and peas. She had no problem eating these. Also sweet potato was a favorite. All you have to do is microwave a sweet potato for about 4 1/2 minutes, then cut it open and scrape out small chunks with a fork. Another favorite was avocado. Cut it into little bite size chunks. I started her on these types of foods early and now she loves vegetables; so much that the other day she came running up to me and said she needed a veggie with her breakfast :) Pasta is also good, cook the noodles and then keep in the fridge just pull them out and reheat with butter or olive, it will last a few days. Also "toast sticks" toast some bread spread a little cream cheese or hummus (my daughter's favorite) on it, then cut the bread into narrow verticle slices. Very tasty and nutritious!!!

I never gave my daughter baby food after the cereal stage. It started in an emergency out-of-town situation, when I just mashed up what we were eating. We never switched back. She is a great lover of all veggies and fruits (exceptcooked carrots and raw spinach). She has never been picky. I always wonder if it is because baby food is so bland it really doesn't tast like anything real. Just introduce one new thing at a time, so you can watch for allergic reactions.

Frozen vegetables!!! Petite sweet peas are the best; sweet corn, green beans, etc. Keep trying them. Vegetables are the basis of a healthy diet. A minute in the microwave, a drizzle of olive oil, salt and pepper and they are fantastic.
You can tear up some turkey and mix it up with the peas and some pasta, and now you're a gourmet.

Hi R.:

I am always looking for new ideas as well!

Here are a few things that have worked for my son:
-Spaghetti- I use ditalini (sp) tiny tubular pasta and requires no chopping- (yippee!) with a jar of carrot tomato baby food as the sauce. I don't even warm it and he loves it. Sometimes I cook ground turkey and add that to the "sauce" or I even serve the ground turkey on its own. Easy for little hands to pick up and, again, no chopping.:-)

-Baked chicken breast

Lately, I have been baking sweet potatoes and acorn squash. My son also LOVES anything roasted in the oven: asparagus, carrots, butternut squash. Plus, this can double as a side for my husband and myself. If you have never done this check out food tv and search ina garten or barefoot contessa. All of my roasting recipes are from her. SUPER EASY!

I hope this helps!

A.

Thanks for asking this question. I have 1 year old twins boy/girl and even with two older I can't remember what I did.

Mine love carrots and peas, I serve Cheerios (or something like it) with everything. They like bread, tortillas torn up, noodles sometimes. More and more we are giving them what we eat. We had chili and gave them some corn and beans out of the chili, they enjoyed it.

Again, thanks for asking, I'm already looking at that menu and waiting for you to get more answers.

Give the kids whatever you are eating, just in smaller portions and cut into bite sized pieces. If they don't eat, then they don't eat. They won't starve! I have never made special meals for either of my kids. When they were very small, they may refuse food the first few times but then they'd eat it. I always gave smaller amounts of food thay did like and bigger portions of food they didn't like or were unfamiliar with. This way, they couldn't fill up on food they loved and be satisfied. They'd have to try some new things. This is an important time. If you start fixing special meals now, you'll be a short order cook until they leave for college.
Best of luck!

Congratulations on your wonderful twin daughters! My son just turned 1, and I can relate to your interest in menu variety! Firm tofu, heated in a tomato or squash or chicken soup, is quick and tasty. I don't give him the soup, just the tofu, and he loves the flavored cubes! You can make a batch that lasts a few days. Canned sweet potatos, tomatos, yams, peas, and fruit cocktail -- sometimes I warm it, sometimes I don't (if possible, look for varieties with less salt and sugar). When it's just me and my son, I'll often stop at a grocery store salad bar and get something we can share. I also use alot of Morning Star products -- the soy sausage (we call it fauxage) and breaded soy nuggets, esp. And plain yogurt can be mixed with alot of smushed fruits and veggies (add some cereal to bulk it up).

One other note: Participation seems to help cultivate my son's interest in food. He creates a spectacular mess when he eats, and he is right there learning about spoons and bowls (and gravity and texture!). I really think it makes a difference in his attitude toward food.

Good luck with your two girls and the new little one in February!

That's the idea behind two popular books, "Deceptively Delicious," by Jessica Seinfeld, and "The Sneaky Chef," by Missy Chase Lapine. Hope this helps.

I do daycare and by 12 mos all the daycare kids are eating exactly what the older kids eat. I just offer it to them, making sure to shred hard foods, avoid chips and give crackers instead, and steam hard veggies as needed.
You can see my 6 week menu at http://www.freewebs.com/tarastoyland

The key to feeding kids is feed them what you eat. Well the healthy things you eat, lol. Not the junk foods that most of us like but shouldn't eat.

This might help, I call it my picky eater plan...
There is a great book by William G Wilkoff, MD called Coping with a Picky Eater that every parent or provider of kids should read and have a copy of. http://www.amazon.com/Coping-Picky-Eater-Perplexed-Parent...

This book has what I call the Picky Eater Plan. I have used this plan with kids that literally threw up at the sight of food and within 2 weeks they were eating normal amounts of everything and trying every food.

First you need to get everyone who deals with the child on board. If you are a provider it's ok to make this the rule at your house and not have the parents follow through but you wont' see as good results as what I described up above.

The plan is to limit the quantities of food you give the kid. When I first start with a child I give them literally ONE bite worth of each food I am serving. The book suggests that every time you feed the kids (breakfast, morning snack, lunch, afternoon snack, dinner) you give all 4 food groups. So, for lunch today I would have given the child one tiny piece of strawberry, one spoonful of applesauce, 3 macaroni noodles with cheese on them, and 2 oz of milk. Only after they ate ALL of what was on their plate would you give them anything else. They can have the same amounts for seconds. If they only want more mac and cheese, they only get 3 noodles then they would have to have more of all the other foods in order to get more than that. If they don't eat, fine. If they don't finish, fine. Don't make a big deal out of it, just make them stay at the table until everyone else is done eating. They don't get more food until they are sat at the next meal and they only get what you serve. When I first do this with a child I don't serve sweets at all. So no animal crackers for snack but rather a carrot for snack. Or one of each of those. I don't make it easy for them to gorge on bad foods in other words. Now if they had a meal where they ate great then I might make the snack be a yummy one cause I know they filled up on good foods.

Even at snacks you have to limit quantities of the good stuff or else they will hold out for snack and just eat those snacky foods. I never give a picky eater the reward of a yummy snack unless they had that great lunch prior to it.

It really is that easy.

I started scrambled for my DD at that age as well as pasta pick ups by gerber. She really liked those. I cut them in half for her though because I thought they were still a little big. Also, I started her on the turkey/chicken sticks from gerber and some diced veggies. For some reason, she really like peas, so she ate those along with green beans and diced carrots. Just make sure everything is tiny for them. My daughter is 14 months now and on almost all table food. She still likes the meat sticks on occasion with some veggies. Oh, and mashed potatos too!! They'll love them.