CHILDRENS MEAL IDEAS
If you need some inspiration to help you cook healthy and tasty food for your kids, try these meal ideas. These meals are not suitable as first foods but fine once your baby is older and used to eating a wide range of solid foods.
When preparing food for children, don’t add salt, sugar or stock cubes directly to the food, or to the cooking water.
Whole cows’ milk can be given as a drink from the age of one. Semi-skimmed milk can be introduced at two years old, provided your child is a good eater and growing well for their age.
Breakfast for babies and children
Porridge or unsweetened cereal mixed with milk, topped with mashed ripe pear
Wholewheat biscuit cereal with milk and stewed fruit
Toast fingers with mashed banana
Toast fingers with a hard boiled egg and slices of ripe peach
Stewed apple, yoghurt and unsweetened breakfast cereal
Childrens’s lunch or tea ideas
Cauliflower cheese with cooked pasta pieces
Mashed pasta with broccoli and cheese
Baked beans (reduced salt and sugar) with toast
Stewed fruit and custard
Scrambled egg with toast, chapatti or pitta bread
Cottage cheese dip with pitta bread and cucumber and carrot sticks
Plain fromage frais with stewed apple
Small pieces of soft ripe peeled pear or peach
Children’s dinners
Mashed sweet potato with mashed chickpeas and cauliflower
Shepherd’s pie with green vegetables
Rice and mashed peas with courgette sticks
Mashed cooked lentils with rice
Minced chicken and vegetable casserole with mashed potato
Mashed canned salmon with couscous and peas
Fish poached in milk with potato, broccoli and carrot
Snacks
Rice pudding or porridge (with no added sugar or salt)
Canned fruit in fruit juice
Fresh fruit
Yoghurt (unsweetened)
Toast, pitta or chapatti fingers
Unsalted rice cakes
Bagels
Small cubes of cheese
Getting your child to eat fruit and vegetables
Try these ways of increasing your child’s intake of fruit and vegetables:
Put their favourite vegetables or canned pineapple on top of pizza
Give carrot sticks, slices of pepper and peeled apple for snacks
Mix chopped or mashed vegetables with rice, mashed potatoes, meat sauces or dhal
Mix fruit (fresh, canned or stewed) with yoghurt or fromage frais for a tasty dessert
Chop prunes or dried apricots into cereal or yoghurt, or add them to a stew
