Recipes, Please! :)

I have the same problem. Sometimes I can get her to eat broccoli and cheese or cauliflower and cheese. I find it is easier to give it to her for breakfast when she is most hungry. If I try to give it to her later on, she refuses.

Just keep offering a variety of foods. Kids need to be exposed to a food sometimes 20 times or more before they accept it, try it, and like it. How about eggs for protein? There are many ways to fix them. My son likes them boiled, deviled and scrambled. Cheese is another protein, so is yogurt (greek style is higher in protein).

Don't all kids like fruit? You didn't mention any. Bananas, strawberries, pineapple, applesauce, blueberries, pears, peaches, and kiwis are all great choices! Fruits (and veggies) are PACKED with essential nutrients, vitamins, minerals, and FIBER!

Make food fun! Broccoli = little trees. Cauliflower = snowy trees. Make a face using carrots for lips, mashed potatoes for a beard, broccoli for sideburns, olives for eyes, green beans for eyebrows, hotdog for a mouth, a cherry tomato for a nose, peas for a hat, spaghetti for hair, blueberries for dimples.....get creative!

Try introducing new foods daily. Start with one meal a day with something new. Make sure it is when she is not tired and she also has her favorites as well so she doesn't feel threatened. As her palate increases, introduce more foods, more often.

My (3yo) son's favorite foods are pizza and spaghetti for main dishes, broccoli is his favorite veggie, and all fruits! He likes anything that has to do with breads also. He would fill up on them if I let him. I always give him a little then not let him have more until he eats some veggies and protein.

I recommend nutritionist Ellyn Satter's book 'Child of Mine, Feeding With Love and Good sense" because one thing I learned was that eating behavior like your daughter's (used to eat everything and now only a few select things) is a totally normal developmental phase - she's learning to be more independent in a lot of areas and is exercising that independence in what she agrees to put into her mouth! Satter's advice, like what a PP mentioned, is to keep offering a variety of healthy foods even if she seems to reject them over and over - chances are she'll try it when *she* feels like she wants to (which may not be until she's seen it on her plate for 10 different times before!). http://www.ellynsatter.com/physical-products-books-child-...

try grilled chicken breast cut up into bite sized pieces with a little Light Italian dressing on it (brush it on after you grill it like a george foreman grill)
mini raviolis, use wonton wrappers in the vegitarian section of the prodce with a little bit of sauce and cheese mixture to start after she decides if she likes them or not then fill em with WHATEVER!!! Yeah these are easy
Might be a little young for this but here is a fav
1 cup biscuiq
1 cup skim or 1% milk
1 can mixed veggies mashed up
1/2 cup chedder cheese shredded
2 or 3 chopped up hot dogs or turkey dogs or tofu whatever you like
mix together in a bowl place in 350 degree oven and bake for about 30ish min if you make them smaller then less time; a tooth pick should come out clean and they should look like a biscuit nice and golden on top and bottom.

My baby is 19 months and I try to feed her everything. It took 7 months for her to finially eat cheese. It is frustrating. Week to week they refuse something they liked and start eating something they had refused. So just keep trying to feed her whatever.
My daughter is really into sauces recently. Anything she can dip, or has a sauce already on it. She loves pasta.
Here's a dish she loves:
*Whole weat pasta of your liking (just a small handfull or less), some shredded carrot, steamed chopped cauliflower, peas, broccoli, and if you want you can add grilled chicken chunks (my baby still is if-y about the chicken) and about a tablespoon of white sauce (I use garlic parmasean).
My goal with this dish is to have more vegetables then pasta, and just enough sauce to lightly cover, mainly because she eats it often.
Also try chowmein (you can make your own with fresh veggies) or stir frys, mine does well with those. Enchilladas are good because you can add a ton of vegetables to it, same with tacos or taco salads, and pizza (our grocery store sells whole wheat pizza dough that is fantastic). Broccoli salad, cabbage salad with asian sesame sauce. I know this doesn't have a lot of nutritional value but try jello with some fruit in it. I like to make the jello jigglers so she has fun picking it up.
I have been trying to feed her eggs (in every form) for about 8 months, and she still refuses, and recently I have tried tuna, but thats not going too well. Chicken is a toss up, just depends on what marinade I use, she really likes a honey teriyaki sauce I put on my grilled chicken. She never refuses steak, lol. =) Just keep trying to give her everything, especially things you are eating. I hope this helps in some way.

Just start giving her what you eat, if she's hungry enough, she'll eat it. Give her a bite or two of each thing you are eating and if she eats that, give her more. If she misses a meal or two, its okay, it won't stunt her growth, just make sure to give her a small snack in between meals if she skips until she starts eating then NO snacks if she doesn't eat. Good luck!

At 16 months, it's time to just offer what you are eating. If you don't start now, you are going to always have to cook two meals. My daughter has always gotten what we eat, and she eats everything --save for spicy. I am now giving my 10 month old son what we eat too, just in a form he can manage.

If you teach them right away that what's on the table is what's for dinner, they quickly learn to eat it. They also need to be exposed 15-20 times before they will like it. So just make sure there is something on the plate she will eat, and then don't worry about it. Don't comment on it, etc. just offer her a balanced meal and let her do the rest. Lots of variety and options are key in helping her to expand what she will eat.

You said she ate her meats and veggies when mashed up, do you make stews? We eat a lot of stews in our house at the moment (due to my 10 month old). .

The only from Panera thing is a bit nuts, if you ask me. I personally wouldn't stand for it and would just say "this is the only mac and cheese available, take it or leave it" --but I am a bit tough on my kids. What kind of mac and cheese do you make at home? Do you make it from scratch? I like the Barefoot Contessa's recipe (though I use whatever cheese I have around the house and skip the tomatoes). Maybe you just need to play around a bit. I'm not familiar with Panera's chicken/noodle soup, but have you tried to replicate it and then not tell her where it's from?

How about ravioli's? I make homemade ravioli's all the time, filled with lots of good things. Great way to get veggies on the table without having veggies ;-)

We always gave our kids what we ate and they grew to like it or they went without. To let your children dictate to you what they will eat will end up where you make two or more meals all the time. That's a horrible thing to happen to a family. If you want to out to eat at that wonderful little restaurant that just opened up, the one everyone is talking about, you can't because they don't serve what is on your child's menu.

I had a business associate that would only eat a very limited number of foods. When our business team went out for a dinner to discuss business the bosses would be limited where we could go because he was such a picky eater. He was very talented and very good at his job, but he missed out on at least one promotion I accidently found out about because his superiors felt that if he wouldn't try new foods he probably wouldn't try new ideas.

I know a family that has one child that they let him choose what he will eat. He is almost a teenager and his diet consists of mac and cheese, chicken nuggets and tater tots or french fries and a certain brand of ketchup. How sad. He is starting to show signs of obesity.

Good luck to you and yours.

I agree it's not too late to gradually teach her to eat what you eat. It's tough at first, but really does work. We do the same as Jessica and only really feed her what we cook for ourselves. I also involve my daughter in the cooking process and let her "shake" the spices into the food before I finish cooking or baking, so she feels like she helped to make it. I make french toast (yes another breakfast food), but I soak the bread longer and can get almost a whole egg worth of mixture into each slice. I use honey and cinnamon/vanilla too. Good luck and don't give up!

We have always fed our daughter the same meal as we are having, I don't cook "special meals". I make sure that the food we eat is not too spicy, or that the spicy can be added separate. It seems that she goes in cycles of what type of food she eats more of. Like for a few days she was eating almost all carbs and wasn't even eating cheese which she loves, I started getting worried about it, and wondered if I should only put veggies on her plate. I continued to give her the same meals as we were having, and after a few days she went on a broccoli kick. haha. I really feel they know their bodies, and if they are offered healthy food, they will get the right nourishments,

.

It's not really an issue of food, but of the will. It's totally normal for kids at the age to become picky eaters. What has worked well for me with my three girls (now 9,8,6), is to give them something healthy first. They have to finish it to get the carb. they like. Doing the veg/meat alone and first and in a small quantity makes sure they are hungry and it is small enough that they can eat it. She won't starve even if she doesn't eat for a meal, but you will stave off feeling like a full time restaurant and she will learn that she needs to eat what you give her - and do what you tell her. There is no reason to cajole, talk to, reason with, beg or plead - or get frustrated or angry. Just be calm, cheerful and matter of fact about it. "First peas, then mac and cheese. No peas, no mac and cheese." Depending on how strong willed she is, she'll fight it longer or shorter. It's not just an issue of eating and she knows it. She wants to have clear boundaries consistently enforced - but she'll push to see where the boundaries really are.