6 dinners for children: healthy, fast and fun

The most stressful moment of the day? For many parents it is when it is time to get home after an intense day at work or a powerful afternoon with the kids in the park and catch dinner.

Many times both we and the children are tired and hungry. Actually, we would like to sit on the sofa or play with the little one, but we have to prepare dinner and we have not always organized ourselves to have quick and healthy dinners ready. Because, of course, we are not satisfied with just any dinner. like good parents we would like to prepare delicious and healthy dinnerswith a lot of vegetables, because we have noticed that the children have not yet eaten their 5 servings of vegetables for the day.

It often happens that we open the fridge and start thinking. What to do for dinner? We wait a while because a miracle might happen and something appears, but since nothing is happening and the children are protesting, then we start to prepare that delicious pumpkin puree, with the organic pumpkin that we bought at the market over the weekend. We waited twenty minutes trying to entertain the children. But as soon as the puree is presented on the table, the boy turns his head with an “Ugh!”because the pumpkin does not like it and He is not hungry anymore.

Does it ring a bell? Well there’s no reason for it to be that way. We can prepare quick and healthy dinners with lots of vegetables for children and for the whole family with much lower stress levels.

Quick and healthy dinners for kids: what to do and how to organize

All we need is, as always, a little organization and planning. The ideal is plan dinners in advance, at least for weekdays. These tips will help us organize:

If we are too lazy to start thinking about dinner ideas, we can use the food types method. We think about what types of dinners we have for dinner or would like to have for dinner: for example, complete salads, purées, vegetable protein, healthy sandwiches… AND we dedicate each day to a type of food for dinnerFor example, vegetable puree on Monday, vegetable protein on Tuesday, cooked vegetables on Wednesday, healthy snacks on Thursday, etc. Thus, for planning we only think about what puree or what protein we are going to prepare and thus planning is easier. Once the dinners are planned, we can make the corresponding shopping list and decide who will be responsible for preparing dinner. Only be clear about what we are going to have for dinner and who is going to prepare it it’s a big jump. Then we can do another step and advance the preparations. For this, we can dedicate one hour on sunday afternoon to prepare dinners or their bases, or if we have more time during the week, we can for example take advantage of the child’s nap and leave things ready before leaving home. In our preparations we can prepare all kinds of vegetable purees, make a large amount of baked vegetables, prepare vegetable burgers, baked tofu or tempeh, sauces… Even if we only have 10 minutes, we can, for example, wash and cut vegetables for salad, leave tofu marinating to grill it or make a quick sauce to accompany steamed vegetables. We can also take advantage of leftovers from meals and turn them into quick and healthy dinners. If we have some tofu left over, we can make sandwiches; with a couple of tablespoons of tomato sauce it is enough for a pizza, etc.

If we have a problem with the little ones who don’t eat, it is best to talk to them and explain the importance of eating vegetables and adding vegetables to other preparations beyond the typical purees, which for many children is not the texture they like the most. The stir-fry, oven, or raw vegetabless tend to be more popular.

We can also try make up funny names what to call a vegetable puree “Hulk mash”present food in a fun way and if they do not eat any vegetables, hide it in dishes that they like as hamburgers, croquettes, sauces…

5 dinner recipes for children

Here are ideas for five healthy and fun dinner ideas for kids (and adults!):