Muffin tray dinner – a novel meal idea for kids!

Just as my oldest child (aged 5)  is becoming more adventurous with food, his younger brother (aged 3) is saying ‘no!’ more and more.  So I decided to try this great ‘muffin tray dinner’ idea I read about in ‘Getting the Little Blighters to Eat’ by Claire Potter (a book recommended by a local mum – link here:  http://www.amazon.co.uk/Getting-Little-Blighters-Eat-children/dp/1408190745).

For a muffin tray dinner you create an exciting kids meal by filling the holes of a muffin tray with different foods (my kids ate theirs in front of the tv as a treat).  It’s a great way of using up food that needs eating and encouraging kids to try new stuff.  Instead of trying to think up 12 different foods to prepare, you can put the same food in some of the holes.

Have a mix of mostly savoury (including one or two veg), a couple of sweet treats, fruit and one or two new foods.  Most of the food can be instant so it doesn’t have to be time consuming.  Today we had: two sweets; oat biscuits; chorizo slices; rye bread with peanut butter; chopped plum; a kitkat finger; cheese; pre-cooked chicken chunks; satsuma segments and homemade chips.  You could try anything you think of!  Other ideas Claire Potter suggests are: any fruit; twiglets; seeds; chocolate buttons; veg sticks with humous; crisps; marshmallows; tofu chunks; popcorn; dried fruit and cereal.

My oldest ate every last crumb on his tray and my youngest ate everything apart from the chicken.  They both (to my surprise and excitement..!) enjoyed the rye bread (a new food in our house).  And my oldest decided that the melted chocolate from the kitkat was actually quite nice (having run a mile from anything gooey in the past).

We are going to try and have a muffin tray dinner every week, which the kids are very happy about.

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