no 65: what on earth do you feed a toddler?

A week of toddler meals and snacks, and how I private chef for a two year old without losing my mind.

Just joined? Welcome! Earlybird covers a mix of personal essays, style, wellness, parenting and more. Today’s edition is fairly parenting centric — if you’d rather skip future motherhood content, you can customize what you receive here.

One of the hardest things I have found about being a parent to a toddler is something that one one ever thought to warn me about:

Not once in all the “just wait”s that were lobbed my way (and there were so, so, so many!) did anyone bother to mention that having a toddler means that you essentially become a personal chef for the world's most inconsistent client.

Not only do you have to have a meal plan for *every single meal of the day, forever*, but also that meal often needs to be 100% portable to ensure you are never caught in traffic, at a playground or out to dinner without sufficient nutrients. (regrettably, my toddler cannot survive on black coffee and toast until dinner time)

I won’t lie to you: the learning curve can be a bit steep. But somehow I am now a mom that is regularly asked at preschool, at playdates, and out for dinner, how I got my kid to be such a good eater. He eats just about everything we put in front of him, with gusto - and went from being in the low teens percentile for height and weight at his one year check up to being almost in the 90th percentile at his two year.

I’ll be the first to tell you that there is a lot of luck at play: we got a kiddo with a great appetite, and adventurous spirit and we worked with that early and often to help him try *everything*. But I also put a lot of thought into expanding his horizons (and his palate) with creative meals that don’t add too much time to my own plate. Today I’m sharing:

• My tips for encouraging adventurous eaters

• How we approach meals and cooking for our toddler

• An example week of toddler meals

• A Grocery List of things I always have on hand

• The gear I swear by to make toddler meals on the go a breeze

This is by no means an exhaustive guide (e.g. I won’t go in depth on introducing solids), but is wholly representative of how I approach feeding my very hungry caterpillar without also losing my mind!

Let’s dig in,

How we approach meals // cooking for a toddler:

I will acknowledge right off the bat that we are extremely lucky and don’t have major food intolerances, allergies. I also love cooking, but don’t want to spend allllll my time on it. So, starting from the beginning I adopted a “no special meals” approach - the same way I did when I went plant based while my husband didn’t.

That means, more or less: I’m cooking one thing, and that’s what we’re alllllllll eating.

Here’s what that looks like in practice:

• Dinner: This tends to be the most complicated. We eat as a family, and since the little bear has been eating solids I have assembled his plate based on what we are eating. Earlier we kept it really simple for all of us in terms of ingredients and seasonings and as he’s gotten more adventurous I’ve returned to mostly the way I cooked before with a ton of ingredients, textures and flavors.

  • Portions look like; 1 portion each of a protein, a vegetable, and a grain, plus cheese or yogurt and fruit.

• Lunch: Morning tends to be our outing time, so Lunch is often “on the go” in a lunchbox. I like to work smarter than the snooze button, and frequently pack his lunchbox the night before utilizing a mix of leftovers or meal-prepped items, low-mess fruits and veggies, and pre-made items.

  • Portions look like; 1 portion each of protein, fruit (and or) vegetable, cheese, and “snacky” item (crackers, trail mix, pouch, fruit bar).

• Breakfast: Not everyone in our house is a morning person (my toddler included) and so we have found our way to a breakfast situation that works for us and is generally the most low-key meal of the day with a *lot* of repetition. Our little guy loves peanut butter on whole grain bread, eggs with cheese, or greek yogurt with “sprinkles” (chia seeds).

• Snack: we are a two snack a day house - one in between breakfast and lunch (or lunch and nap time) and one to get us through the time between nap and dinner. I mix this up the most and do what I can to sneak in as many nutrients as possible (examples below).

  

My top six tips for encouraging adventurous eaters:

• Start early and often: When we started introducing solids I found a list of “100 foods before one” and set about accomplishing as many of them as possible. I chose two or three items to focus on each week that aligned with something I was cooking for the adults, and made sure to expose our little guy to each thing in different formats, textures and flavors.

• One bite rule // Still learning to like it: When we’re trying something new, I always encourage a “one bite taste test” – give them a chance to try it, without feeling like they have to eat an entire portion. Sometimes, they don’t like things right away and that’s a-okay y’all. The mantra in our house is if that one bite doesn’t feel good, it’s just a food we’re still learning to like and we’ll try again next time.

• Serve food in “courses” (to avoid battles over high value items): this isn’t always practical, but sometimes you really do need to save the best for last. Between 1 and 2 years old, I would regularly save favorite food items (fruit, cheese noodles, etc) until the end of the meal to ensure that little one at least ate *some* of the other foods as well. I found he ALWAYS had room for fruit and pasta, but if we served those things first it would cause battles over seconds and eating anything else on the plate.

• Utilize Parent Plate Envy (AKA:Model the behavior you want to see): When we’re making or having something he’s never tried before, I’ll often set aside a small portion for him but not put it out with his dinner. Since he’s an extremely nosy dinner companion, I can almost always count on him watching what we’re eating, and deciding “I want some of THAT”. We’ll do one bite, and if it’s a winner he gets his own serving. This has worked with just about everything, including foods he has previously refused when just served to him on their own (swamp soup comes immediately to mind…)

• When in doubt, add a “dip”: I have found that our toddler will eat just about anything if we give him something to dip it in. At our house that is most often hummus, greek yogurt, whole grain mustard or a tiiiiiiiny bit of a dairy free ranch dressing. Not really sure how this one works, but it does.

• If you can make your own, great, otherwise store bought is fine. I’d love to be the one making gourmet meals four times a day but the reality is that shit is hard and time consuming. When I’m having a hectic week (solo parenting, moving, when you just can’t…) I'm always down to supplement with something pre-made to round out nutrients, provide diversity, or just making things easier. Whether it’s grabbing something from the hot bar or the freezer section, I wholeheartedly endorse not having to do it all yourself.

A week of toddler meals:

This week is fairly representative of a regular week in our life: there’s preschool days, two outings to friend’s houses for dinner, and a dinner out, a good amount of repetition and lots of things eaten out and about and on the go.

Loving this breakdown? This is the kind of stuff I send out regularly — practical, honest, slightly unhinged (in the best way?) including deep dives like this, subscriber Q&As, and personal essays I don’t publish anywhere else.

✉️ Subscribe here to keep the good stuff coming and read the rest of this post.