How To Cook Healthy At Home For Your Kids
Is it possible to cook easy healthy meals at home that the kids will actually love?
Eating at home should be easy. Having healthy meals to give to the kids to eat is a regular household chore to do. But it isn’t always easy to feed kids healthy food that they will actually eat and enjoy. I know I had this problem when my kids were growing up. To make it less of a chore for you, we will list a few ideas for you, from different foods and superfoods for you to cook, to the best kitchen knives you can use to help out your cooking turn out the best in the easiest way.
When you are cooking healthy for the kids sometimes they can be the pickiest of eaters, which can become a hassle when trying to keep the healthy parts in their favourite foods (e.g. all the veggies in their favourite spaghetti bolognaise meal). To get these small but most beneficial ingredients into the food, get your best kitchen knives out, because you may need to follow a few of our tips listed below! And if you want more tips on what the best knives are for your kitchen, have a read here.
What to cook at home for your kids
Cooking is super easy.
Follow a recipe step by step and you will create the same chef standard food right from your home.
But that’s not what the problem is. The problem is how to slip in those super healthy foods into your kids meals to keep their diet balanced and nutritional.
Some super healthy foods for kids all involve the food pyramid, which tells you how much of each food a person should be eating to stay healthy. In the typical day, this includes half the food you eat being vegetables or fruit, one quarter proteins and one quarter grains. Typically, most people aren’t eating enough fruit and vegetables a day that is recommended. Some of these easy to include vegetables are:
- Spinach
- Broccoli
- Carrots
- Kale
- Green peas
- Cabbage
- Sweet potatoes
And some of the best fruit include:
- Avocado
- Pineapple
- Grapefruit
- Bananas
- Apples
- Blueberries
- Mango
All of these food products can easily be added to your daily meals. Using your best kitchen knives, you can cut these into whatever form you need to sneak them into the food.
Adding healthy ingredients into your everyday foods
This might seem like the hardest part, but it’s actually so easy! Firstly, if your kids don’t like a particular vegetable or fruit, that flavour needs to not be the most prominent in the dish you’re making (aka, you need to make them ‘invisible’ to hide from their little cheeky eyes). You just need to use your knife to cut them up extra small, in dishes like pasta or soups, so they’re added crunch, but aren’t a big ingredient that kids will notice.
Breakfast:
Using your best kitchen knives, for breakfast, you can add spinach to an omelette in the morning (for something more hidden), avocado on some toast with an egg, mango and banana on some yogurt (and you can have each of these each different morning to keep things different).
Lunch:
For lunch, using those kitchen knives, cut up a sandwich with cabbage, avocado, carrots, ham, cheese could be an option, so could a little snack pack, with an apple, pineapple, blueberries, carrots, a small amount of dip, and some sweet potato chips.
Dinner:
Dinner also has endless options, using your best kitchen knives, you could prepare a number of really healthy meals. This may be making spaghetti out of zucchini, and having that with a meat sauce, some peas, corn and broccoli would make an excellent, healthy and yummy dinner. The kids won’t even taste the difference of the zucchini pasta alternative. You could also make a chicken soup, with all the vegetables mentioned above, or your own alternative vegetables. All of these can be chopped and changed, but it just goes to show how easy it is to include more healthy foods in your meals.
Where to find more resources when cooking at home for your kids
These ingredients can be swapped for any other vegetable or fruit you desire. It depends on personal taste, but it’s definitely not hard to slip more vegetables into your diet. If you’re stuck for more ideas, google the dish you would like to make and see what other are using for some healthy ingredients. You would be surprised with just how many recipes are online. By using your best kitchen knives, and just giving it a go, you will find you become better and better at finding the healthy options, and your kid’s body’s will thank you for it (even if they complain along the way)!
Kim Moore is a work from home mum who loves to cook. She specialises in steak and the best steak knives. Kim runs the review site, http://thebeststeakknives.com, and when she’s not busy there, she’s busy in the kitchen cooking up a storm of healthy and yummy foods for her family and friends.
