Toddler lunch ideas.

Well, this makes me feel better. I felt like I was serving less a meal and more just easy little piles of food from each food group. It turns out that's what everybody does. I am getting plenty of ideas for new little piles though, so keep them coming!

One thing I remember making en masse was "baby pizza," which lasted into the toddler stage, which was whole wheat mini pitas, with pesto instead of tomato sauce -- less mess, less likely to provide a glob of burning hot liquid -- topped with chopped veg (usually onion, broccoli, red pepper) and enough cheese to glue that on; bake half-way, wrap and freeze, chuck in toaster oven as needed. Will he eat off your plate? Some kids will be way more adventurous if they're allowed to grab off a parent's plate -- there was an article in the NY Times, among other places, a few years ago theorising that this was a hangover from cave-toddlers as eating a random thing off the cave floor could kill you while swiping somebody else's food wouldn't -- and I leveraged that to get all sorts of weird foods in.

Little piles ROCK! Little kids like the idea that they can pick and choose what they want to eat, it gives them a tiny bit of control in a world where they have pretty much none. Don't fret that you're doing it wrong. Right is what works for you and your family. Seriously, toddlers are like dogs, throw them scraps, the don't know the difference.

What are you eating for lunch? Can she have that too? Our 15-month old now eats pretty much what we eat at meals and does not have toddler-special food. We keep fresh fruit around that she has unlimited access to - she eats small apples whole, not sliced up because I am super lazy for example - and we also have a big air-tight box of healthy snacks (nuts, crackers etc - my biggest surprise for her food has been that all the crackers in the Baby Food aisle had awful ingredient lists, but regular healthy crackers came in much simpler and better ingredients, just no cute packaging) that we dip into for little nibbles when she's hungry during the day. Otherwise, she just eats a smaller portion on a plate, or she eats off a parent's plate. We put stuff like chili on the side to add at the table for the adults. We are very lucky to have a non-picky eater, but I really really recommend skipping the toddler/baby food phase entirely if you can. It makes cooking and eating out much easier.

Meat (leftover grilled chicken or steak from dinner, or sliced ham), Veggies (green beans, broccoli, carrots, sweet potato cubes, steamed), Fruit (banana, apple, fruit/veggie melt fruit snacks, dried cranberries), Carbs (pretzel sticks and crackers, because the kid is crazy for 'em, pasta noodles with margarine and salt and pepper) My 19 month old is just starting to get picky, and he has a lot of food allergies (milk, eggs, soy, corn), so I have kind of a limited ingredients list. I only recently started making "pb&j" for him with almond butter and whole fruit jam. Naturally he loves it but it's a tremendous mess so it's not what I feed him when I gotta get food into him quickly. Really, I love the muffin pan snack tray and use it like crazy. He has a little shelf in the kitchen where he leaves his sippy for refills, and I put his snack tray out with an assortment of good stuff, he eats it until it is gone (and that's how I get the less-desirable protein items into his belly - no more cranberries until your chicken is gone) and then it gets refilled unless it's close to dinner time. I would love it if he liked hummus or guacamole or the other healthy dippers he liked when he was 7mos. old but he doesn't really want anything to do with them. So I guess my answer is "small bits of healthy foods that the kid can graze on". I work full-time from home and meals have to be quick.

Our go-to easy kid lunch is smorgasbord: various fruits and veggies (green beans, cherry tomatoes, sliced peppers, sliced apple, baby carrots, etc), hummus, cheese, crackers or pita or bread, celery with peanut butter or cream cheese, olives and little pickles, sliced meat or sausage, any finger-foodable leftovers, mustards and sauces to keep things interesting... basically whatever's in the fridge goes on one big plate we all share. Very quick to make, we can adjust the balance based on whatever he's had too much or too little of lately, the kid has fun testing out little sandwich combinations of the various items, and we stave off food pickiness by including at least a few random things he doesn't normally go for. (This has either worked extremely well for us, or we've just been extremely lucky, because ours has turned out to be a very adventurous eater -- much more so than his mother for that matter.) The best part is listening to a toddler say "smorgasbord". See also hors d'oeuvres. ("Oh boy! Usually we only get one derve!!")

We often cook up a bunch of Turkey Burger sliders and put them in the freezer (ground turkey, bread crumbs, egg, old bay). Pop one out and reheat it for a minute in the microwave, heat up some frozen peas and a little piece of cheese on the side and it's a tasty lunch that our toddler loves.

Oh, and often the leftovers from our (adult) dinner the night before will be the kid's lunch or dinner the next day - what's easier than food you just have to reheat?

One thing that really worked for me was edamame (organic, of course, because soy tends to be one of the most GMO things out there). They come precooked so you don't have to do anything at all. The key is getting the edamame out of the pods in front of your little one - which they find extremely amusing, especially if you squeeze the pod to so it shoots onto the plate. Also, I've convinced mine that raisins are candy. Bwahaha.