Prepping daycare lunches

At daycare, finger foods are the way to go. The babies are less willing or less tolerant of strangers feeding them mushy food for lunch. If they end up eating mushy food with their hands, it gets very, very messy. We tried this once and they had to striped him down to his diaper after he was finished. Luckily, daycare is used to messes and don't mind cleaning up after wards.

Babies are picky eaters. This makes it even more important to give them variety and new foods all the time. As adults, we may be fine eating the exact same meal for days but not babies! It's not easy to come up with creative finger foods all the time and preparing them also takes time. I'm not tied down to a full time job right now so I can spare the time to think about his meals and prepare them. I'm not sure how long I can keep this up but I'm trying to enjoy it while it lasts.

Our little Tristan eats pretty much everything. He knows what he likes though. Bread and cheese are a couple of his favorites. Jean-Louis thinks it's because he is French - yeah, right! Which baby doesn't like bread and cheese? We want Tristan to get used to a healthy balanced diet. If I can make it, I do. He's never had a jarred baby food yet. If we serve him bread, it can only be whole wheat. If we give him cheese, it has to be a mild cheese that has low sodium. We have always been careful not to give him anything that is very salty or sweet. The only sweets he gets is from fresh fruits. Chocolate, cake, candy and all that will have to wait until he is at least 2 years old. Yeah, we are pretty strict but so far, he seems to be eating everything. This week he has been eating lots of broccoli, cauliflower, tofu, salmon, chicken, and noodles. I actually feel a little bad for him since his past few lunches and dinner were more or less a mix of those same things. That's the problem with making too much of one thing. We usually do introduce something new on top of old food though.

Today's lunch for daycare is different. Well, sort of since I did use some of the leftover veggies. What can I say - I hate to waste food :) I made him an egg scramble of cauliflower, broccoli, mozzarella and cheddar cheese. I added no salt since cheddar cheese is quite salty. For his fruit, I packed him chunks of rambutan, white nectarine, and steamed apple. I also packed 1 slice of lightly toasted whole wheat bread, just in case he rejects the egg scramble. I would share a picture of this had I taken one but some times there is just no time. So as not to disappoint my readers, there are pictures of food below!

I want to share a few pictures of lunches I took from a week or so ago. The main dish is usually the tricky one to come up with. The fruit dish is fairly simple but needs to change every day or two. I usually pack him a variety of at least two different fruit, all sliced up. If I pack a sweet fruit, then I try to keep the other choice of fruit fairly sweet too, else he may just chuck it if it's too sour in comparison. Sweet grapes and ripe banana go well. Sweet and sour oranges and almost ripe kiwi go well. You get the idea :)

Here is one of the lunches I prepared for him at daycare:

• Main dish: Finger wraps of broccoli, chicken breast, and mozzarella cheese
• Fruit: Banana, persimmon
  
• Other: Baby honey Mandarin orange
  

Some days they get fancier than other days but the following is more like a typical day's lunch:

• Main dish: Udon noodles, carrots, broccoli, tofu
  
• Fruit: Kiwi, orange
  

Tristan is a great eater. He wasn't always but right now he is. The daycare staff is amazed at how much he eats too because he is not a very big baby. My parents are always calling him skinny when they see him. When we bring him home, most of the time, there is no food to be brought back. But there are days where he just won't eat there. We usually feed him some of the what he will have for lunch the next day at dinner time. He may eat it but then refuse the same food at daycare. Babies can be like that!