Cooking for the family requires a lot of meal planning, which is sometimes not easy when you have fussy children to cater to.
However, with these simple tips, it will be a lot easier to plan meals efficiently and ensure that you will cater to everyone’s needs.
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Make the vegetable part fun
It is common for some children to say that they dislike vegetables, which is often because they know it is good for them. Therefore, it is a good idea to make the vegetables more fun. This will encourage them to eat them and make mealtimes more pleasant as you won’t have moans or tears when the children are told that they need to eat their greens.
For instance, instead of using standard broccoli, you could create easy broccolini and add some herbs to it to make it taste different. The different appearance and taste will maybe not even have them realize that it is the same vegetable that they usually kick up a fuss about.
Add something that they love
To ensure that everyone in the family is satisfied with their meal, especially the children, it will always be a good idea to add something that they love. This could mean adding their favorite sauce to the table or cheese to the top of their dinner.
Ensuring that there is something on the menu to cater to everyone, or at least those who are fussy, will make sure that mealtime is as peaceful as possible. It will also ensure that your family trusts your cooking and that you will always cook something nutritious yet yummy.
Make the food colorful
Making food colorful and vibrant is always bound to excite anyone that eats it. Even adults love colorful and fun food.
Therefore, it can be a great excuse to ensure that everyone eats their 5 a day if you make the plates as colorful as possible.
You can even make your dinners more colorful with alternative ingredients, such as courgette spaghetti as opposed to standard spaghetti. The more colorful it is, the more fun dinner time can be.
Play music
Should your dinner times often be a time where you and your family like to sit and unwind (with minimal conversation) then you make the experience more relaxing by playing some ambient music.
Likewise, you can make it more fun and playful with music for the times that you want to make dinner time more exciting. Should you be cooking a world cuisine, you could play music from that country.
Make conversation
Should you and your family like to have conversations over dinner to catch up, then you can make family meal times more meaningful by doing so.
You could take it in turns to start a conversation and from there, allow the conversation to ebb and flow and make the dining experience more intimate and engaging.
Change the table setup
If your meal times can sometimes feel dull or too repetitive, then it will help to change the table setup. This could mean changing the centerpiece so that you have something different to look at and talk about. Or, you could change where everyone sits.
It can be common to sit in the same places at dinner. Therefore, you can mix things up and make them exciting by changing the seating plan every so often.
Eat outside
When the weather is nice, there is no better reason to eat outside. You and the family do not always need to stay cooped up inside to eat dinner.
Instead, you could cook your meal on the BBQ or simply all take your dinner outside to sit and eat around the outside table.
Ask people to join in when you cook dinner
You might it boring to cook alone. Or, your family might be restless while you are cooking. To combat these issues, you should ask people to join in with you when you cook. It is a great way to introduce new flavors and skills to your children. Although they might not be able to help with the chopping or cooking itself, they can fetch things for you and try the sauces before you marinate the food.
Asking family members to get involved can enhance the experience and ensure that everyone gets an opportunity to have their say in what should be for dinner. In time, people might even offer to cook, which means you will get to sit down and relax for once.
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