What does your 2 year old eat for dinner?

Im running out of ideas and want to introduce new foods to DS.

Currently for dinner he eats veges, chips :redface:, nuggets :redface:, sausages, toasted sandwich...

He does eat lots of fruit and cereals and yoghurt and cheese during the day.

I know it's a terrible dinner diet, but thats my reason for posting! I need new ideas that he will eat! I've tried pasta, scrambled eggs, lasagne, fish...but he wont have a bar of it.

What does YOUR 2 year old eat for dinner?

***bump bump****

I too would love to know what 2yr olds eat for dinner. Mine eats less than yours so don't stress. He is always offered what we are having but never does eat it. Though I now have stopped giving anything if he says NO, he just has his milk then bed.

All mine eats is, if he dished what we are having it usually with some vegies & he'll only eat some of them. Otherwise he'll eat scrambeled eggs, chicken or spaghetti that's it!

Hmmm well what I make him and what he eats are two different things. I make him and Miss M the same meals, and sometimes he eats them, sometimes he doesn't.

Last night they had chicken schnitzel and vegies - they'll have that again tonight cos I forgot to take meat out of the freezer. Other nights they'll have sausages and vegies (he always eats his sausages!), or spag bog, ooh he loves my fried rice... ummm I dunno, stirfries... just anything that we have for dinner, I cook theirs up first and DH and I eat later when they have gone to bed.

My nearly two year old eats pretty much anything we do. He loves snags with veggies, mince, pasta & veggie dish I do in the slow cooker, chicken curries (also done in the slow cooker), tuna patties with veg, basically anything that contains chicken (like chicken and veg casserole).

Have you tried pasties? They have lots of veggies in them and are fun to eat :)

DS is 3 now but I've never focussed too much on dinner at night... it seems to me to be a tough time to introduce new things... tiredness usually defeats that. Alternatively I find that at around 3pm he is very receptive to new foods... he is very hungry at this time and will eat almost anything... so I basically let him snack on healthy foods right up to dinner time some nights.. then he usually has a token amount of whatever we eat and if he doesn't I'm not fussed... he still has a large milk drink before bed.

The trick with new food is to dice it if possible ;) my kids will eat anything that's nice and small. My 3yo has always love brocolli "trees"... i break them up into very small florets.

Probably not what you are after but we just feed the kids whatever we are eating for dinner. Is there any reason why you are giving separate meals? We only give something separate if they are screaming hungry and dinner is taking too long.

Erin, i have started doing that too. I offer him whatever it is im having ( i always make it DS friendly ;) ) and if he doesn't eat it, he has milk and then bed.

I was doing the whole "he cant go to bed on an empty tummy thing" and so would give him whatever he wanted, but that really doesn't work in the long run when they realise they dont have to eat what you give them, cos you'll give them what they want anyway, KWIM?

Astrid- no, i dont give him seperate meals. He has whatever it is im having.

I'm the same as Astrid. DD eats, well she is served, the same as us. I was having terrible trouble getting DD to eat until we all started eating together at the table. It does mean that we eat tea at 6pm at the latest but if it means she will eat so be it. Some nights she eats everything on her plate the next night she won't touch a thing. I also think along the same lines as Bath. If she eats she does if she doesn't she doesn't. A toddler won't let themselves go hungry and will eat when they get hungry.
Somethings she eats are spag bol, chicken fettucine, snitzel, steak, chicken, beef, potato, carrot, beans, corn, lasagne, fish fingers, ****tail frankfurts, zucchini slice, toast, egg, spaghetti tins, baked beans, cheese, yoghurt, 2 min noodles. I also don't care if she wants a "breakfast food" for dinner. Say she wants toast then she can have it. I'm not overly fazed on what she eats or when.
It is so frustrating though isn't it. Good luck. We have just come out of a phase where she refused to eat anything at all for a few weeks. I was pulling my hair out.

My DS eats whatever we eat for dinner. We are in Singapore at the moment and he can't get enough of any kind of rice dish (fried rice is a goodie with loads of veg cut up small and egg) and he also loves any noodle type of dish. I found the more flavour...the better.

Last night DS and I went on a dinner date together and we shared fried rice and a pork with Ginger dish (which I mixed into the rice)...he loved it....and the waitresses love watching him eat!

Olivia will be 2 in November and she eats everything.. her fave is salad lol.. but she eats all meats and veges, Loving tomato at the moment

An honest suggestion for you.. simply serve up what you eat.. if he won't eat that put a little of what he does eat on the side of whatever else you serve up.

I just a got a new little cook book which has some great ideas. It is called top 100 finger foods - by Annabel Karmel. (sp?)

Easy and delicious. I made Lu chicken nuggets with thigh fillets coated in a ricebubble and parmesan cheese crust tonight. Bit hit. The recipes are easy and make you think 'why didn't i think of that?!" I was feeling a bit stuck for ideas and found a cook book helped me think of things. :D

DD gets whatever we're having. She LOVES lamb chops with handles, anything chicken, pasta (actually, pasta with a cheese sauce and tuna stirred through is a big hit with her), scrambled eggs, home made cheeseburgers, anything she has helped make... her fail safe, though, is a cheese sandwhich...

I made the mistake with #1 of freaking out if she refused to eat what we were eating, and making her something she liked...a toasted cheese sandwich etc. I was worried :lol: that she would go hungry and that it wouldn't be good for her. I eventually wised up to the routine a little and we started making her eat what we ate - luckily, her favourite food has always been salad stuff, so that side of it's ok, but as a result of allowing her to be fussy at a young age, she is still fussy now - there is alot of foods (particularly more multi-cultural cuisine) that she tries to turn her nose up at.

With #2, from the time he started on solids at about 5 months (he started teething at 11 weeks and started having fruits etc by 5 months to give him something to chew on) he ate EVERYTHING. I purposely gave him all sorts of things to try - down to mild curries and the like. He now, at 4, eats pretty-well anything and everything. His favourite food is also salad like his sister, which is great, and because the 'junkier' aspect wasn't bought in early like his sister (offering a less-nutritious alternative for the dinner we were eating), he actually will choose a healthier option over a less-healthy one MOST times, if he's ever given a choice.

So yeah...after all that :redface: I'd recommend you just feed them what you're eating as much as possible and don't stress if they don't eat...they will eat when they're hungry ;)

I'm a meanie, I refuse to make separate meals, so DS eats what we're eating or nothing. The few things he won't eat are potatoes, anything breaded, or anything too spicy. it's easy enough to work around this.

Favourites:
- Orzo cooked with chicken, sage, tomatoes and spinach
- Pasta with tomato sauce (with meat and veggies in it)
- Maccaroni and cheese with broccoli and ham in it
- Pasta with green olives artichoke hearts, tomatoes and green peppers in it
- Fish (LOVES fish) or shrimp, with steamed veggies (likes broccoli, spinach and carrots)
- Salad (he loves crunching away on salad with a bit of ranch dressing)
- Chicken noodle soup (loves most soups actually)
- Quiche (eggs ham, broccoli and cheese)
- Lasagna
- Scrambled eggs and Peanut Butter toast
- Pancakes with honey and fruit salad (we sometimes have them for dinner instead of breakfast)
- broccoli and cheddar rice
- tacos (he makes amess but LOVES them)
- tortillas lightly filled with beans, veggies, cheese and chicken
-

Twin sister - that makes me hungry!

DS's favourite meal at the moment is Chicken Kiev - although instead of putting garlic butter in his, I use a vegie puree. (Or you could use a Rafferty's squeezie.) He loves it - and so do I because it's a good way of getting him to eat veggies without realising it.

My DS is super fussy! He would live on sausage or chicken if he could. We basically tell him everything is 'sausage' and he'll at least try it now. Last night he ate marinated steak and cauliflower cheese (which we told him was chippies. He did have some roast potato as well). I know we are setting a terrible example by lying but it works for us :)

LOL it made me hungry too :)

Oh yeah I forgot about sausages. My DS loves those too. WE went for a pancake breakfast in the park the other day and he ate his sausage, my sausage, DH's sausage and he still wanted more!

Now that Munchie has decided she's not going to bed before 10pm (ugh!), she sits at the table with DH and I and eats whatever we're having. Or, rather, she stuffs her face all day and then when I make dinner she'll push it around her plate, share it with the cats, eat a few mouthfuls and then just play with it. But I figure providing she sees DH and I enjoying it and at least tries a couple of bites, I'm happy - if she were hungry, she would eat. I sometimes forget that little kids have little bellies - sometimes she eats enough at breakfast to last her until dinner, and then I wonder why she's not too fussed on lunch.
As a PP said, dinnertime isn't always the best time to introduce new foods - tiredness makes a cranky toddler very stubborn, so lunchtime is our period for testing new foods. Munchie likes spicy food, rice, chicken, and homemade burgers. She would eat boiled or fried eggs three meals a day if I let her, but I try to give her lots of vegies at dinnertime because she doesn't eat much fruit during the day. Thankfully she loves broccoli, carrots and peas and corn, so usually chews on them (if not actually eating many) quite happily.

hmm i have the opposite problem of everyone else.. my ds will eat all his vegies, but we struggle to get him to eat meat most nights. The only time he will eat meat without encouragement from us is when I make my homemade rissoles, spaghetti bog, lasagne or canelloni.

Hey what about corn on the cob? my ds loves this, Nachos with a home made chunky vegetable salsa and cheese sauce on top. Tacos are usually a big hit, especially when ds puts his own toppings on.

One thing we do insist on here is all eating together at the table, we eat dinner around 6 to 6:30pm every night. If ds is fussing over his meal, dh and I will race with him to see who can get the next mouth full in faster :) He loves that game, and its a sure way to get him to eat at least some of his dinner.

You sound like your doing a great job, kids do go thru stages of fussiness, but if you make a big deal out of it , then it may only get worse. I reckon you should just go with the flow, serve him what you are eating for dinner, if he doesn't eat it, don't stress. As others have said, he won't starve himself.

A favourite here is what Z has called "potato mountain"! I make devilled sausages (continental packet mix) with peas, corn, carrot, grated zucchini, cauli & broccoli (so they can't see it!). Then I put it in a cassserole dish, mash up some sweet potato, then put that on top with some grated cheese. I bake it in the oven til the cheese melts (everything is already cooked before).

My DD who is also 2 eats whatever we are having but I can't get her to feed herself - she will eat it if DH feeds it to her. We all eat together she just doesn't eat (unless we have bread and she will eat that) until DH has finished and then he comes and feeds her. Any suggestions on how to get her to feed herself? This isn't just a dinner thing either lunch is always a battle - I've started to refuse to feed her (sandwiches) but she is happy to go without.

my DS is a great eater and now eats whatever i have made for us but some of his favourites are:

shepherds pie
pasta of any sort (i make a cheese sauce and add heaps of veg, salmon or tuna usually)
chicken patties
roast sweet potatoe
corn on the cob
vege fritters
lamb chops
israeli cous cous
home made fried rice - rice, heaps of veg, egg, chicken/tofu/tuna
curry and rice
risotto (i make a baked tuna and tomatoe one)
salad
mini homemade pizza
fish goujons
salmon patties
meatloaf
eggs - scrambled or hard boiled
hope that helps with some ideas...