Menu Ideas
Click here for our weekly printable menu plans
I LOVE meal planning! Meal planning is the best way to ensure your family is eating healthier meals, without going broke!
How do you keep meal planning simple and quick? The way I meal plan is I make a list of 30 meals I know my kids will eat, and then modify the recipe to a healthier version. Generally, most families will eat the same 30 meals over and over. (you know, tacos, lasagna, spaghetti, etc.)
My kids helped with making the list, as should yours. Make this list personal to your family. Once you have your list, simply assign them a day during the month. The next month, mix it up. For a super easy digital meal planner, try this one.
Why do you plan a salad or other fruits and vegetables at every meal? 50% of our diet (kids included) comes from fruits and vegetables! A plant based diet not only ensures your kids are getting the proper nutrients necessary to grow, but also contributes to
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disease prevention,
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better behavior,
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more energy,
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better skin,
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better academic performance, and
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HAPPIER CHILDREN! The younger you teach this to your kids, the more likely they will adopt these behaviors for LIFE.
For a tool to remind you and your kids to add more fruits and vegetables to your meals, use the Healthy habits plate.
Following is our list of favorite meals. For a complete week of menu ideas, visit our side bar, or:
Salads/ sides
- Apple Cabbage salad
- Broccoli Salad
- Triple Berry Slaw
- Pea Salad
- Bean/ Tomato/ Avocado dip
- Potato Salad
- Carrot Raisin Salad
- Waldorf Salad
- Spinach Salad
- Fruit Salad
- Fruit and Rice Salad
- Bean Salad
- Corn and bean salad
- raw veggie tray with dip
- orange chicken salad
- coleslaw
- zucchini stir – fry
- strawberry poppyseed salad
- breaded and baked vegetables
Dinner
- Teriyaki Chicken with rice
- Chili
- Taco’s with black beans
- Veggie Burgers
- Pizza
- Chicken Soup
- Shredded Beef Sandwiches (on whole wheat rolls)
- BBQ Chicken
- Spaghetti
- Chicken Dinner (Chicken/ carrots/ Onions/ Potatoes
- Broccoli and Chicken Pot Pie
- Potato Soup
- Lasagna, or Lasagna
- Sloppy Joes (Veggie style)
- Hawaiian Haystacks
- Chimichanga’s
- Enchilada’s
- Taco Salad
- Stew
- Burrito’s, or Cafe’ rio Sweet pork Burritos
- Pasta with Vegetables
- Homemade Chicken Nuggets
- Quesadilla’s
- Fajitas
- Chicken pillows
- Chicken parmesan
Comments
Comment from Sweet Pea Chef
Time October 12, 2008 at 12:23 pm
I heart menu planning. Such a great way to get things together ahead of time and do things efficiently and healthy!
BTW, I am doing a speech in two weeks to a group (about 40-50) of moms about healthy eating. I am going to put a “shout out” in my speech about your website, okay?
Pingback from Easy menu planning | Healthy Food Ideas for Super Healthy Kids
Time March 26, 2009 at 5:20 am
[...] Menu planning can be one of those tasks we know we need to do, but never have time to do it. If planning a weeks worth of meals took you less than a minute, would you reconsider? This is how we do it SUPER FAST!! [...]
Pingback from Planning Day | Healthy Food Ideas for Super Healthy Kids
Time May 24, 2009 at 5:48 pm
[...] simple menu planning (of eating the same 30 meals each month) needed a little shaking up. Today I chose 2 cookbooks (I used a Vegetarian Crockpot cookbook I [...]
Comment from Brianna Parisi
Time February 25, 2010 at 11:03 am
Speaking of meal planning….how about meal planning for kids? AND letting them chose it all so they can learn and be independent when it comes to the importance of living a healthy lifestyle! We all know with problems of child obesity today, and the dangerous chemicals in food, that eating healthy is a MUST!
Try this website…zisboombah.com…I am an Intern in Boulder, Colorado for this new, fun, and interactive meal-planning website. It’s sooo cool! It teaches the kids about nutrition, and lets them chose what’s for dinner so that they can learn and make healthy decisions themeselves from a young age. When they register (for free), they put their parents email address in so you have full access to their account. When they go on “PickChow!”, and create their own meal, when they are done they click send and an email is sent to the parent email account with the meal that they have created. Along with it are healthy recipes, a grocery list, coupons, and the nutritional contents of everything they chose.
The meals are measured by stars and meters along the side of the page, so that they can see what exactly each food has. There is a green zone they must stay in- in order to insure balanced, and healthy meals!
Kids absolutely love this website! It truly makes them love healthy eating because they have the choice to pick what they want, and it’s almost like a game! It also makes parents lives so much easier. Working parents can get the emails of what their kids want on their phones and computers on their way home from work! That way, they don’t have to worry about what’s for dinner!
Comment from debbie
Time March 7, 2010 at 7:53 am
This all looks and sounds great, but my kids would never eat the food on the plates in these photos!! How do I get them to eat what I make??
Comment from Amy
Time March 7, 2010 at 8:01 am
Funny thing.. I just barely responded to another frustrated mom like ten minutes ago with the same question (although her question was specifically about vegetables). When I started this blog, my kids wouldn’t eat anything different! But over 2 1/2 years of me being persistent, they are coming around! They of course are getting older, so that helps, but I think in never giving up, they have started to come around. But this is what I wrote the last mom:
I know how frustrating it is when your kids are stubborn about certain foods. I’ve read a million and one ways to get your kids to try new foods, and in my experience, sometimes they work, and sometimes they don’t. Kids are just unpredictable.
With that said, the only real solution I have seen to work in our family is being consistent, and to not make it an issue.
Providing vegetables at least at two meals a day EVERY DAY! And for awhile, letting it be the same vegetable, until they get used to it. I once posted a success in my son saying he liked the salad I made. It took NINE YEARS!!! Nine years of offering salad and he finally liked it J. Diligence and consistency.
Not making it an issue: And not getting upset with your kids. For most kids the bitter taste of vegetables is not preferable (as with other new or healthy foods). Their taste buds are more sensitive than ours, and so many times the vegetables really won’t taste that good, until their palates evolve. So, learn how to make the vegetables taste good (with a little butter, a little salt, some dip, cooking it properly, etc. It all goes back to, you decide what they eat, they decide how much. Period. No more fighting. They decide how much.
Pingback from Healthy Food Ideas for Super Healthy Kids » Let’s Get Wild!
Time March 9, 2010 at 5:23 pm
[...] AboutMenu Planning tips Mom in [...]
Pingback from Healthy Menu Planning | Healthy Food Ideas for Super Healthy Kids
Time October 9, 2008 at 4:07 am
[...] is easy. I can just sort them onto a calendar. The hard part is getting a list together. This is ours. It’s not complete yet, but we will keep adding to it. I like to keep one open day a week [...]