Ok, as promised in my last post Lunch Box food for primary school children I am going to see if I can get my son to eat Mackerel sandwiches. Wish me luck!…

I’m gonna do a test, my son will NOT eat smoked mackerel. He did as a toddler, it was a food he loved. However, these days at the grand old age of 5, he won’t touch it – “IT’S DISGUSTING!” is the response I get from him if I make such an offering!. The School Food Trust have suggested a recipe for smoked mackerel. I am going to try making it and trying it out on my son. I think it sounds delicious – we’ll see!

Here’s the recipe:

Smoked Mackerel Spread

Ingredients

• Smoked mackerel 70g
• Lemon juice  1 teaspoon
• Parsley, fresh chopped – 3 sprigs
• Yogurt, plain, low fat – 30g
• Ground black pepper

Method

• Remove the skin from the mackerel and put the flesh into a small bowl. Remove any remaining bones.
• Add the lemon juice, parsley and yoghurt. Mash together to a rough paste with a fork, or use a blender.
• Season with black pepper. Cover and refrigerate.

I gathered the ingredients and asked 5yo if he would like to help make lunch. Normally being a budding Jamie Oliver he jumps at the chance of cooking, however he thought the smoked mackerel smelt “DISGUSTING”. I have to agree there – mackerel does not have the best smell in the world.

So off I trundled, alone, to make lunch. I stuck to the recipe and resisted the urge to “test” the fish paste.

I did add sliced cucumber. 5yo is crazy about cucumber, so I thought this might make the difference.

Right better hurry up with the taste test – the cat is looking very hungry and licking her lips!

Hubby: “Tasty, I would have it again.” – man of few words

Me: “Very strong tasting, but I quite like smoked mackerel anyway. I would add more lemon juice and more parsley, and maybe some sliced tomato and spinach leaves.”

5yo: “Yeeeeeuck. THAT’S DISGUUUUUUUSSSSTING.” In very loud voice.

Didn’t go down well then!

He is not adverse to “disgusting” food. He likes his fish fingers dipped in milkshake. He thinks jam on his ham sandwiches is fab – maybe that is just because jam and ham rhyme though. However, he likes blander food, mackerel is just too smelly and too strong tasting. Back to the drawing board School Food Trust!

New guidelines have been released from the School Food Trust, aimed at reducing obesity in children.

They offer advice on what food youngsters should eat an help for fussy eaters. The report says more than a fifth of children are overweight or obese when they start school. We can’t agree more that eating the right food, right from the start is essential. That watching their salt, sugar and saturated fat content is crucial to their health, however we do question their lunchbox ‘menus’.

I know my son, would not touch some of their suggestions. How many children like tomatoes – I don’t know any!

Their advice on eating fruit vegetables and a varied healthy diet is great, many parents worry how they can do this properly on a tight budget though.

I’m gonna do a test, my son will NOT eat smoked mackerel. He did as a toddler, it was a food he loved. However, these days at the grand old age of 5, he won’t touch it – “IT’S DISGUSTING!” is the response I get from him if I make such an offering!. The School Food Trust have suggested a recipe for smoked mackerel. I am going to try making it and trying it out on my son. I think it sounds delicious – we’ll see!

Here’s the recipe:

Smoked Mackerel Spread

Ingredients

• Smoked mackerel 70g
• Lemon juice  1 teaspoon
• Parsley, fresh chopped – 3 sprigs
• Yogurt, plain, low fat – 30g
• Ground black pepper

Method

• Remove the skin from the mackerel and put the flesh into a small bowl. Remove any remaining bones.
• Add the lemon juice, parsley and yoghurt. Mash together to a rough paste with a fork, or use a blender.
• Season with black pepper. Cover and refrigerate.

Right, check out my next post to see how well it goes down!

Smoked mackerel sandwiches – do kids like them?

It’s not often I see something from the Government and I think – now that’s a great idea….
But…. the Healthy Start scheme really does deserve a heads up. I had not heard of it, and I wonder how many women that qualify are not told about it.

Basically, it is a scheme where some women (in the UK) can get free fruit, vegetables, milk and vitamins. If you are pregnant, have children under 4 and receive certain benefits you should qualify.

What you can get:

• liquid cow’s milk
• plain fresh and frozen fruit
• plain fresh and frozen vegetables
• infant formula milk

All you need to do is fill in the application form, and get signed by your registered midwife, nurse or medical practitioner.

Sounds like a good idea to me!

Whoever said “It’s as easy as taking candy from a baby, never had a baby.”

This is so true – kids love sweet things. Why not, I love chocolate, but I don’t remember getting much chocolate or sweets as a child. Fridays were chocolate day. My Dad would bring home chocolate which we would all munch though after tea. Now the tables are turned. 3yo loves sweets, candy, chocolate, cake – you name it. Yes, we give him SOME, but when should a child 1st get candy?

Setting your children up with a sweet tooth too young?

One argument goes that giving your children sweets at a very young age will teach them that sweet things are good, and encourage them to reach for a chocolate bar instead of fruit when they are older and fancy a snack. The levels of obesity in children and young people surely bares out this theory.

Children need nutrious food, not empty calories

Children grow phyisically and mentally so quickly when they are young. It makes sense to give them food that will nourish their minds and bodies the most.

When is too young?

Having said that, it is easy to say, “I’m never going to give my toddler candy.” In practice, it is so much harder. They get chocolate selection boxes for Christmas, their friends eat sweets, they LIKE sweets. I guess my reaction is, in moderation it’s OK.

It also makes sense to never give a baby sweets. They really don’t need it and they could easily choke on something that isn’t totally soft. A small piece of chocolate that melts in their mouth is probably the best of the bunch.

Our 3yo really only gets chocolate even now. I worry about the effect sugary sweets will have on his teeth. I would prefer him to want grapes and raisins for a snack – and the majority of the time he does. Sometimes though, he just wants CHOCOLATE. Is it genetic? Sometimes it is just very hard to say no.

How old were your children when you 1st gave them sweets? Are you suceeding at holding off? Or do you just let them have what they want?

A new study reveals that women who take Vitamin D when pregnant can cut  the risk of premature birth.

The dramatic findings suggest that “mothers who were given ten times the usual dose of Vitamin D during pregnancy had their risk of premature birth reduced by half and had fewer small babies… No test showed any adverse effect of the large dose of vitamin D.” *

This is great news. If a simple vitamin can help boost the health of babies and prevent premature birth, surely every woman should be encouraged to take it.   

Vitamin D can be found in some foods, but it is mostly absorbed from sunshine. This means people living in cooler countries may not be getting enough. This includes the UK and parts of the US.

Vitamin D is found in foods such as oily fish, eggs and liver, and in fortified foods such as margarine, breakfast cereals and powdered milk. The levels in food alone are not enough.

Vitamin D has health benefits for other groups of people not just pregnant women. For example, Vitamin D deficiency is common and deficiency during pregnancy and childhood may increase the risk of a child developing Multiple Sclerosis.

* Times Online News article

Getting young children to eat fruit and vegetables can be a chore. You can make it more fun by turning tasting fruit and veg into a game.

Firstly wash, peel and chop the fruit and veg you are using, make sure you remove any pips and stones. 3 types is about the right number to start with.

Choose any, but these are great to start with:

Fruit, can be fresh or tinned

• Banana
• Strawberry
• Apple
• Pear
• Peach
• Carrot
• Red green or yellow pepper
• Mushroom
• Tomato
• Cucumber

Get your toddler to cover their eyes, and feed them a small piece of fruit or veg, ask them to tell you what it is. Congratulate them if they are right. If they get it wrong, ask them questions about it to help them and guess again. Is it sweet, crunchy, sticky, soft, etc.

You can join in the game too, by swapping round and you cover your eyes and get your toddler to feed you bits of fruit and veg. You should be good at guessing the right one, but you can say, oh it’s sweet and crunchy, is it an apple?

This games makes tasting new food fun, and helps with improving their vocabulary – it can get messy though!

My tot was a great eater. There is nothing he wouldn’t try, and meals were a dream. Then at about 2 1/2 he just stopped eating bread. He would just eat the filling – never the bread.  “NO NO NO” was all I got at lunch time if bread was offered.

OK, a new method was called for.  What does he really like… Numbers were a big fave. Luckily IKEA were selling cookie cutters in number shapes – I had some in the cupboard.They had been sitting there as I had never got round to the baking cookies thing!

He got to choose which numbers he wanted – and it was easy to do. Hey presto it worked like magic. He was eating bread. Margarine on numbers, jam on numbers, cream cheese on numbers.

At the moment he will only eat the number 5. He has gone through 2 3 4 and 8. I wonder which will be next?

Bread ‘fives’, with slices of strawberry and banana with halved grapes.

Lunch went down a treat!

We are told by every expert under the sun that fruit and vegetables are good for us and we must eat 5 portions a day.

Yes, fruit and vegetables are delicious, tasty and good for you, but sometimes you need some new ways to get your youngsters to eat them.

Here our favourite Vegetable Snacks For Kids – please add more!

Raw vegetables

Cut up fresh raw vegetables into bite size pieces, or sticks.

Be careful about serving broccoli, carrots, and cauliflower to young children as they could choke. You can grate some veg, like carrots, instead. You can serve the vegetables with cheese, or milk to provide protein and fat. Add crackers or fruit juice for carbohydrates.

Good vegetables to eat raw include:

• broccoli
• green beans
• carrots
• green peas
• cauliflower
• turnips
• celery
• cucumber
• peppers
• mushroom

Tomato and vegetables juices
You can blend chopped up vegetables to make a juice, or use the water you boil your vegetables in (cooled down of course!) as a nutritious drink.

Vegetable Art
Instead of arranging vegetables for your kids, give them sliced raw vegetables and let them design their own vegetable creations – then they can eat them!

Vegetable dips
Chop vegetables into bite size pieces or sticks and dip into hummus, natural yoghurt, unsweetened apple sauce. Good dipping vegetables can be carrots, celery, green or red pepper and broccoli.

Vegetable smoothies

How about a spinach smoothie? – sounds odd but tastes great!

How to make:
1 banana, sliced
150g (5 oz) green grapes
1 (200g) tub vanilla yoghurt
1/2 apple, cored and chopped
50g (2 oz) fresh spinach leaves

Blend all together. Add a little milk if your smoothie is too thick.

Apple and carrot smoothie?

How to make:
250ml milk
1 very ripe eating apple
1 small carrot

Pour the milk into the blender
Peel and grate the apple and carrot, add them to the blender.
Blend until smooth.

Grape and broccoli smoothie

Simply add seedless grapes and raw broccoli to your blender and blend until smooth
Add ice to make it less thick if necessary.

Remember to be aware of allergies and only give food to your child that is age and development appropriate.

A great recipe book for helping your child eat healthy nutritious meals: Big Book of Recipes for Babies, Toddlers & Children: 365 Quick, Easy and Healthy Dishes: From First Foods to Starting School

Just one comment on the book is:

I can’t praise this book highly enough! It’s very well laid out and even the pages are tough enough to be wiped down easily. I have tried loads of the recipes already with my own toddler and have recommended it to all the parents in the nursery where I work. I was amazed to find how easy it is to make root vegetables into a fun and nutritious meal. My son’s favourite is Toddler’s tortilla but I have yet to try any recipe that he won’t eat! A real find!

Other related articles
Easy fruit snacks for kids
What food and drink should I avoid when pregnant?

We are told by every expert under the sun that fruit and vegetables are good for us and we must eat 5 portions a day.

Yes, fruit and veg are delicious, tasty and good for you, but sometimes you need some new ways to get your youngsters to eat them.  

Rather than just munching on an apple or a pear – here are our favourite fruit snacks for kids – please add more!

Remember to remove stones, pips, and skin for very young children, older toddlers can usually handle skin on apples for example, but every child is unique.

100 % juice freeze pops.

You can buy molds that you can simply pour fruit juice into then pop them in the freezer. Or you can simply pour juice into small paper cups, cover the cups with plastic wrap, freeze the juice for an hour then add a wooden freeze pop stick (you can buy these) when the juice is slushy enough for the stick to stand up straight. Return to the freezer for another 4 hours or until frozen.

Once frozen, remove the plastic wrap and peel away the paper cup. As an alternative, you can use yoghurt instead of juice.

Remember juice made Not from Concentrate is better for you than those From Concentrate – but the latter is usually cheaper.

Fruit sandwiches.

This sounds odd, but is delicious. Try slices of apples, pears, grapes, bananas, you can add soft cheese to most fruits and it tastes great!

Fresh fruit dipped in yogurt, fromage frais, apple sauce.

You can use pretty much any fruit, try your tot’s favourites. Vary the flavour of yoghurt, or fromage frais.

Fruit Smoothies.

You need a blender or smoothie maker for this.

A smoothie is generally made up of soft fruits and a liquid base. You often need to ass a liquid base or the smoothie is too thick to drink and you’ll end up eating it instead!

Popular liquid bases are milk, yoghurt, apple juice or water.

Pour a little liquid base into your blender then add the fruit.

Use any soft fruit. (Bananas, peaches, strawberries, pears, mangoes, nectarines, raspberries, cranberries, to name but a few). A combination of fruits can be good, like banana and strawberry, or pear blackberry. Some fruits can make your smoothie lumpy, like apples. This is just because they are a harder fruit, if you like texture in your smoothie – these are fine!

Peel any citrus fruits, bananas, mangoes etc, and then add the fruit at a steady rate whilst blending and blend until the smoothie has a smooth consistency. Add more of your liquid base if the smoothie is too thick. If it is too thin, you can add ice, or more fruit.

Tinned fruit.

Tinned fruit, has the advantage that you can eat fruit out of season.

Some tins come in syrup and some in fruit juice. Note that fruit tinned in syrup holds its shape, color and flavour better, even after tinning, however tinning fruit in water or fruit juice helps reduce the sugar content of the tinned fruit. 

Dried fruits, and nuts

Be very cautious about giving seeds and nuts to young children because they could choke on them. Dried fruits are typically high in fibre and complex carbohydrates and contain many necessary minerals and vitamins. These days you can buy many dried fruits, such as:

• raisins
• prunes
• blueberries and other berries
• apples
• dates
• pears
• apricots
• figs
• prunes
• bananas
• peaches
• raisins

Frozen fruit chunks

Cut up grapes, strawberries, banana slices, blueberries or watermelon, put them in a freezer bag and pop them in the freezer.

Freezing chunks of fruit seems to change them into sweets in the eyes of children!

Alternatively, you can puree the fruit and pour it into a mold and freeze like with the juice freeze pops.

Remember to be aware of allergies and only give food to your child that is age and development appropriate.

A great recipe book for helping your child eat healthy nutritious meals: Big Book of Recipes for Babies, Toddlers & Children: 365 Quick, Easy and Healthy Dishes: From First Foods to Starting School

Just one comment on the book is:

I can’t praise this book highly enough! It’s very well laid out and even the pages are tough enough to be wiped down easily. I have tried loads of the recipes already with my own toddler and have recommended it to all the parents in the nursery where I work. I was amazed to find how easy it is to make root vegetables into a fun and nutritious meal. My son’s favourite is Toddler’s tortilla but I have yet to try any recipe that he won’t eat! A real find!

Other related articles
Easy kids recipes – Vegetable snacks for kids
What food and drink should I avoid when pregnant?