Breakfast:

• eggs (we usually scramble–EC is definitely competent to cook these)
• yogurt/granola/fruit
• oatmeal (usually with frozen fruit from the freezer, the kids don’t really cook this because it takes sustained attention to stir it and that part gets hard. It’s 1/4 of oats to 1 cup of water and we add in the frozen fruit when the water is nearly all absorbed)
• pancakes (EC can fully prepare these)
• dry cereal and milk

Lunch:

• cut up raw veg with lunch meat and cheese
• cold sandwiches (both children are fully capable of making a wide variety of kinds)
• leftovers from the fridge
• grilled cheese sandwich with red pepper/tomato soup (have tetrapacks in the house)

Dinner:

• If you feel like cooking ethnic foods my kids will eat just about anything. They don’t prefer onions or mushrooms and they are a little picky about greens but the variety they eat blows my mind.
• pasta and sauce
• leftovers (of course, because Noah always cooks LOTS)
• various freezer meals like pot pies or frozen dinners (I don’t have EC run the oven… Still a wee bit high and hot for her to reach in)
• caesar salad (for MC, EC will bitch about this up one side and down the other)

EC says that is what she can come up with off the top of her head. All of these food options are things that we keep around as staples. We will have these foods on hand. The kids are physically capable of doing almost all of this alone but usually we make stuff together for the social/interaction part of the experience. If you aren’t feeling like you can stand… the kids would be cheerful and lovely about bringing you food.

Drinks: we will probably have juice in the house. I don’t encourage the kids to drink it. I drink it because I’m struggling to gain calories. Milk and water are totally unregulated. Whatever they want is fine.

Dessert: our family typically has dessert Monday/Wednesday/Friday/Saturday and we have a sweet breakfast on Tuesdays and Sundays.

The kids are allowed to get a candy item out of the stash spot on Sundays. They know where this is and how to help themselves. We do not otherwise regulate when/how during the week they eat this candy item.

Fruit/nuts/some jerky are on the snack cart and the kids are free to eat as much of this as they want without checking in at all.

If the kids are on the screen a lot you have to interrupt them to force/encourage meals. This is not my favorite dynamic. I tend to just limit screen time around meals because otherwise the kids would far prefer to not eat and get a 10 minute bonus of youtube time. Sigh. Then their behavior goes to shit because they are hungry and cranky. Very predictable.

Our meal times: these are flexible and variable. We have patterns but we don’t stick to them religiously. We usually eat breakfast between 6 & 8 depending on how hungry we are and when we wake up. Mostly we eat within 30-60 minutes of waking up and our wake up time varies.

Sometimes we do two lunches, one at 11 and one at 2. Otherwise if we aren’t that hungry we just wait and eat somewhere 12 & 1 and call one lunch good enough.

Dinner varies anywhere from 5-7. It depends on what we are doing in terms of classes and house guests. Dessert waits until everyone is done eating and then it is help yourself. I tend to remind my children what a serving size of ice cream looks like (the small metal bowls!!! NOT the giant bowls that can hold 1/2 a gallon of ice cream in one go!) but I don’t actually argue with them over this. So it’s a situation where they know I don’t like it and that I have medical/biological reasons for bitching… but I try so hard not to micromanage every part of their lives. I have way too much control over them in general. Most of the time they select a reasonable amount of ice cream. Sometimes they go nuts. I try to see this as a normal variation in terms of people just varying. But it’s hard to not carp at them.

I’ll be honest with you and say there are days when I’m not the best at offering food because I feel like crap. But my kids are freakin good at saying, “Hey! It’s time to eat! So, let’s go see what’s around…” They have not absorbed much weirdness about food from me. (Thank goodness.) They both like to eat.

Be aware that EC will eat a lot more vegetables and fruit than MC. (I’m dropping the future part. I’m a day away from full term. The kid is now my middle child and I need to just go with that.) I encourage/pressure gently MC to eat more fruit and vegetables but I don’t sit on them and force it. If MC is really turning their nose up at what I have cooked, they are allowed to go eat raw veg from the fridge. They are completely competent at making their own salads.

I… think that’s food stuff? If you have any other questions I will cheerfully answer them.

Noah cooks fairly differently from this list but I thought it would be wise to just make this post about stuff that is easy/low effort/the kids can do it for themselves.