Lunch vs Dinner

If you scroll through this sub you’ll see lots of examples.

I already have @Jenn and have found some inspiration here, but it’s not always clear what age children the meals are being prepped for plus I thought it would be helpful to have written examples in one place.

I sometimes repeat what she didn’t eat at lunch, for example: I give her broccoli, rice, beef and some fruit for lunch and she did not touch the beef, so I give her that beef for dinner with another sides, like maybe corn and quinoa

My lunches and dinners often look very similar. Meat, veggies and healthy carb. I usually add a fruit to lunch and not dinner. Today we had sweet potatos with ham and onions, greens, and berries for lunch. Dinner was chicken, green beans and rice.

I usually prep things for lunch that I can freeze and heat up in the air fryer so it’s super quick and easy, such as chicken nuggets, zucchini slice, veggie tots, mini quiches etc. I then serve these with some fruit/veg (banana, berries, tomatoes, cucumber and hommus/cottage cheese) and for dinner she’ll just have whatever we have! Loves a good slow cooker meal, spag bol, pasta bake, shepherds pie, curries, chicken and chips (just potato and olive oil cooked in the oven), steak etc.

Lunch we do things like eggs, muffins, sandwiches, fruit & yoghurt & cheese.. dinners is more a family meal, pasta, meat & veg. Curries etc.. It doesn’t have to be conventional, a meal is a meal, I know children like breakfast for dinner and left overs for breakfast! As long as they eat something it doesn’t have to be a convenient ‘lunch time’ food. Hope this helps though! x

I would suggest giving a cooked dinner at lunch time. Things like spag bowl roast dinner pasta dishes stews lots of veggies jacket potato’s, risotto, curry. the things that take longer to cook do as your main meal the day before or batch cook and freeze in small pots that you can get out the next day. then do a high tea for later in the day. This could be veg stick hummus, toast, omelette, scrambled, eggs, boiled eggs finger sandwich’s with soft cheese spread fruit, yoghurts, you can make fritters with almost any veg so like broccoli fritters sweetcorn fritter ect just search on google baby friendly fritters and change the veg or fruit you use in them each time. you will find your LG will eat better at lunch time then in the evening because the later in the day the more tiered children become.

Lunch tends to be last night's leftovers. If we didn't have any it'll be something quick and easy like a pasta dish or a brunch type of dish. Food doesn't need to be complicated.♥️

Thank you everyone for your helpful and kind replies! I know it’s only the unknown that’s making it seem complicated and we’ll soon settle into some good lunch/dinner combos - your replies have given me some clarity and inspo.