Eating with Six Kids

Children must eat.  Children must eat daily.  We all must eat daily, if we are to remain healthy and happy.   As such, meal planning and preparation is a vital task for the Mom of Six Kids.  When babies are small and nursing, the nourishment of the Mom is one of the biggest concerns, but before long it is time to introduce solid, or at least semi solid foods to the child.   In our house we generally started with rice cereal, and then moved on to fruits such as applesauce and bananas, then veggies and meats gradually adding one or two new foods each week or two.  Our kids were definitely Gerber babies and I'm grateful for the baby food companies that helped out in this regard.  I did try making my own homemade baby food at times, but the time and effort required for pureeing, then storing the food and cleaning the blender or grinder was not always worth the end result.   The wide variety of simple baby foods available are such a blessing! 

Of course it wasn't long before baby would be eating cheerios, crackers, bread and other table food, cut into appropriate sized pieces of course.   Soon we could forget about the store bought baby food.

And then, it's always fun to eat ice cream!  Especially chocolate.  "A chocolate face is a happy face" is the motto in our family. 

Chocolate pudding works too!

I always did find it a bit of a challenge to come up with simple but interesting lunches for a house full of pre-schoolers or children home during summer vacations.  I know that we ate a lot of peanut butter sandwiches and macaroni and cheese, fish sticks and canned Spaghettios.  One of my dear friends in New Jersey introduced us to raisin bread and cream cheese sandwiches, and those soon became one of our favorite lunches too.   Add some fresh fruit to any of these, and you have a wonderful kid friendly lunch!

Breakfast was usually simple too.  Cereal and toast and orange juice and milk was usually the menu.  Sometimes there were eggs or oatmeal.  Kids can learn to fix their own breakfast at a fairly young age, and when six kids need to get ready for school on different time schedules it's almost a necessity that they prepare their own.   On Saturdays we made pancakes, sometimes with homemade maple or brown sugar syrup.  Peanut butter and applesauce were also favorite pancake toppings.  Christmas breakfasts were and still are more elaborate with eggs and bacon and sausage and sometimes homemade croissants or cinnamon rolls. 

Dinner was usually a bit more varied at our house.   I have always tried to have at least one variety of cooked vegetable for dinner along with the main course, and giving kids a choice of vegetables always increases the chances that they will eat something fairly nutritious.  This is much easier during the summer when we usually have a few fresh things growing in the back yard garden.

Dear Husband is not a huge fan of casseroles, so we didn't go that route very often.  Sunday dinner usually includes chicken, potatoes and gravy, and hopefully there is leftover chicken for some other dish during the week.  Enchiladas or sweet and sour or rice and chicken gravy are just a few.   Sometimes the chicken might be replaced by roast beef or pork, with their own variations of leftover meals . . . beef stew, BBQ beef or pork sandwiches.  Then of course we enjoyed a lot of pasta, tacos, sloppy joes, hamburgers, pizza, meatloaf, stroganoff, beef and broccoli, etc.  Sometimes I have even been known to bake home made bread, rolls, pies, cakes and cookies.  On Saturday nights I usually give myself a break and we go the fast food route after a busy day of cleaning, shopping, and other activities.    No, I'm not a fancy cook, but we get by. 

What are your family's favorite things to eat?