Food Diary of a Toddler

**Disclosure: This is a compensated post. All Opinions are my own true and honest opinions!**

If my toddler were to keep a food diary, it might look something like this:

February 18, 2016:
Day 423 that my mother has tried to keep me imprisoned in this high chair. She can make me sit, but she can never make me eat!

February 20, 2016
Today chicken is my favorite food. I will refuse to eat all foods that are not chicken. If chicken's on my plate, I'll eat it and then throw the rest of the plate on the floor.

February 21, 2016
Today I do not like chicken. Forget that it was my favorite food yesterday. Today, every single piece is going on the floor to the dogs. And these potatoes? They'll look excellent mashed up in my hair.

February 28, 2016
Does my mom really think I'm going to eat with this fork? Fingers are so much more effective in getting food from bowl to mouth. Just to make sure she understand my rebellion, I'm going to dig my hands into my dinner and then lick it off one finger at a time. She'll love that.

And so on....

Meal time has been our biggest toddler struggle by far. What he likes one day, he doesn't like the next. Food, and plates get thrown on the ground. The later frequently gets broken. By the end of mealtime our house and our child look like they took a trip through Nickelodeon's Slime machine.

Luckily, over the last year I've started to find a few solutions. Not to say that things always go well. But thankfully, I've found some meals that he loves (and are more nutritious than chicken nuggets and fries every night!) and also dinnerware he can't break. You might be surprised how often he's been able to break plastic children's plates. Please tell me you've been there too: mid-dinner, everyone is finally seated and served, and just when you think it's safe to eat, your kid throws his plate across the room like he's trying out for Olympic discus throwing.

First up, the dinnerware. We LOVE Re-play Re-cycled. Their dinnerware is made from Recycled Milk Jugs, which makes them not only environmentally friendly, but STURDY. Like other plates before them, they've been hurled across the room, and these things hold up like no other. No scratches, no breaks, nothing. We use their plates, bowls, silverware, sippy's, and snack pods for just about every meal. AND, I might just be giving a trial set away in the color of your choice at the end of this post... so stick around!

Besides being good for the environment, and super durable, their dinner ware is also machine washable, easily stacked for storage, affordable, fun, and perfectly sized for little hands. Jacob loves being given the independence to pick out his own color when it's time to plate up his dinner, and his categorizing skills are stronger than ever since we started using their divided plates. Heaven forbid a piece of food fall off the fork into the wrong compartment - all dinner activities must cease until he puts it back into the right compartment with the others. Re-play meats all FDA requirements, are made in the USA, and their cups truly are no-spill. (Can I get an AMEN?)

Re-play's Dinnerware comes in just about every color you can imagine, and they put out special sets for holidays too. Walmart, Kroger, Target, Whole Foods, and Amazon all carry them as well as their own website.

All the meals you'll find in this post are served up in Replay Recycled's Dinner ware in the following colors: sky blue, aqua, yellow, and green. From left to right we have: Divided plates, a double snack pod, bowls, utensils, a regular cup, a sippy cup, and a single snack pod. (which is still filled with Jacob's goldfish.) They also have flat plates, soft spout sippy cups, and teething toys.

Next up, toddler meals. I'm so excited to share with you some of our favorites. These are toddler tested, and approved. By my toddler of course. You know as well as I do that every toddler is different. But I hope you find something here that you and your kiddos love!

This is a recipe I found on pinterest and man is it good. It's reminds me of stroganoff with chicken instead of beef. It's the perfect comfort food and always a hit in our house. (Note: the recipe is in the pin's description. If you click on the picture it will take you to an entirely different recipe)

We make the Pioneer Woman's recipe. Little man loves eggs, and I love that it's loaded with veggies that we don't normally eat, like artichoke hearts and mushrooms.

This is a recipe that I originally found from the now defunct Cooking for Two magazine, but have heavily tweaked over the years. I'll be sharing the recipe soon. Little man loves sausage and pepperoni, so this is always a hit. We usually serve it with a green veggie (broccoli is his favorite and garlic bread) and he eats every bite.

Another chance to hide veggies! We make these in all different varieties - as long as there's cheese in the middle (and what is a quesadilla without cheese?) little man will eat it. He also loves when I cut his food into fun shapes - like these hearts I made for Valentine's Day. No recipe here, I just sandwich cheese between two tortillas, toss in some veggies or leave it plain and fry it in a pan until it's golden on both sides.

I'm fairly certain that Jacob would eat this every day breakfast, lunch, and dinner if we let him. His absolute favorite meal. Seen here with a bisquit and mandarin oranges. Again, no recipe. This is just a boiled or grilled hot dog, chopped up, added to a can of baked beans and warmed on the stove.

Jacob's loves breakfast at night! This can be as fancy (pancakes, waffles, crepes, etc.) or as simple as you like. This particular night we went for super simple. Not a bit was left on this plate by the time he was done with it.

A little on the fancier side, we usually save confetti pancakes and fruit syrup for special holidays. The ones you see here were for Valentine's Day. I simply add sprinkles to Trader Joe's pancake mix, then blend together fresh fruit (in this case strawberries) with a little water and sugar to make the syrup.

Another pinterest winner, this crockpot recipe is from Ally's Sweet and Savory Eats and it
is super simple. You can throw all the ingredients together in the morning and it will be ready when you get home from work. We serve it up with two of Jacob's favorites - rice and black beans

These don't photograph great, but little man loves biting into them and finding beef, bacon, and cheese on the inside! They are super simple to make and clean up is a breeze. We found them on pinterest from Cook, Crave, Inspire and like to make sweet potato fries and veggies to go with them.

We buy these at Publix, though similar brands probably make it too. It's really easy to grill stovetop and it's packed with flavor. Served here with rice and blueberries, some of our favorites.

Would you like to win a starter set from Re-play Recycled? The starter set includes a divided plate, silverware set, and sippy or regular cup in the color of your choice. Enter below! U.S. entries only.