[Daisy Goat]

My two 6yo boys have never liked potato, rice or pasta. Not even as small babies when you could literally feed them any combination of food.

I have kept hoping this will change as the grew up. For a while at about 18 months they ate a sort of mince and veg fried rice combo but it had very little rice in it. Then they started picking out the rice to avoid it. So I stopped making it as individual pieces of sticky rice everywhere was not worth it.

They hate anything potato with the exception of potato gems and Hash browns and I don't really consider them potato products but oil.

I have tried to make them potato in a every different format I can think of. The same goes for Pasta. One of them will now eat a small bowl of Spaghetti Bolognaise these days but only once ever couple of weeks.

Ultimately I think it is a good thing for their future to not be so dependent on Starchy Carbs as a basic of their diet, which, unfortunately is one of the main diet issues of Australians. BUT it is making it hard to make a meal for them when they won't eat any of these bases for many simple meals.

Any ideas on what I can feed them along with the meat, fish and carrots they adore?

This post has been edited by Daisy Goat: 31/12/2012, 12:02 PM

[SarahM72]

Maybe try googling Paleo for children? Paleo won't have rice, potato or pasta.

Here is one link I found.

http://www.paleoforkids.com.au/

Something I make for my kids which yours may like is "meatza". Like pizza but with a mince meat base. First I put around 1 kg of mince spread out in an oven tray, and cook in oven until cooked through. Drain off the fat (it will also have shrunk a bit). Then top with tomato paste/sauce, and your regular pizza topping, like onion, tomato, capsicum, chillis, olives, fried eggplant, spinach leaves (basically whatever you want) and of course lots of grated cheese. Then put back in oven until cooked.

[beabea]

I bet you'd get some good responses over in the cooking section. Also, long time no see! How's things?

What do you normally cook?

I would be inclined to cook dishes where they can just leave the carbs on the side (or not take any in the first place). So if I was doing fish and veg I would let them eat just fish and veg - you might have potato or bread on the side, but it's not necessary if they are eating and growing well. Think about how many carbs you can get from non-starchy vegies. Carrots are very carby, for instance.

So for example, I usually serve ratatouille with bread or cous cous but wouldn't mind if my kids just ate the ratatouille. (I'm not sure if yours object to bread or cous cous, come to think of it - you didn't list these, so maybe this is a suggestion just by itself!)

You can get a lot of wraps of various grains (doesn't need to be all wheat all the time) if they'll eat those, just wrap up dinner (meat and/or veg dish) in an oat wrap.

Do they eat oats? You can get a lot of novel grains in the health food section and sub in for your more widely-known staples. Is it a texture thing or a taste?

Hum. I dunno, I just don't think it would really bother me to leave those things out, but maybe my approach to cooking is fundamentally different, making me not a great person to ask. Do you cook casseroles? Yeah - what do you normally cook and then maybe someone can adapt it for you? What have you tried to serve up in the past seven days?

ETA- just realised my kids would eat fruit for breakfast lunch and dinner if allowed so they wouldn't really want for carbs because of that, even if I dropped all breads, cereals, potatoes, etc. Maybe that's why it wouldn't bother me to just add more sauce and let them pick out the pasta. Do yours eat fruit well?

This post has been edited by beabea: 03/01/2013, 03:43 AM

[Sunny003]

Mmmmm meatzza lol

Sarah Fragoso has some great paleo recipes. Our boys love zucchini strings to replace pasta. We usually just do meat & veg. Last night was burgers & chicken breast on BBQ with salad.

[Daisy Goat]

Hi BeaBea , true, long time no see. I only do EB infrequently these days. There has been a heat wave here so needed something to do.
My concern is not actually the lack of Carbs at all. I personally think that Australian diets are ridiculously high and reliant on them.
They do love carrots which is great. Unfortunately they are not really interested in food full stop and have the standard child dislike for my things. S won't eat tomato-never ever has. Which really makes it harder.
I am going to try meatza ( I can get away with pizza sauce) and will try zucchini strips. I had forgotten about them.
And they love fruit like yours BeaBea.... Which is great. I have tocontrol how much of it they eat of they would eat it over anything else too...lol
I I just hate serving up the same type of dish all the time. I think the problem is really mine. DH eats Dukan Diet style (so very Paleo) as well.
I think it is just rice and pasta dishes I miss. Plus the bloody cost of meals is huge when there is no "filler" type food.

[beabea]

I only do EB infrequently these days.

Me too.

I just hate serving up the same type of dish all the time. I think the problem is really mine. DH eats Dukan Diet style (so very Paleo) as well.
I think it is just rice and pasta dishes I miss. Plus the bloody cost of meals is huge when there is no "filler" type food.

Ok, I see.

Yes, the cost factor is something. Carbs are cheap - perhaps one reason we got ourselves here in the first place. Or it is the other way around? They got cheap because we were here already? Where's an economist when you need one? Focussing on the veg would certainly be the cheaper way to do it, probably the healthiest, too, but there's few things to beat a packet of dried pasta for cost-effectiveness.

You need something where you can add some pasta or rice optionally, don't you? Spag bol, with optional spag. Stir fry with optional rice. Mine love pasta, but to be honest my kids eat the latter one with some frequency (they prefer white rice, I always serve brown). I guess more often than not I cook and serve my pasta/rice separately, spooning the sauce on top at the table, so it's easy for me to just leave it off one plate or another. If you usually cook it in, one-pot style, it would get a bit wasteful and tiresome (risotto would be difficult, for eg). If you really need one of your old faves and there's no way to make the carbs separate and optional, perhaps do it on a day where you have more time so you can put crudites and dip on the table as an alternative?

Seems like you should put a new recipe book on your wishlist! Stuck in a food rut!

[MrsLexiK]

I am not a lover of eating too many of the pasta, rice and potatoes. As a child I never ate rice and never ate mashed potatoes. I now only eat roast potatoes, I do eat a little bit of rice but 95% this is brown rice. I do looooove pasta but it is not good for me at all. I also love Mexican but again not good for me at all, and a few dishes I make that gets seved with rice I don't want to eat the rice. We have spag bog a bit but I either use slim pasta or a packet of steam fresh veg for me and a small amount of pasta pasta for DH. I make the sauce from scratch and then serve it over the veg or the slim pasta if I am using that. I do that with most things for myself. Ie honey chicken, stir frys etc. I make a pie filling and top it with mash for DH and with nothing or some pumpkin for me. Most times they say mashed potatoe you could go mashed pumpkin or mashed cauliflower as well.
I make Mexican and again serve it for myself over veg.

[AllyK81]

What about pulses?

We cut out carbs around a year ago for weight loss reasons and I feel great now we don't eat them, but meals do need a 'filler'. We eat a lot of canned lentils and beans. They are cheap and don't need much cooking. They are also delicious!

The girls I used to nanny for used to LOVE them, too, so I assume pulses can be kid friendly (although my Mum never would of dreamt of serving up lentils).

[Chelara]

Corn or pumpkin? Bready type things, stew with dumplings, tacos, chilli con carne with corn bread, polenta? Have you tried gnocchi? Asian dumplings or noodles? Rice noodles? Parmigiana made with eggplant? Pastries/pies, quiches, San choi bow... May a stirfry and offer them lettuce leaves or wraps while you have rice or noodles.

Tbh I wouldn't stress it, if they eat fruit they'd get plenty of carbs.