help! i'm tired of my picky eater wasting food

As a budget conscious parent, I understand when my clients say how frustrated and tired they are of wasting food because their picky eater won't eat what they serve. There are several ways to combat this issue but for today, we will focus on mealtime planning that will result in less waste and is also a great technique for working with picky eaters overall. The technique is the Division of Responsibility by Ellyn Satter. If you aren't familiar with it, you need to become familiar-especially if you already have a picky eater in your house. In a nutshell, the D.O.R is a meal serving method known affectionately as "buffet style."  The D.O.R, in and of itself, does produce less waste than a "typical" serving style of pre-plating meals because kiddos plate their own food and take only what they like. My method of mealtime planning within the D.O.R will save even more {food AND time!}.

Cook once {or twice}, eat three or more times

One of the keys to serving buffet style with less waste is to plan ahead for meals, within the same week, that can use many of the same ingredients but in a new way. This not only allows for you to cook less, but also for you to have several "exposures" of food for your kiddos but in a way that might be more appealing to them. Let's look at a sample meal plan, for one of my coaching clients, who had a kiddo that liked ground beef and cheese. 

Meal One: Tacos

• Cook double the amount of ground beef you normally do for tacos however, don't season it all for tacos. You can freeze the plain ground beef for another time.  
• Serve meat, tomatoes, onions, shredded lettuce, cheese and any other taco condiments in separate bowls
• Serve tortillas on their own plate so each person can pick and choose how to plate their food and in what amounts.

Meal Two: Spaghetti

• Use the ground beef cooked from taco night OR serve with another meat {which you could also make more of and freeze} for variety
• Serve meat, marinara, noodles and cheese in separate bowls so each person can choose how they want their spaghetti and take the amount of each that they wish
• Serve salad {reusing the onions, cheese, lettuce and tomatoes from taco night} with the typical salad fixings in individual bowls. 

Meal Three: Pizza 

• Reuse ground beef {either plain or leftover from taco night} or alternate meat served with spaghetti {ground chicken, turkey, sausage etc..}
• Serve cheese, tomatoes, onions, shredded lettuce {if making taco pizza} and any other extra fixings you desire in individual bowls. 
• Have premade pizza crusts, english muffins, dough balls or reuse tortillas from taco night for each person to choose as the base for their pizza
• Each person assembles their pizza how they wish and a quick trip into the oven for warming is all that is needed

Check out how one creative family does Pizza Bar at their house

The awesome thing about these three meals in particular is that they are often, either in their entirety or parts, accepted by most picky eaters {bread products, noodles, cheese, ground beef etc...} which is exactly why they "work" within the D.O.R so well. You will need to keep in mind that some of the foods {shredded lettuce} may need to be used more quickly than others and don't do well if frozen. This plan is simply to show you that with a little creative meal planning you actually CAN waste less food. Let's talk about how you can plan meals for YOUR picky eater. 

Get more ideas for meals with your picky eater.

What have you found are good meals that waste less and fit within a buffet style of meal serving? 

Until next time, keep growing and blooming!

Jen