Menu Plan

Looking to have more fun with food and encourage your kids to try new things? Yeah, me too. That’s why I created the food+fun challenge. Each week, we plan out a week of fun themes and play with our food. If you want to read about how this got started or find a list of 35+ kid-friendly themes, you can find that here in the initial post. 

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Week one was such a hit that everyone agreed we should continue with our food+fun challenge. Everything felt easier this time around, especially since the kids were 100% on board and excited about the possibilities. To my utter delight, the kids both requested that we do a secret ingredient challenge every week; they loved the guessing game that ensued and I love trying to trick them and/or sneak random and unexpected ingredients into our meals. Clearly a win-win on that one!

Some highlights from the week included finding and enjoying lots of mini foods, a pie tasting party for pi(e) day, and going bowling in honor of bowl day.

These are the themes we chose for our second food+fun challenge menu: 

M: chicken noodle soup
T: use it up day + pi(e) day
W: secret ingredient day
Th: crunchy day
F: green day
Sa: mini food day
Su: bowl day

See below for the delicious details of what each day entailed and also for the recipe links so that you can get in on the fun.

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Encourage your kids to try new things by playing with food. This is week one of our food+fun challenge where I’ll be planning out a week of fun food themes to get my kids to try new things. If you want to read about how this got started or find a list of 35+ kid-friendly themes, you can find that here in the initial post.

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We started off week one of our food+fun challenge with a bang! There were so many great theme choices on the list and it was such a treat to look up recipes with those themes in mind. It was the first time in a long time that I had felt inspired about cooking and was truly looking forward to what our days had in store. It was also the first time in a really long while that the entire family took part in the planning; it’s usually me and my iPad looking up recipes and feeling a whole lot of resentment.

These are the themes we chose for our first menu:

M: yellow day
T: surprise ingredient day
W: pantry challenge
Th: simple sandwiches
F: food by letter
Sa: out to eat
Su: eat like a celeb day (lionel messi)

See below for the delicious details of what each day entailed and also for the recipe links so that you can get in on the fun.

Read more

Looking to have more fun with food and encourage your kids to try new things? Yeah, me too. That’s why I created the food+fun challenge. Each week, we plan out a week of fun themes and play with our food. Read on for more information about how we do it and for a list of 35+ ideas to jump start your food+fun journey.

A few weeks ago, after the eleven billionth argument with my eldest around (not) eating the dinner in front of her, I decided it was time to try a different approach to food and eating in our house. 

Because clearly the one where we nag her to eat her fecking dinner or remind her that she needs actual nutrients from the food she’s eating in order to grow and have enough energy to do the things she wants to do, isn’t actually working. We’ve gone so far as to bribe both kids with something special when they do eat their actual food. Something i do not recommend. 

All that did for us was create a lot of tension and arguments in the house.

And it sucked.

For everyone.

So I set out to make food (and dinner time specifically) FUN. I wanted to hear laughter at the kitchen table instead of yelling. And I wanted both of my kids to get excited about food and trying new things. 

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