I can’t believe another month has passed since the last time we featured Munchkin Meals! My son, T, is turning 19 months old on Monday (he is now closer to two than one, aaahhh!) so below is a sampling of what we offered him during his 19th month of life!
Breakfasts
sweet potatoes roasted in coconut oil & cinnamon, banana slices & cheese with a side of 1 parts fresh apple juice & 3 parts water – simple, simple.
He opened the pantry & asked for some “o’s” this particular morning, so I obliged..
+ the beloved O’s!
Trader Joe’s has these Toasted O’s that are gluten free with a short ingredient list that I buy occasionally as T loves them for stroller and car snacks & has fun putting them on his little fingers (:
fresh figs, strawberries, avocado & more roasted sweet potatoes
we always have breakfast while still in our PJ’s (: banana, olives and pluot with a side of coconut water
nectarine, fresh fig, and a pancake topped with tahini & honey. The pancake is: whole wheat flour, egg, raw cream + ACV as buttermilk, vanilla, cinnamon, ginger, ground flax seed & baking powder.
I have since decided to finally bite the bullet and go 100% gluten free after various practitioners have been recommending it to me for years – literally about 7 years. If I am entirely gluten free then T will also be gluten free (until he can prepare food himself) so no more wheat pancakes, but we have been making really tasty oat and coconut flour ones! I love that they are filled with protein and good fats along with spices and no sugar. They are perfect to cut up and take as a snack too, T loves eating them with or without toppings.
pancake to go
Lunches
tortilla with almond butter, sweet potatoes, corn chips with homemade guacamole & healing movement orange blend cultured vegetables
strawberries, fennel barley risotto, carrots, green beans & cheese
baked zucchini “fries”, banana topped with tahini and heirloom tomatoes
roasted squash with coconut oil, banana with peanut butter & strawberries
corn and black beans, avocado, yellow nectarine and pluot
baked sweet potato wedges, roasted broccoli, chicken and plum
shared lunch with mama: turkey, avocado & tomato on romaine topped with deli mustard
Dinners
Again, I am so bad at taking pictures of dinner but I remembered a few more times this month!
roasted golden beets, adobo slow cooker chicken with mushrooms & onions, and banana slices. Not pictured: rice – makes such a huge mess, I try to help him with it as much as he will let me.
HEAB/CD’s dinner hash: yukon potatoes, grass fed ground beef, mushrooms, onions, and sauerkraut
deconstructed tuna noodle casserole: brown rice noodles, peas, and tuna fish all coated in the cashew/nutritional yeast “cheese” sauce
local albacore tuna from our CSA topped with avocado mousse, white rice (was feeling brave this night letting him go to town on the rice alone) & radish/cucumber dressed with flax oil
chili, corn bread and a little cheese.
The only produce that we purchased outside of the farmer’s market this month (aside from one bag of frozen peas for the tuna casserole) was bananas. As we know, bananas grow *nowhere* near us, in a climate nothing like the one we experience. I have not researched banana plantations in depth and although I always purchase organic, they are still from Dole and as a large multinational company I will never entirely trust their practices. BUT, I just can not stop buying them for T, ah! They are so convenient to take with us out of the house, a great source of fiber, easy to top with healthy fats (peanut butter, almond butter, tahini) and have a long counter life. Do the benefits outweigh the negatives? Are there any good alternatives? What do you all think?
What have your kiddos been eating this month, I can always use new ideas and recipes!
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Oh my goodness – can I please come over and eat with your toddler. Ha – his meals sound right up my alley! 🙂 Good to know too about the Toasted O’s at TJ’s as we try to avoid gluten with our kids. It used to exacerbate our older daughter’s eczema, and although she seems to have outgrown most of her food intolerances, we still avoid wheat more often than not. We’ve been buying these gluten free pomegranate sweetened O type cereal, but I bet the TJ’s stuff is a lot cheaper. We tried to avoid cereal snacking for so long, but it really is such an easy and portable snack!
in case you didn’t know barley has gluten. you want to stay away from wheat, barley, rye, spelt and regular oats. good job on feeding you child good healthy food. he will thank you one day. thanks for sharing about the Trader Joes O’s. I didn’t know they are gluten free. I will have to get a box next time I am there.
Colleen – Krystyna here. I am so glad you added the note about “regular oats”. In the last couple of months, I have been doing more research and reading up on the gluten-free info that’s new/more available since we started down this path in 2007. I knew about the phrase “cross-contamination”. I guess I had never really thought about how the grains are processed, and that they are all ground in the same chute/mill/machinery unless they are ground in a dedicated allergy-free facility. We started buying oats that were gluten-free around a year ago…so glad that we made the switch. Kicking myself in the mama pants for not knowing about it sooner. Thank you for making that information known and sharing it with a wider audience.
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