8 Toddler Food Hacks Every Parent Should Know | Easy Meals & Recipes

Thumbs up. Will I be at a million by the time they watch this video? Hey everyone, welcome back to my channel. Today, I'm gonna be sharing eight must-know toddler food hacks that every parent needs to know. These are gonna help prevent the dreaded picky eater that everyone's scared of, because honestly, it just needs more work. It's a pain in the butt. And who wants to cook multiple meals for all your different children? Not me. I mean, I only have two, and one's still eating finger foods. These tips actually work, and my three-and-a-half-year-old, honestly, she used to be a picky eater. I'm so happy to say she will try literally everything. Doesn't mean she'll eat everything on her plate, but she will try it, and honestly, it makes me so happy. So stick with me, and you also can have an adventurous eater. Before we hop in, I wanna give our place a huge thank you for sponsoring today's video. They gave me the most gorgeous kitchen makeover. My kitchen has never looked so good. More about them later. Let's hop into the video. This is my favorite pancake recipe. I've been making it for years for my family, and it's so easy to put together. I will link the recipe down below. Mix together the wet ingredients, add the dry, whisk until combined, and you're ready to cook. Pro tip, do not, and I repeat, do not overmix your pancake batter. You're gonna have flat pancakes. Literally two seconds into the video, and I've already dirtied myself, and I can't blame it on my kids. Ugh! Picture this. It's Sunday morning. You're gonna make pancakes for your whole family, and instead of slaving over the stove, flipping every individual pancake only to slice it up into small cubes so your kids actually will eat it, and obviously so it's safer. Instead, do this. You're gonna cook everything at once in a pan, kind of like a crepe style, and then you're just gonna go in there with a spatula, break everything up, chopped pancakes in a pan all at once. It's the best hack ever, and then you just drizzle it with maple syrup, and breakfast is done. Scrambled pancakes. This is how I wanna do it on a busy, chaotic Sunday morning with two kids. Look, it tastes great. I even kinda like it better because you get more of the crispy bits, which are my favorite part. This recipe, so fluffy. Isn't everything just better on a stick if your kids are picky with eating chicken, shrimp, vegetables, minus fruit? I know, weird. Most kids are all about the fruit, but not the veggies. Sage is very particular about the fruit, so I put some of her favorites, like blueberries and raspberries, and also some that I'm trying to get her to eat. I know when you put them on a shish kebab, it just makes things more fun. They're more likely to try it out. It looks different, and you can even have them help you build them too, and maybe do a little fruit kebab buffet situation. You can get creative and use some of those little shape cutters to make them fun shapes like flowers and hearts and stars. My three-year-old loves that and really appreciates the little details. It might seem like a simple thing, but everything on a stick is just better. Tell me this isn't the cutest, prettiest kitchen appliance you've ever seen in your life. When I first saw this pop up as an ad on my Instagram account, I legit thought it was fake. I didn't think it was a real oven. No, no, no, it's real. This is the Easy-Bake Oven. I wish I had as a child, and I am so excited to have now as an adult. Oh, that's so cute. I am so excited to be working with ArtPlace because I have used, let me grab the pan I've had forever. I've had this Always Pan. I feel like I've always had it, no pun intended. This pan has survived like three moves, Matt burning and ruining all of our pans. Somehow this one has survived. So I have loved ArtPlace for a very long time. I feel like their stuff is so pretty that you think it wouldn't work the way it does. The quality of everything I just received, they just stocked me up with some new items from their line. And even Matt, who does not get excited about kitchen equipment, let me tell you, was like, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow. Like everything was so beautiful. The new cutting board and chef knife I just got, like why didn't I get these sooner? I love the pan, and now I love this. This is the Wonder Oven. It is a six-in-one frying toaster oven machine. It can literally do everything and anything. The reason why I have not purchased an air fryer up until this point is because A, they're so ugly and bulky, like every single one of them, and they're all like toxic. They're coated with Teflon. I ain't about that. This one here is non-toxic. It's beautiful. You can roast, bake, air fry, reheat your food. It is the multifunctional air fryer of your dreams. Like I couldn't have dreamt of a cuter appliance. I couldn't. What's really cool is that it has a built-in steam infusion technology, which is gonna make your food crispy on the outside, but soft and moist on the inside. This is something you usually can only find in very expensive, like thousands of dollar steam ovens. Now when everyone comes to my house and is like, why don't you own a microwave? I'm gonna be like, because I have this really cute one instead. It does everything. What does your microwave do? This is a kitchen appliance I am more than happy to have on my counter. It's so pretty. This is the color steam, but they also have so many other fun colors. Like it was so hard to decide on which one. They gave me a special code. Nicole 10 will give you 10% off their entire line. If you're trying to get your kids to eat more of these vegetables, you need to turn them into chips. I got my air fryer going. The wonder oven. It's so cute. In the background, it's gonna be in like all my videos now. We are gonna make vegetable chips. So I'm gonna do carrot. You can also do this with kale. One of my favorites, sweet potato, Brussels sprouts, like flake off the leaves, beets. The possibilities are endless and obviously you can use just regular potatoes, but carrots is a fun way. And I have been loving, I've been buying these overpriced carrot chips. And now that I have an air fryer, I can make them at home. I'm gonna slice them on a diagonal and then season them with some oil, garlic powder, dill, and salt, and then pop them in and they're gonna get crispy and delicious. And I'm gonna see if my three-year-old is gonna eat them. I've made her kale chips before, but not a carrot. So we'll see if it passes the test. She does like carrots, but honestly she can never eat too many veggies. Try this. Try it? I am hungry anymore. Got some of this. I'm gonna show you how to level up your basic box mac and cheese. I love macaroni and cheese, but the problem is there's not really vegetables or much protein in it. So I'm gonna show you how to add both of those for your kids to enjoy as well. And for you too, because we like mac and cheese too. I already got a pot of water boiling. I'm gonna show you a fun hack to add some protein to the cheese sauce, as well as some extra veg to the pasta. We are gonna do it all in one pot. It's gonna be great. During the last couple minutes of the pasta cooking, I'm gonna add in some chopped up broccoli. Drain and set aside. To the pot, I'm gonna start making my cheese sauce. I'm gonna follow the directions on the box. Add in my butter, my milk, the cheese powder, but we're also gonna add in an egg. Stir everything together until creamy smooth, and then we're gonna add in our pasta and broccoli together, toss it all up, and then serve it to our kids like nothing happened. Work? You can't even tell. Yeah, you can't even. That there's egg inside. You can't tell there's egg inside. You know who eats broccoli? Yeah. Who eats broccoli? Same. It is so creamy. It's really good. Thumbs up. This next hack is more for us parents just to make life easier. Kitchen scissors. If you don't have a pair, you need to get one. And I don't mean just like scissors lying around, but scissors that are dedicated for chopping your kids' foods. I use scissors in the kitchen for cutting things like spaghetti, vegetables like asparagus, even meat like sausage, chicken. Like I can't think of anything that I don't use them for. So get yourself a good pair that are designated for the kitchen and only used on food. Sometimes it's the most simplest things that make so much sense. And this is it. So dinner's done. I find one of the hardest things to get kids to eat is dark leafy greens. So how do you get your kids to actually enjoy this without always having to eat a salad? Grow a garden with them. This is something that my daughter and I started this spring and it was such a fun thing not only to do together. We've been watching it grow, although it's kind of like looking a little sad right now. It's been really hot and I've kind of forgot to water it. I was like a third child at this point. But when I tell you it was the first time that I've seen my daughter just pick a green leafy vegetable and put it in her mouth and chew it and actually be like, mm, good mommy. I was like, is this all I had to do was grow a garden for her to actually eat lettuce and kales? It's such a fun activity and you can even do this indoors. There's lots of small indoor gardens that you can set up. And this is something fun that kids can just get connected to on how their food grows. My goal is to make a salad together from the ingredients in our garden and actually have her enjoy and eat it. I've been starting off slow with like cucumber mixed in dressing and stuff, but honestly, a fun hack to get your kids to eat some greens. Let them pick it right out of the garden. They think it's really, really cool that they can eat it. So it's dinnertime and we're making one of my daughter's favorite foods. What are we making? Nachos. We're adding a vegetable that she doesn't typically eat, but when added to one of her favorite foods. So for your kids, if it's pizza, pasta, whatever it is, make it and let them add it to it. So that way they made the decision and they're the ones that are gonna eat it. Good job, Sage. This happened organically a few weeks ago and now I'm like, just let her do the toppings. And we have a cheese sauce. I wanna do it. You wanna do it? Okay, you do it. And this is gonna go into the oven and get nice and crispy and delicious. I also like to add black beans to the ground beef with the taco seasoning. Just adds in some extra like protein and it just makes the ground beef go further if you have a big family. And what do we call these? Sprinkles! Yeah, these are our pepper sprinkles and that's how we get her to eat. Are you eating the cheese sauce? No. What do we have for our smoothie? Zucchini. Zucchini? Zucchini. My next tip is get your kids liking smoothies at a young age. You can add it in. Get your kids to like smoothies. I put it in? Yep, put in the banana. Get your kids to drink smoothies. I put it in? Yes, at a young age. Put it in. Chaotic here. Peanut butter, yeah. So we have zucchini here that I froze. I also will do frozen cauliflower rice. That's a great way to get some veggies into smoothies. We're making a variation of her oatmeal cookie smoothie that she loves. You can lick the spoon if you want. There you go. Okay, we're gonna add some flax. I help. Thank you. Also, just getting them involved in the smoothie making process is gonna get them more likely to drink it if they see how it was made. It's fun. They get to see it blended. You can put it in a cool cup. Okay, do you want me to do this one? No, I do it. Break it open. Do it and I help you. Okay, take the seed out. You do it. One, two. Okay, add the milk in. Can you add a handful of oats? A little cinnamon? Okay, you do it. Ice. Oh, it's cold, it's cold, it's cold. It's cold, it's cold. Okay, I feel faster. I like the yogurt. Thank you. What's really good is a little bit of sea salt because it makes it taste like a cookie. Just a little bit. Okay, you wanna put it in? Here, put that in. Sprinkle. Okay, let's put the lid on. Turn it. Turn it over. It's tradition that Sage has her earmuffs when we blend a smoothie. Because why? It's gonna make it loud. Yeah, it's gonna be loud. Okay, let's blend. One, two. Smoothie dance. We do the smoothie dance. Smoothie's done. Cheers. Oh, it's good. Can I drink some? You wanna drink mine? Okay, I'll drink yours. No. Okay, I won't drink yours. Don't drink mine. Those are your two? Okay, she's stealing them. But when you get your kids liking smoothies, you can hide literally everything in there. Probiotics, hemp hearts for protein, healthy fats like avocado. Okay. It's so good. You can add so many different kinds of veggies. Butternut squash, if you steam it and freeze it is good. Zucchini, cauliflower. The possibilities are endless. She's officially stolen my smoothie. You guys can check out our place. I'm gonna have all my favorites linked down below. Use the code NICOLE10. It's gonna give you 10% off. Thank you. I've been using their products for years. I'm so excited to finally have the Wonder Oven. It is truly beautiful. And now we're gonna air fry everything. Thanks for watching. I hope these tips help you and your kiddos eat more veggies and just become more adventurous eaters. I will see you in my next video. Bye guys.