Um...it depends. Sometimes I supplement a little so they won't wind up eating just the carb(s). For example, tonight I made a very spicy lentil and spinach dish, rice, naan, and cauliflower. They are very picky around vegetables and don't tolerate spice, so when I make Indian food i usually cut up some fruit and serve plain yogurt on the side as well.

Occasionally I'll give them leftovers they like if we happen to have some to get rid of. I'm particularly likely to do this if the "main dish" is leftovers they didn't eat the first time.

Cook new? No.

But I will let them make a meal of any available leftovers. This includes both previously prepared leftovers from a previous night's meal and random ingredient leftovers that are perishable (like half an avocado or a small amount of lox in a baggie).

I will sometimes make a second vegetable if the first one is an unfavored one. One kid hates asparagus and lettuce--so he usually gets broccoli or some cut up cucumber, peppers, and carrots if we're having salad.

No, never.

I make one main entree and at least one main vegetable/side for everyone. Everyone gets that and for the kids I add a piece of fruit and sometimes I will add another side if I don’t think they’ll eat the main entree. Like if it’s salmon, which neither tend to eat, I’ll add a scoop of yogurt to the plate. If they don’t eat a bite of salmon, that’s fine, I don’t give them a large amount so it doesn’t get wasted.

I know they are fine because they don’t whine about being hungry. And some nights they eat a TON. like my 5 year old ate probably 6 oz of ground lamb last night. So I don’t worry if some nights they seem to just graze.

Depends on what we're serving, but I do a separate meal sometimes. A lot of times I'll hold out some cooked meat not in a sauce too. We have a very picky eater (7) though, who is really underweight, so I'm a lot more focused on making sure she eats SOMETHING at all.

Anonymous wrote:At that age, yes, or I'll make 1-2 things they will eat or something simple like a grilled cheese.

Yours will be the teens who shriek at anything beyond a cheese pizza

Big mistake to do this OP. Picky eaters are made, not born.

Do not become a short order cook for your kids.

Generally not. Exception is if we have several different small leftovers, and then different people eat different leftovers.

No never. I might vary the way it’s prepared to suit tastes but we eat the same thing. For example we had spinach tortellini tonight in homemade Alfredo sauce. She doesn’t like vegetables mixed in but will eat them on the side. So I cooked the broccoli then put hers on the plate with the pasta, then mixed the broccoli in the pasta/sauce for my own because I like it like that.

Anonymous wrote:Do you cook separate adult and kid meals? Mine are 5 & 7. I try to make sure there is one thing at every meal they both will eat but I don’t cook them their own dinner. Sometimes that means they don’t eat much. Is this typical?

Op here - to be clear, they’re not starving!! They eat a ton at breakfast and lunch and have a big health snack after school. My mom was giving me grief about this and made me wonder if I’m being too tough.

No, I never did. I didn’t cook anything crazy complicated or spicy, but I tried to introduce many different flavors and types of foods. They definitely had picky stages, but they’re adventurous teens now.

Anonymous wrote:Do you cook separate adult and kid meals? Mine are 5 & 7. I try to make sure there is one thing at every meal they both will eat but I don’t cook them their own dinner. Sometimes that means they don’t eat much. Is this typical?

That's what I did, although my kids were always big eaters, so even if they were only one thing they'd eat, they'd eat a lot of it.

They are now teens and eat everything in terrifying quantities.

At that age, yes, or I'll make 1-2 things they will eat or something simple like a grilled cheese.

Do you cook separate adult and kid meals? Mine are 5 & 7. I try to make sure there is one thing at every meal they both will eat but I don’t cook them their own dinner. Sometimes that means they don’t eat much. Is this typical?