#WildernestMealPrep - Our weekly baby meal recipes to make dinner easy

After my post a few weeks ago talking about how we were diving into more solid foods, I unintentionally found myself meal prepping the babies’ dinners for the week.

Even if you just have one baby, you know how valuable quick ready to eat meals can be instead of having to cook something every single day. We run a tight ship with our schedule, especially our bedtime routine (which starts with dinner), so there’s no possible way for me - an inexperienced cook - to spend hours at the stove each night while maintaining eating, baths, and bottles before their 7PM bed time. And while we have nothing against baby food jars or subscription services for the fresh stuff, making their meals has been an important goal of mine since pregnancy, especially while I still have full control over what goes into their bodies. Plus, I honestly cannot fathom paying for a monthly/weekly subscription, or jarred food with ingredients I’m not 100% sure of, when it’s so much cheaper to make my own.  

Instead, I sacrifice a few hours of my Sunday night, after the babies are in bed, to try out a new baby-friendly recipe I can portion out and refrigerate/freeze to use for the rest of the week.

One of the biggest questions I’ve been getting is whether or not my babies get sick of eating the same thing for 7 days, which is totally a valid concern. While I’m sure my answer won’t yield the same results for everyone’s baby, we’ve actually found that being consistent with a single meal for the week gives them time to process the taste and textures. In fact, the AAP states that “a baby might have to try a new food 10 to 15 times over several months before she’ll eat it.”

There have been a few times where we’ve given a new food to try only to be met with horrified faces and raspberries rudely blown into our faces in disgust. Had I only had one baby, I might have been willing to stop the meal right then and make something new, but life with triplets can sometimes give you a whole new perspective on '“choosing your battles” and I often found myself persisting on unless the meal became a total shit show. Miraculously - and about 99% of the time - they’d actually stop the fussing, realize it’s not as bad as they initially thought, and continue the meal begging for more.

Even as an adult I can be apprehensive to new foods I end up learning to love, so it makes sense the same would apply for our tiny humans. 

In having a single meal for a week straight, I feel like I’ve helped expand their taste buds a bit. While some meals are a hit from the start, others take a bit of warming up to. We may get some looks on day 1, potentially some refusal and developmentally normal gagging we persist through on day 2, but usually by day 3 they’re eager to open their mouths or feed themselves because it’s familiar to them. After that, we finish out the week with success.    

So far, we’ve had one meal that was a total failure. When it got to the point where they were crying because they knew what it was I was trying to feed them, I considered it a loss and started mixing it with sweet potatoes instead. Sweet potatoes are their go-to food and “hiding” this meal in them ensured I didn’t waste my time and money making a week’s worth of it!

FINDING MEALS

If you follow my Instastories, you may have seen me post a few pics and recipes the last few Sundays of what I’ve been cooking. I’ve been asked numerous times for other ideas on what to feed babies, or whether or not I was following some sort of cook book.

So far, it’s been a combination of Pinterest, Google, and just a few of my own meals I make for myself and tweak for baby-friendliness. My biggest guide in making decisions on what to make, however, has been the “sample menu for 8-12mo olds” from the AAP.

While they don’t specifically list any recipes, they do outline the food groups you can touch upon for each meal of the day, which has given me a great starting point for searching the internet for actual recipes.

Based on the sample menu and our own modifications, talked about it my last post, dinner time for us touches upon the following food groups (usually all of them, but not always): some sort of grain (pasta, rice, whole wheat bread, a dough, etc), some sort of poultry/meat, and as many veggies as we can cram in. We cover the other food groups with breakfast and lunch, and I typically try and stay away from naturally sugary things - like fruits - before bed time.

Once I pick the “base” ingredient, it’s usually easy to go from there. If it’s a pasta base, I can experiment or look up homemade, veggie packed sauces with some sausage or chicken throw in. If it’s a rice/grain, I’ll throw together a stir fry of veggies with ham or chicken. If I do some type of dough or bread, something like chicken quesadillas with cheese and veggies is a huge hit. If I can’t think of something on my own or want to try something a little more “advanced,” searching “baby recipes” on Pinterest is usually a good go-to.

WEEKLY RECIPES

With all that said, I recently did a poll on Instagram asking if anyone would be interested in weekly recipe posts and the feedback has been quite positive. While I can’t make any promises (because triplets), my goal is to make a recipe post on the same day every week, giving people the chance to gather any needed ingredients or motivate themselves for cooking.

I cannot guarantee things will be allergy free or specific to any special diet, but will absoluetely make it a point to be inclusive of this whenever possible.

I’m hoping to do my first recipe post this Saturday here on the blog, and will provide a link via Instagram and Facebook each week to let people know it’s up. If you truly never want to miss a meal post, I have a newsletter signup below where you can get my latest blogs directly in your inbox - it’s an email that will go out daily if there’s something new, or not at all if I haven’t posted anything.

I can’t wait to get this little project started and hope it helps make dinner for your littles as easy, inexpensive, and healthy as I feel that they are. As always, if you have any questions or suggestions, feel free to drop a comment - it’s always appreciated!