Quick Toddler Pasta

My child very much prefers to feed himself so we have been serving him ‘finger food’ from quite young – as soon as he could manage.

Come lunch or dinner time, I want his meal to be nutritious, include most of the food groups and for him to enjoy it. I think he enjoys flinging it around the room more than eating it, but the first 10 mins of him eating is a joy to watch as his hungry belly tells him to graze away.

He is a little fussy so because there are usually more elements than an adult meal I find myself looking for healthy shortcuts to get a variety of morsels on his plate.

This tip will have some filling pasta and healthy tomato sauce done within 10 minutes. It’s very simple, but sometimes I find the obvious sometimes isn’t so when I’m stuck in the toddler feeding rut.  

A foreword to this tip is that I buy organic pasta sauces and freeze them in my Tupperware ice cube tray which has a lid. If you didn’t have one of those you could freeze them in normal trays and pop out into a snap lock bag once they’re frozen.

1.     Boil a saucepan of water - I start with hot water so it takes no time to boil

2.     Cook around a cup of your pasta of choice – I find spirals and ravioli parcels easy to pick up

3.     Drain and return to saucepan without the heat on

4.     Pop a pre-frozen cube of organic tomato pasta sauce in the saucepan and stir around to melt. The cube will cool down the pasta making it ready to eat.

5.     My child will eat about half so I have a little ready to put in the fridge for his dinner or the next day. 20 seconds in the microwave takes the cool edge off it again. 

Let me know if you're interested in more toddler offerings. 

Cooked pasta ready for a saucey cube

Let the residual heat from the pasta melt the cube off the heat

Ready to serve

Lunch is ready - I am not mean. There were a few more vegemite crackers there!

And if the baby won't eat it, the dog will