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5 Tips That Will Leave You Feeling Confident About Feeding Your Kids

September 11, 2021 By Elizabeth Davenport Leave a Comment

Confidence means you believe in your abilities. Feeding confidence means you’re able to trust yourself to offer your children a variety of foods in a structured, supportive, nurturing, diet-free environment.

Unfortunately, much of the child feeding and nutrition advice is steeped in fear and diet culture messaging. One reason we started Sunny Side Up Nutrition is because Anna and I have worked with countless parents and kids who suffered the harmful effects of all the fear-based nutrition information out there. It’s hard to wade through all the noise and feel confident about feeding your kids! Anna and I are child feeding experts, and we too have moments where we question whether we’re doing things right.

Here are our 5 tips to increase your feeding confidence.

5 Tips to Increase Your Feeding Confidence

1. Trust yourself! You know your children best. Much of the child nutrition information out there leaves parents confused and worried. What can you do to promote true health? Read Anna’s post: What Are Parents to Do? 3 Nutrition Actions to Promote True Health.

2. Trust your children to eat and grow. It’s easy to run across child nutrition and growth information telling parents they’re responsible for their child’s weight and to feed them only the “healthiest” foods. Trust that your child will do their jobs of eating and growing. It can help to ZOOM OUT. Feeding our children is a long-term process, as Anna writes about in her post: Family Feeding – The Long Haul.

3. Create a pressure-free and pleasant atmosphere during meals. Do you have a picky eater or a child who’s easily distracted during meal and snack times? You likely feel frustrated, which is completely understandable! One way to decrease pressure is to remind yourself of your jobs (what’s offered, when it’s offered, and where the food is offered), and your child’s jobs (what and how much they eat of what’s offered). If we push kids to eat more, try what we make, or eat one more bite of their vegetables to earn dessert, mealtime can quickly become an unpleasant experience. However, what’s most important is the time together to connect with others, not what or how much kids eat. Do you want tips for how to avoid pressuring your kids to eat? Check out Picky Eating: If Pressure Doesn’t Work – What Does?

4. Have a flexible plan for meals. Meal planning doesn’t have to be rigid. A simple and adaptable plan can help you feel less stressed and more confident about getting everyone fed. We share our planning tips and “go-to” meals in the following posts:

5. Offer a variety of foods at regular intervals throughout the day. Remember, part of our job in the feeding relationship is what food is offered and when it’s offered. We’ve shared lots of tips and ideas in previous blog posts to help you offer a variety of structured meals and snacks!

Leave your questions below and we’ll answer them!

15 Minute Lentil Ragout

May 5, 2021 By Elizabeth Davenport Leave a Comment

When was the last time you packed lunch for your kids? For me, the date was March 15, 2020. Then, last week, when my 13 year old started back to school in-person/hybrid, I went back to packing lunch. I’ve grown used to making lunch at lunch time, or simply setting out items for my kids (ages 13 and 17) to reheat or leaving them to scrounge around the kitchen to put together lunch on their own. It’s going to take awhile to get used to post-pandemic schedules. On my daughter’s second day back to school, I realized a few minutes before she needed to leave that I’d forgotten to pack her lunch! Because I happened to have a batch of my 15 Minute Lentil Ragout and rice on hand, I was able to reheat it and fill a thermos in just a few minutes!

If you’re like me, you’re always looking for simple, new lunch ideas. I thought I’d share the recipe with you, since one of my go-to lunch items is lentils and rice and having a batch on hand saved me last week.

This quick and easy Lentil Ragout has a hint of summery tarragon and a splash of Champagne vinegar to add brightness to the dish. It tastes great over rice or farro. Sometimes, I top it with grated cheese or toasted pecans or a poached egg. The ragout also makes a great side dish for my Mustard Roasted Salmon.

You can see here just how easy it is to make my 15 Minute Lentil Ragout! Don’t want to chop the onion, celery, carrot and garlic? You can buy them pre-chopped at most grocery stores.

Do you feel stressed about packing lunches? Try our simple lunch packing formula:

Would you like more tips to de-stress your lunch packing routine? You can purchase our E-book: Your Ultimate Stress-Free Guide to Packing Lunches here.

If you love lentils, you’ll love my Lentil Salad recipe that also uses the Trader Joe’s steamed lentils.

What’s your favorite lentil recipe?

15-Minute Lentil Ragout

Print Recipe

This tarragon and Champagne vinegar infused lentil ragout takes only 15 minutes to make. It tastes great paired with rice or farro and it makes a great Thermos lunch.

Author: Elizabeth Davenport

Ingredients

2 Tablespoons olive oil

1 celery stick, diced

2 carrots, peeled and diced

1 small onion, diced

1 garlic clove, peeled and chopped

1 teaspoon Red Diamond Kosher salt

1/4 teaspoon dried tarragon

1 container of Trader Joe’s steamed lentils

1 1/2 cups water or vegetable or chicken stock

1/2 teaspoon (or a splash) of Champagne vinegar

Freshly ground pepper

Instructions

Peel and dice the carrots, onion and garlic. Dice the celery.
Add olive oil to a medium sauce pan. Add the chopped veggies and turn the heat on to medium.
Add 1 teaspoon Red Diamond Kosher salt and 1/4 teaspoon dried tarragon.
Stir the ingredients together and sauté for 5-10 minutes or until the veggies begin to soften just a bit.
Add the package of Trader Joe’s steamed lentils to the pan. Break them apart with a spoon.
Add freshly ground pepper.
Add 1 1/2 cups water, turn the heat up to medium high and bring to a low boil. Cook for 5 minutes.
Add 1/2 teaspoon of Champagne vinegar (or white wine vinegar).
Taste and add more salt and pepper if needed.

Notes

Serve over cooked rice or farro. The lentils are also great topped with grated cheese or your favorite toasted nuts or a poached egg.