Food Friday: Protein for the Toddler.

Back to my picky eater....sometimes I have a hard time getting Judah to eat meat. Too rough, too stringy, too dark...whatever the reason, he does not always like to eat meat.

Perhaps this dislike of meat was because I rarely served it to him as a baby. Meat is not exactly something that can be pureed like peas or apples. Meat tends to be stringy and rough in nature making it a hard item on the menu to digest.

I started out with peanut butter sandwiches. Using cookie cutters made this fun to eat. Then for a while whatever meat I served him I told him it was chicken. Chicken he usually ate, especially chicken nuggets. Then we got into fish sticks because the shape was cool. And of course there is the hot dog phase which makes me cringe every time to think of all those packaged nutrients going into his body.

So how do you get protein into his little body. Recently, I discovered every time we go to eat at the local grocery deli, he would eat the cold lunch meat slices from the salad bar. I would add shredded cheese, cold peas, and some fruit to go along making a complete meal.

I decided to hunt down some cubed, cold lunch meat with the deli meats to bring home. You have to hunt for it but ham and chicken are there. He likes the cubed meat which is small for finger foods. He likes how easy it is to eat, not stringy and chewy. And he is getting another source of protein.