Healthy Finger Food Ideas for Picky Toddlers

The number one question that gets posted in my mom groups is, of course, "Are your kids eating, like, AT ALL?" What is it about being between 18 and 24 months that turns toddlers into the weirdest eaters of all time? Kids who used to happily eat just about everything suddenly reject things they used to love and demand buckets of ketchup with everything. 

Forrest definitely has his moments of refusing to eat anything, but thankfully, I know I can usually get him to eat a few tried-and-true things. But some of our former staples (like quesadillas and grilled cheese sandwiches) are now on his "no" list. You read that right--he refuses to eat cheese now. 

To make mealtimes easier, I started experimenting with finger foods that I could use to either substitute what he was already eating (without resorting to a peanut butter and jelly every single night) and were a little healthier. These are what I came up with. 

1. Tiny Pancakes

I make Forrest banana and egg pancakes (like the kind you see on Pinterest, here is a good recipe, although I add diced up fruit, cinnamon, and two tablespoons of flour as well); for snacks and lunches, I will sometimes make "tiny pancakes." This is just a tiny dot of batter on the griddle. A few dots adds up to a little bowl of cute pancakes, something he can snack on during dinner or after his nap. They're easy and at least it's not a handful of Teddy Grahams, right? 

2. Steamed, Diced Carrots with Ketchup & Ranch

Every mother is now staring at their screen like, "you're joking, right?" I know, this sounds like a disaster waiting to happen, but trust me. I could never get Forrest to eat carrots... if I left them whole. I steam him a few baby carrots for lunch nearly every day and was basically throwing them away untouched.

One day, I decided to dice them into pieces, toss them in a little butter and garlic salt, and present them with some ketchup and ranch for dipping. He ate every single one. This may be further proof that toddlers will eat nearly anything with their favorite dips, but I think it made him think those pieces of carrot were something else. This is now a staple for lunch and dinner for him. If you have a microwave steamer, it's especially easy. 

3. Veggie Nuggets

Forrest will eat chicken, fruit, and carbs until the cows come home. But veggies are where we really struggle. I've really discovered that he needs his veggie disguised--either in applesauce pouches or in nugget form. 

We buy our veggie nuggets (this is my favorite brand and variety, you can get them at Whole Foods and most grocery stores). But I have made them before and they're surprisingly easy. I like this recipe for them, because it includes lentils--perfect for if you worry your toddler isn't getting enough iron. 

3 Things I Stopped Buying in 2016

2016 was a big year for me in terms of learning to budget and, most importantly, learning to save money. 

I've always been what financial types call "a spender." That isn't to say I didn't save money; I did. I regularly went through phases where I saved more than I spent, mostly because I was lucky enough to not need to spend all my money on boring things like bills. I've also, however, gone through periods of time (especially when I was a teenager and right after college) where I spent every penny I made every single paycheck. 

That's not a super fun way to go through life, but you live and you learn, I say. 

However, 2016 really changed things for us. Why? 

Firstly, Forrest's birth was considerably more expensive than we thought it would be. I was in the hospital for a total of 10 days (that bill still makes me cringe) and Forrest was in the hospital for a total of 7 days. Yeah, you read those numbers right. That's 17 days being billed between us, plus labs, medications, and everything else. 

Secondly, because breastfeeding didn't work out for us the way I always planned, we ended up spending a lot of money on feeding supplies: bottles and sanitizers I didn't buy, a bottle drying tree, bottle drying brushes. And then, as time went on, formula. Have you ever looked at how expensive formula is? A 3-day supply (a single can) costs around $17.99 for the more affordable brands. Seriously. By the time Forrest was 8 months and exclusively formula fed, we were spending about $40 a week on formula. 

All these expenses meant it was time to really get a lock on our finances and start saving money. Mainly, I wanted to have more in savings for a rainy day, plus we have some goals for ourselves. Thanks to some clever budgeting and payments, we're going to pay off our car in half the time. 

When it comes to saving money, however, it's often the big, unchangeable expenses that can blow your budget. Most people spend more on rent, food, and utilities than they would like. Without those expensive payments, it was be easy to save money! However, I do believe there are a few little things that anyone can cut out to help them save a little money. 

So, these are the 3 things I stopped buying in 2016 to help us save extra cash. 

1. Impulse grocery shopping. 

My husband and I both got into a very bad habit of stopping at the grocery store every single day. Oh, I want a soda? It's only $2 at the grocery store! Want something a little extra for dinner? Swing by the grocery store! We were regularly doing our grocery shopping, plus we'd spend $5-20 every other day or so. Individually, that doesn't sound like a lot. But if you spend $5 at the grocery store, or convenience store, every single day, plus do a weekly grocery shopping trip, you're breaking your budget. 

Now, I set a grocery budget ($70 a week, usually) and stick to it. We're lucky in that we only have one, small toddler at the moment, so it's easy to stick to $70. And if we need something at the store that I forgot, well, that's just too bad! I put it on the list for next week. 

2. Take out.

Another bad habit: picking up dinner on the way home. Lots of couples do this and it's easy to think, "Oh, this $10 pizza isn't a huge deal!" But if you're buying groceries plus spending $10+ on dinner every night... then why are you buying groceries again? One week, we ended up spending something like $120 on food and I put my foot down! There is no way two people need $120 worth of food in a week! We were wasting groceries and wasting money. So now, we eat at home and that's it. Once in a while, we will have a planned treat, but we budget for it and I don't buy groceries for that day. We've saved so much money this way! Plus, we aren't throwing out food anymore. We use what we buy. 

3. Lunches. 

My husband and I got very used to buying lunch every day at work. But once we had Forrest, that just wasn't possible anymore. I was the first to stop getting lunch every day, which saves us an extra $15+ a week. Then, finally, my husband relented. Every week, I make him 5 breakfast burritos and 5 lunches to take to work; this saves us over $25+ a week, considering my husband would often stop to get breakfast and then get lunch!

It's amazing how a little thing like grabbing a sandwich or a donut in the morning can add up, but it really does. It's also very easy to get into patterns of going to the bagel shop for lunch every day. Now, I make my coffee at home and I pack something small for lunch (usually a cheese stick, an apple, and a bit of leftovers from dinner), and I don't have to worry about spending the extra money! 

How Intuitive Eating Changed My Life

A few months ago, I started listening to a new podcast called Food Psych, hosted by Christy Harrison, a certified Intuitive Eating Counselor as well as a Registered Dietician Nutritionist. I had heard of intuitive eating before (although it hadn't been called that) through Geneen Roth's books, but I had never actually tried to put it into practice. 

I am nothing if not a victim of diet culture; I have been thinking about diets, and shaming myself for eating, for as long as I can remember. I still remember the vivid horror I felt, at 9 years old, that my thighs were bigger than my best friend's and how I needed to fix it immediately. 

For years, I've known that my eating behavior was not normal or healthy. I fixated on food at all times: worrying about it, wanting it, dreading it. I never really knew when I was hungry; I ate when I was expected to, then I ate out of stress, boredom, or feeling nothing. I read an article recently called Hunger Makes Me (that I highly, highly recommend) and I never identified more with a passage of writing than this one: 

I will rely on any other cue—the ease or difficulty of procuring food, the time of day, what other people are doing, the timing of my work and gym and social plans—before I’ll remember to look inward. Imagine being told that your biggest secret—your weirdest sexual fantasy, your most embarrassing faceplant, your favorite Nickelback song—was supposed to dictate your behavior, publicly, as many as three times a day.

When I started listening to Food Psych, something clicked inside of me. 

All these things we view as healthy--going low carb or no carb, posting on fitness Instagrams, taking diet advice from uneducated strangers on the internet, signing up for Weight Watchers--are killing us. Diets, I've since learned, only increase your chances of gaining weight. A study of diabetes patients found that the group that was instructed to diet actually ended up in worse health than the control group that maintained an "overweight" status. 

Here's the thing: weight doesn't determine your health. You're just as likely to get diabetes if you're fit and healthy as if you're overweight. If your reaction to reading that sentence is "No, I've learned diabetes is a fat person disease!", then congratulations, you got played by the diet industry. We are seeing just as high of numbers of diabetes diagnoses in fit, healthy people as overweight people, leading us to believe that diabetes is more genetic than we have previously believed. 

That's just one example. There are many. 

Beyond that, diet culture confuses us about what we feel: we eat what we've planned, when we're supposed to, versus eating what our body craves when it is actually hungry. When you get rid of "taboo foods," when you allow yourself to eat a cookie when you're hungry and want a cookie, but also allow yourself to eat a salad when you're hungry and your body craves a salad, then you are letting your body lead you. The arbitrary lines of "good" and "bad" foods cause us to obsess over them. 

This is all damaging behavior. I know it is, because I'm living it and it's damaging me, mentally and physically. 

I started reading a book called The Intuitive Eating Workbook (I'm still working through it, but will review it soon) that walks the reader through the 10 principles of intuitive eating. It's hard work and I won't pretend I'm perfect at it already. It's hard to get rid of everything I've ever known in terms of "healthy" food and "healthy" bodies. But opening myself up to body positivity and health at every size, I can only see my mental health improving. 

The hardest part of practicing intuitive eating is telling others around you to stop talking about their diets, to stop talking about dieting around you in general. I find (and really, have always found) that diet talk triggers my anxiety eating, but after starting to practice intuitive eating, it's even worse. The moment someone starts talking about never eating cookies again, or giving up cake or bread for life, I start to doubt what I'm doing. I start to wonder if maybe intuitive eating is wrong and all these diets are right. Certainly, all those fitness Instagrams seem happy...

The truth is though that I can't imagine a life where I permanently give up a bad food. I would never be happy never eating cake with my son or baking cookies with him just to eat the dough. That's just not a life worth living, nor is it sustainable--because eventually you'll be confronted by your "off limits" food. It's not a matter of having self-control. It's a matter of listening to your body and allowing yourself to eat. 

But I still struggle with telling others that I cannot listen to diet talk. I still struggle with confronting the beliefs other people still hold about diet culture (and who believe I should be actively dieting). I still struggle with health anxiety that I'm giving myself diabetes or going to die early for no reason. 

It all takes work. But I can tell you: intuitive eating, truly, changed my life. 

Recipe: Gingerbread Scones with Mandarin Icing

A week before Christmas, I had all my baking done: cookies, pies, you name it, I'd baked it and I promised I wouldn't do anymore. But then, Christmas Eve rolled around, most of the cookies had been given as gifts, the pie was reserved for Christmas dinner and... it just didn't feel right to not have a little something in the evening. 

I didn't feel like baking more cookies. I didn't feel like a cake or another pie. I wanted something simple and easy to have with tea or coffee after dinner. 

Enter... the gingerbread scone. 

I'm a big scone fan because they tend to be a little less sweet than a cookie and, as a baked good, they have a bit more wiggle room than something like a cake. This is one of my favorite recipes that I thought I'd share. They are gingery, flakey, and oh-so-good. 

Gingerbread Scones with Mandarin Icing

For the scones

• 2 cups flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1 tsp ginger
• 1/4 tsp cloves
• 4 tablespoons brown sugar
• 1/2 stick of butter (or 1/4 cup) 
• 1 egg
• 1/3 cup molasses
• 1/2 cup milk

For the icing

• 4 tablespoons powdered sugar
• the juice of 1 mandarin
• 1/8 tsp pumpkin pie spice

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. In a bowl, combine flour, baking powder & soda, cinnamon, ginger, cloves, and sugar. Cut in butter using a paster cutter or a large fork, until you get large crumbs (almost like sand). In a cup, combine egg, molasses, and a few tablespoons of the milk. Add to the flour and butter mixture and combine. Add a bit more milk until you get a decent dough (it will be slightly sticky). Form into a ball and place on a cookie sheet with a piece of parchment paper lining it. Form into a flat disk and cut into 12 scones. Separate on the sheet about 1/2-1 inch apart. Bake for about 12-15 minutes. 

Transfer to a wire rack and let cool. In a small bowl, whisk together the powdered sugar and mandarin juice, as well as pumpkin pie spice. Add more powdered sugar and juice if you'd like more icing! Drizzle on top of scones and allow to dry. 

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Absolutely one of my favorite scone recipes ever. It's super quick and easy and the pay off is pretty amazing. If you don't have mandarin oranges, you can use lemon juice as well; or, if you aren't in the mood for a little citrus, you can just use water or milk and add a dash of vanilla extract.