Toodler food

We are one of those households, the allergies list as long as your arm places where everything that comes in needs to be dissected to determine if its safe.  We are Gluten-free, Nut-free, Soy-free, Orange-free and have other food issues with eggs, most fruits, and red meat. We also don't do processed foods, preservatives, and are trying to cut all GMO stuff out too. I can't say I miss them but this can make eating a challenge.

sweet potato, kale salad, mashed potato, and cornbread

C has suddenly upped the amount he wants to eat he is always hungry and so I have found that my old nurse a lot, feed him a little of what ever I'm having method of meal times doesn't work any more. We have moved on to planned toddler meals. I want to make sure that he is getting a balanced diet because even with out all the junk its still possible to be lacking in good stuff.  This is the first week of planned munchkin meals, I will be attempting to make him breakfast, morning snack, lunch, afternoon snack, dinner, and bedtime snack.  Ideas for breakfast are pancakes, oatmeal, muffins, smoothies, snacks will be bite sized and a mixture of veggies and protein, lunch will be what ever we are having usually rice based with veggies and dinner will be the same.
 My hope is that by making sure his meals are balanced and have variety it will spill over into the meals of the rest of the house, that my husbands lunches will become more rounded and our family meals will too.  I'm sure that it will take a while to get in a routine and get used to having a verity of good snacks on hand. So this week I am reading every book on toddler nutrition and breastfeeding a toddler that I can get my hands on and searching Pinterest for fun lunch and snack ideas.

Eating Real

After the birth of C our eating habits slid a little, it was easier to just have pizza or nachos than cook up something real. They didn't become horrible we still ate tons of veggies and healthy food but the processed convince stuff snuck its way back into my kitchen. We started to have had food issues when C started showing signs of food allergies, and almost a year ago we became Gluten Free, Soy Free, Nut Free, and Citrus Free. Its made life a little more complicated. 
I'm ready to purge our bodies and household of all the junk, to go back to the real foods. Not preservatives, less sugar, no GMO's, if it can't be grown in the backyard and cooked up in the kitchen it really has no place going in our bodies. Starting on the January 1st we are going Real, I don't think it will be easy, but I think it's necessary. C is right at that age where he is in love with food he picks kale over chicken and broccoli over cheese, he doesn't drink juice or have sweets, the closest thing to snacking on junk food he gets is plain unsalted rice cakes.  I want him to grow up eating good food, to know the joy of sitting in the garden picking tomatoes right off the plant and popping them in his mouth. 

So in a few weeks we will begin, we have started already slowly easing our way into the Real Food challenge, we have been trying to add two fruits or veggies to every meal and this week we are giving up sugar in our coffees and replacing it with maple sugar or honey.
The rules and info on our challenger can be found at http://www.100daysofrealfood.com/