How to Make Lunch Fun with Muffin Tins

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When my children are infants, they eat very well.

By the time we reach the baby food stage, they are daring and will try anything. Prunes, mangos, bananas mixed with avocado.

Then, as we start to introduce table food, all of my kids become these picky little eaters. Food snobs really. And if my 12 year old is the first case study, this picky eating stuff is going to last a long time.

There are some days you would think that veggies ruin their lives.

You want me to eat THIS? What is IT?

During the summer time I will place a fruit tray or a veggie try in the middle of the table and that is our side for lunch or our snack during the middle of the day.They will gobble up the sweeter fruits and veggies like watermelon, pineapple, strawberries, grapes, carrots, etc.

But, just about every evening I steam a veggie to go with dinner and about 50% of the time there are complaints from someone. Crazy thing is, they never complain over a regular dinner salad. All of my kids will eat it without one peep of negativity.

While our big kids have paved this picky path, and quickly the twins have caught onto it, now little Matthew (2) is following more and more in their foot steps and turning his nose up at the foods I offer him throughout the day.

We do have a rule, you must try at least one bite of each food on your plate. You can then say no thank you if you really do not like it, once you have given it a try. I can not tell you how many times my older kids have turned their nose up at something on their plates and spend 15 minutes trying to convince me that they have tried this particular food before and it made the throw up, just to try it and… what do you know. This is actually really good. And they are glad they tried it. AND they want seconds.

With that said… we still struggle. And lunch and snack time this summer are no exception.

I have searched around for some ideas to make meals more fun. I keep seeing muffin tin lunches and bento lunch ideas all over the internet.

Benefits of Muffin Tin and Bento Lunches

• portion control
• less waste
• variety
• makes eating fun

We are giving it a try.

You can simply use a muffin tin with or without liners. To take the fun idea one step further, I purchased some silicone reusable muffin tin liners in the shape of bears. You can get flowers, clowns, triangles, etc.   (And when you use the reuseable liners you really can forgo the muffin tin all together if you want. Although the muffin tin makes it easier to transport everything to the kitchen table.)

While this is not something my bigger kids are going to be interested in, my twins (5) and the baby (2), are certainly digging this fun new eating idea!

Suddenly a boring banana is fun again! This is a mommy solution!

There is a row of four cups for each of my little kids. On this particular day each child had a hard-boiled egg, banana slices, celery and carrots with ranch dip at the bottom of the cup, and some healthy chips. They get a variety of everything and not an overload of just one item.

Another day we did sandwiches and they really wanted a cookie with lunch too. By having a small muffin cup we were able to meet in the middle. (They did have to eat their sandwich before they could eat the cookies.)

Have you ever tried serving meals to your children in muffin tins? What combinations were best received? What about bento lunches- have you ever given them a try?

What are some tips you can share about making meal time fun?

I am sharing these tips on these sites: i heart naptime,  the girl creative,  C.R.A.F.T. craftomatic,  crafts keep me sane,   skip to my lou,  making the world cuter, sumos sweet stuff,  mad in crafts, tip junkie, tasty tuesday, tempt my tummy tuesday,  craft edition,  hope studios, todays creative blog, sew much ado,  someday crafts,  we are that family,  blue cricket designs,  somewhat simple,  paisley passions, house of hepworths,  fun to craft,  fingerprints on the fridge, tidy mom,  a few of my favorite things and  it’s a hodge podge life.   Looking for a more copious list? Here are over 50 sites to search for and share projects  and tutorials.