When our children were much younger, we would often just cook or prepare plain, simple ingredients on a plate for them to try.
A piece of broccoli. A carrot. Some zucchini. Rice. Cucumber. A small serve of meat.
Sometimes the meat was plain, or perhaps had a little marinade on it, just to see how the different flavours were accepted – or not.
At the time, I didn’t think of this as creating a family meal rotation. We were simply trying to introduce different foods and give the children the opportunity to discover what they liked and didn’t like.
There was also a period where I was preparing two or three variations of the same meal because I knew certain things were unlikely to be eaten.
Whole vegetables were often a problem, but blending vegetables into something like a spaghetti bolognese meant they could be included in a prepared meal that everyone would generally accept. It worked, but I remember thinking that eating the same two or three meals wasn’t really enough variety. I wanted them to experience different foods, different flavours and different combinations.
Over time, though, the number of meals and ingredients that were accepted gradually increased. Those meals were remembered and kept in the rotation, while we continued to try other things alongside them.
When Something Worked One Week But Not the Next
One of the things I’ve found frustrating over the years is that getting a meal accepted once didn’t necessarily mean it would be accepted the next time. Something could be eaten one week and then barely touched the next. Sometimes it was the ingredient itself. Sometimes it was how it had been prepared.
Sometimes it seemed to come down to something as simple as the size of a piece of carrot. “The carrot pieces were too large.” And suddenly most of the meal was still sitting in the bowl.
When the children were younger, we would try to explain that sometimes you needed to try something more than once before deciding whether you liked it. So we would keep putting different ingredients onto their plates and give them another opportunity to try them rather than completely removing something after one attempt.
That didn’t always work. And there were plenty of meals where not everything was eaten.
I accepted that to some degree because developing their tastes was always going to involve some trial and error.
But that didn’t mean it wasn’t frustrating. There was wasted food, extra preparation, and sometimes the feeling that I had put effort into making something only to watch parts of it sit untouched.
Keeping Things Simple Helped
As time went on, I started to understand that keeping some meals simple wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. There are still certain foods our children don’t want to attempt.
Beef steak, lamb and pork aren’t generally things they want on their plates. Beef mince and chicken, in different forms, are much more accepted.
Even that isn’t completely fixed, though.
Beef stroganoff is something they’ve accepted again more recently, even though it uses beef strips rather than mince. There are mushrooms in it as well, and one of our more fussy eaters will still eat some of them when they’re cut up small enough.
So the boundaries aren’t always as fixed as they might seem. What doesn’t work one year can sometimes work again later. Sometimes just changing how something is prepared is enough to make it a little more acceptable.
Finding Variety Within Familiar Meals
One thing I’ve found over time is that variety doesn’t always mean starting with completely different ingredients or completely different meals. Sometimes a small change can make something familiar feel like a different meal.
A tuna mornay made with penne pasta is now generally more enjoyed as a tuna bake, with breadcrumbs and tasty cheese melted over the top in the oven.
It is still based around familiar ingredients, but changing the way it is finished and served has made a difference. It also tends to leave enough for leftovers, which can go into the freezer and become an extra meal for someone when they want something different from what everyone else might be having.
Our beef bolognese has changed in similar ways. Rather than always making it with a strong tomato base, I sometimes use less tomato, add a little nutmeg and use macaroni pasta instead of long spaghetti. The main ingredients haven’t really changed, but a small variation in the spices and pasta can change the flavour and make it feel like a slightly different meal.
Beef tacos using flour tortillas are another one that generally goes down well. They’re quick and easy to prepare, and we can now include a little lettuce for some crunch in the wrap and it is actually eaten.
I’ve also always tried to include grated carrot in the beef mince, looking for small ways to incorporate vegetables into a meal without making the vegetables themselves the focus.
More recently, we’ve added another variation to the rotation.
A homemade marinade of passata, barbecue sauce, honey, garlic and oil with cubed chicken pieces or wings has become an easy meal with rice or egg noodles. Stir-fry vegetables can be cooked separately because not everyone eats them, but the chicken itself provides a new flavour that everyone can generally enjoy.
These aren’t dramatic changes. They’re small ones.
But I’ve found that small changes can be enough to give us some variety without moving too far away from meals that we already know generally work.
The Meals We Keep Coming Back To
Over time, we’ve ended up with a fairly regular list of meals that we can refer back to. It’s not an endless list, but there is enough variety to keep us from feeling like we’re eating exactly the same thing every week when planning the meals to cook for the week.
Some of the meals regularly eaten in our household are:
- Tuna bake
- Spaghetti bolognese
- Beef mince tacos
- Chicken wings
- Sausages with vegetables
- Homemade pizza on the weekend
- Beef rissoles, sometimes with egg and bacon in a burger
- Chicken schnitzel
- Beef stroganoff
- Butter chicken, not too spicy but with plenty of flavour
- Beef meatballs with onion and tomato sauce and spaghetti
Even within those meals, there are variations.
With some of the beef mince meals, I’ve started including a tin of lentils. It adds another source of protein, changes the flavour slightly, and is also a relatively inexpensive way to increase the meal and have some leftovers to put away for another time.
With sausages and vegetables, there will usually also be some rice or pasta available for the person who doesn’t want to try whole vegetables on the plate.
And with the beef rissole burgers, some will have a little salad as well, while others won’t.
It might not look like a particularly exciting system written down on paper.
But for us, it works.
We Gradually Built a List of Meals That Worked
Now that the children are teenagers, we’ve gradually built up a collated list of meals that we know generally work for our family.
I don’t think we ever deliberately set out to create a “safe meal rotation.” It just happened over time. We noticed what was eaten. We remembered what wasn’t. We tried things again. We changed a recipe slightly.
And gradually, we built up a collection of meals that gave us somewhere reliable to start.
We keep the recipes in a folder, and we also have an electronic copy that we can refer to.
That means when I’m sitting down to think about meals for the week, I don’t have to rely entirely on trying to remember what we have made over the years. The list is there. Having a meal plan for the week also takes away some of the decision-making before the working week begins. Planning what meals can be easily kept for all to see on an electronic planner or be as simple as keeping copies of recipes in a folder altogether to refer to which is what we started with.
It also means that when I’m looking for something slightly different, I can look through the recipes and find a variation rather than feeling like I have to come up with something completely new.
Having Familiar Meals Takes Away Some of the Pressure
I still get frustrated sometimes. I don’t think that completely disappears.
But there is less of it now because I have a better understanding of what each child is likely to eat and what probably isn’t worth putting on their plate.
I know that certain foods may be left. I know that certain things probably won’t even be attempted. And I know which meals give us a much better chance of everyone eating enough without turning dinner into another negotiation.
That knowledge has actually become useful. It means I’m not constantly trying to solve the same problem from scratch. Instead, I can work from what I already know. For a busy school week, that matters, as it reduces the amount of mental load and the thinking that lies underneath it.
There are already enough decisions to make around getting everyone where they need to be, getting through work, school and everything else that fills a normal week.
Dinner doesn’t always need to be another experiment. Sometimes it can just be a meal that we know works.
Trying Something New Without Making It a Big Deal
That doesn’t mean we’ve stopped trying new meals.
On weekends, when there is a little more time, I might discover something different that I’d like to try.
I’m generally making a judgement before I go ahead with it, knowing that it might not be accepted and that I might need to have something else available. But these days there tends to be more success than rejection.
For me, I don’t really consider a new meal a success just because someone eats a little of it once. I tend to look at what happens the second time around.
If I make it again and it is still mostly eaten, then I know it has a much better chance of becoming part of our rotation. That gives us a little more confidence to keep it in the mix.
When we do try something new, I like to ask what they thought of it. If they didn’t like it, what was it that they didn’t enjoy? Was it the flavour? The texture? One particular ingredient? The way something was cooked?
Sometimes those conversations give us something to work with next time.
I also try to explain that ingredients don’t always taste the same on their own as they do when they’re combined with other foods. The combination of ingredients can change the flavour of the whole meal, and sometimes a food that isn’t appealing by itself can work differently when it’s part of something else.
It’s not about convincing them that they should like something. It’s more about helping them understand that food can change depending on how it is prepared and what it is combined with.
Our Family Meal Rotation Isn’t a Rule
I think that’s probably the biggest difference between how I see our meal rotation now and how I might have thought about it when the children were younger.
The list isn’t a set of rules. It isn’t saying these are the only meals we will ever eat.
It’s simply a collection of meals that we have learned generally work for us. Some will stay. Some will disappear for a while. Some may come back. And occasionally something new will find its way into the rotation.
There is still room for variety. There is still room for trying something different. But there is also room for knowing that a familiar meal can sometimes be exactly what a busy family needs.
Sometimes Familiar Is Enough
I used to think that having a small group of meals we relied on meant we weren’t offering enough variety. Now I see it a little differently.
Family life doesn’t always need more choices. Sometimes it needs fewer decisions, that is good enough for me after a busy weekday working.
Having meals that we know are generally accepted means I can spend less time worrying about whether everyone will eat and more time simply preparing food for the family.
It has also made cooking enjoyable again in a different way. I still like trying something a little different. I still enjoy putting some effort into a meal when I have the time.
But I don’t need every weekday dinner to be an opportunity to discover something new. Sometimes a familiar meal, eaten without much fuss, is enough.
And perhaps that is another part of creating a steadier family rhythm – knowing when to keep trying, and knowing when something that already works is good enough.