Chicken and Veg Rolls

This is a variation on a traditional sausage roll.  I like to think it is a little healthier.  These are usually lunch and picnic items but we have been known to have them as a lazy dinner too.  While they are 'hidden' veggie items they are good for the whole family

When we make these I batch cook and freeze them as there are always too many for 1 meal. If you are reheating then you probably want to do so in the oven in foil at first and then then uncovered to allow the pastry to crisp The filling can also work well cooked up on it's own.

Equipment:

Meat mincer (if you don't have this use pre ground/minced meat)

Grater

Scales

A couple of bowls

Oven trays

Kid safe activities (if you want your kiddo to participate)

Helping weigh and measure ingredients

Passing items to grate/mince

Helping mix

Helping roll

Ingredients

1 Pack of shop bought puff pastry

1 pack of chicken thighs (boneless and skinless) or skinless chicken breast (Thighs are more moist when cooked)

Same weight in veg of what ever kind as your meat when its out of the packet (so 500g meat = 500g veg)

1/4 cup of oats or breadcrumbs 

1/2 cup of wheatgerm (optional)

Seasoning 

2 eggs

1 extra egg to act as glue (so don’t add it)

 Method

• Whack the oven on at about 210c

• Mince up your meat (I have an attachment for my food processor - if you don’t have any way to mince it then you might want to buy chicken mince (turkey is ok but it cooks a bit dry)

• Mince/grate your veg finely 

• Mix together all the ingredients and seasonings except the puff pastry and the 1 egg for glueing 

• When the pastry is defrosted take each sheet and cut it in half length wise so you get 2 long rectangles per sheet

• Using a spoon put a line of the filling across the rectangle - don’t do it right at the long edge as you need to be able to roll it up but don't be too mean either

• Roll it up making sure that the pastry overlaps where you started by about 1 cm.  Just before the end use the egg by brushing a little over the edge and gluing it to your roll

• Make each one in the same way - usually you will be 4 really long sausage rolls - don’t try and cut them before they are cooked or you get a mess

• Line your baking tray with greaseproof paper (they stick to foil) and make sure to leave a good distance between them as they will puff up and out

• Bake for about 15 minutes at 210 then turn the oven down to 180 and cook for another 10 minutes max - just check they are not burning 

The dreaded veggie

Veggies are not something that the Smurf will eat willingly a lot of the time.  If it's a green veggie then you are even more out of luck.  You may get a win with corn on the cob (that he does seem to like) mushrooms and onions and possibly potato, but anything else and you are asking for a battle

We have had lots of battles, and lots of vomiting, all due to veggies being given.  We want B to have a good healthy balanced diet, which requires veg, but we are starting to change our approach to how we get him to eat them.  

It seems to me that 2 year olds are the masters of battle strategy, amongst other things.  They are stubborn, wilful and never seem to forget the things they want to remember (if you want them to remember something then you are probably out of luck).  We have tried family dinners - this just means there are more of you to get annoyed, we have tried bribery and blackmail, we have tried being nice and being grumpy.  The net results of all this trying has been a headache and no real amount of veggies being eaten.

Our new approach has 3 strands, and thus far its being more successful than anything else we have tried

Phase 1: Shopping

B actually quite likes grocery shopping (it is good one of us does).  He can cross items off the list, ask constant what and why questions and he can be a helper getting things to put in the cart.  Yes we actually let him help.  He is a kid who loves to have a responsibility so we use that to our benefit. 

When we prepare the list he gets to pick items to add on, but at the store we encourage him to choose 1 fruit and 1 veggie not on the list to try.  He loves fruit so that is never a battle, and he likes the choosing of a veggie.  This is all about getting him excited about the food.  We can talk about its shape, colour, smell, how we will cook it etc.  All of this is about being positive and excited.  We may also look up videos on how the veg can be prepared to further amp up the excitement

Phase 2: Cooking 

Again B likes cooking - he would prefer to keep his hands clean, but tolerates getting messy if it means he can cook.  It could be something as simple as whisking eggs or putting food in a pan, all the way up to cooking an item.  

Being in the kitchen is a part of learning respect for food and seeing how it is prepared.  Understanding that work has to happen for you to eat is a good way for a child to be respectful of what is given to them.  It also means that you don't get to fib about what is in food.  A lot of the items we make have 'hidden' veg, but which i mean they have veg in them but it is not obvious.  I want B to know that there is veg in an item but he won't have to see it.  

Phase 3: Hidden and visible

So quite a few meals have the 'hidden veg' but I also want him to know that he can have veg on his plate too.  This means every meal he gets 2 small portions of veg on his plate.  I will encourage him to eat it, I will ask him to eat it, but I will not force him to.  

For us confrontation just leads to agitation over the whole meal, if he doesn't eat some of the veg and he is still hungry then he has to eat some to get afters, but if he tries he doesn't need to eat it all.  Our goal here is try some and don't make yourself sick - plus we know he has taken in veg via the 'hidden' items

It is a slow process, and sometimes frustrating, but B doesn't get upset about the veg being there, he will, with a little prodding eat some of the veg and dinner time is back to being peaceful and amicable.  Slow steps will get us there in the end

I am going to post some of our favourite hidden veg recipes here over time

It's been a long road ... travelling from there to here

Like a lot of parents - feeding our growing smurf has had a lot of ups and downs or more accurately ins and outs.  

B suffered badly with reflux from when he was born, and not the silent kind, but rather the explosive, emptying his stomach all over us in one go kind.  He didn't have failure to thrive, in fact he packed on the weight easily, so we were told it was not an issue.  The fact was he put on weight because he breastfed almost all the time, and he wanted to feed all the time because his throat hurt from the acid. 

After struggling for 6 weeks, we had his checkup and spoke to the Dr in the UK who said we could try infant gaviscon - which you had to give him at the start of the feed via a bottle.  It would not stop the vomiting but it would stop the pain.  We went off feeling happier - until we discovered he would not take a bottle, it was boob or nothing.  We ended up having to use a syringe - messy but it worked.  We still had mass vomiting, but less crying.  This was workable up until he reached 6 months and he had a huge growth spurt.  Now I could not take him out anywhere, because 9/10 I was going to be covered in vomit.  I lost count of the number of times I would abandon shopping carts in the store because I could see that he was going to empty himself over me.  We were now in the US so we went to his Paediatrician and explained the issue, and luckily she listened and provided us with medication, the downside was we would need to gradually wean him off of it.  This helped huge amounts, the being sick was only occasional and I could go out again.

Weaning was an issue - B liked a limited amount of food and only wanted boob, but we worked at it.  Fruit and veg was ok but don't try and get him to eat protein - and if he didn't like something everything came back up. We spoke with his Dr at check ups and she was ok with us staying on his meds up to 18 months, we worked on everything and weaned him off at 14, vomiting picked up a bit but we could manage.  The eating of protein didn't and it seemed to be a texture thing.  At 19 months we stopped with the breastfeeding and we were fully weaned.  

Persistence, a lot of tears on all parts and a lot of searching on the internet gave us some tricks - certain shaped foods could help him get used to food in his mouth and decrease the sensitivity of his gag reflex and the realisation that well seasoned, well flavoured food would work better than bland helped too. We made it through, he always put on a good amount of weight, he didn't eat too much junk and he developed well, but meal times were hard work.

B is now 2.5 - we still have our issues and the ever present vomit reflex is hard to deal with, especially as he can seemingly do it at will.  He has quite a wide range of tastes and you can usually talk him into trying most things,  he will have your hand off to get bacon or coconut shrimp, but he will quite happily give you his veggies.

It feels like it has been a long road already but please know  if you are struggling with a difficult or fussy eater, please know you are not alone.  Talk to people, look things up and get help, eventually things will get better but it is ok to want or need help.

My journey

Food is great - I love food, healthy food, less healthy food, snacks - you name it I probably like something about it. Looking back 14 years or so I didn't much like food.  Sure I ate plenty, but in general eating was what you did because you had to and, while I had my favourites I rarely got excited by food.

I was a vegetarian - not due to ethical reasons (good on you if you are) but because I didn't like meat.  Taste, texture, smell (oh god the smell) - it all turned my stomach.  Being a vegetarian was not why I didn't like food,but my nervousness about what I would try was. 

My husband loves to tell the story of how be 'broke me' by spending most of a day with an M&S chicken sandwich telling me to eat the chicken.  Eventually, for a quiet life I gave in and agreed it was ok. From that point on slowly but surely I started to include meat in my diet, but it had to be cooked just right and you could not even think of serving me rare steak.

R ended up working for an organisation where there was a lot of travel and he would eat out at lot of fancy restaurants and come back with loads of ideas, the slowly but surely we would try.  We got more adventurous and tried lots of new dishes, at home and in restaurants, and it was great.  We screwed up, a lot of what we tried to make, but we learned. We experimented, we tried and we grew as people. We have eaten at  some awesome restaurants and had some truly marvellous food experiences

Cooking shows, always a slightly guilty pleasure, have fuelled our desire to keep growing and developing and now we get the chance to try and share our love of food and cooking with our small person.  We discovered early on that what would help as background noise when settling B when he was super small was the background noise of a cooking show,and we have kept that up so that some of his limited TV is a cooking show just before bed.  

There is nothing more special than hearing his little voice tell us excitedly that he thinks that looks super tasty and he would like to eat it one day.  I hope that we manage to keep this excitement and love alive for him,  Of course I would also like it if he was a better eater, but not many parents wouldn’t

What I’m going to put here is unlikely to be a lot of the fancier things that get made, but probably a lot more about what we managed to get B to eat and the trials and tribulations of dealing with a toddler