Quick & Healthy Toddler Meal

My wonderful neighbor brought over a Pilipino noodle dish today called pancit. I grew up with my friend’s mother feeding me well on pancit and lumpia. Anyway, I digress. I figured the kiddo would eat some, but not a whole meal of it. So I got to thinking. I wanted him to have carrots, then he started talking about rice so I came up with a good way to cook them all quickly.

I started with the following:

5-7 fresh baby carrots halved and sliced

1/4 cup(ish) of frozen peas

Minute Rice Brown Rice

I boiled the carrots for about 15 minutes until they were a little soft. I stuck them in the freezer to cool off. Then, thinking about all of the good nutrients that was leftover in the water, I used that to cook the rice. It was already boiling so it cut the rice cooking time in half. When the rice was done, I added the carrots and frozen peas. The peas were warmed by the hot rice and in turn cooled the rice down to toddler temp! Didn’t think of this first thing, but you could cook it all in low sodium chicken broth for more flavor and add already cooked chicken to the rice too.

This may be a duh kind of thing and you are thinking “It took her this long to figure this out?” But I was pretty proud of the healthy, quick meal I made for him when he wasn’t going to be eating the same thing as we are at dinner. He really scarfed it too!