My baby likes to "help" in the kitchen!

Let Everyone Choose a Meal!

This idea works for any family, but works especially well for families with school aged kids. 


The Setup:
- Pick a day to discuss the upcoming weeks meals, perhaps after Sunday dinner, or if you have a regular family meeting this would fit in well there.
- Allow each member of the family to choose one meal for that week. If you have a large family you can split it up so that kids get to choose every other week. If you have younger kids you may want to give them a list of healthy/balanced meals that you know they like, that they get to choose from.
- Write it down and make it happen!


How & Why it Works:
- Kids will be excited that for the day that they get to have "their dinner".
- There is a lot less stress involved when you know your kids (or at least one of them) are going to like and eat the dinner you make.
- Kids are more likely to want to help prepare the meals when they are involved in choosing them.
- There is still plenty of opportunity to introduce new foods on parent's choice nights. 
- And if nothing else, you can use their dinner as a motivation to eat well all week in ways such as, "I'm so excited to have ____ tomorrow, aren't you? I bet ____ is excited for her dinner tonight, we better all eat it up!" I know that's pretty cheesy, but with the appropriate tweaking, you get the point, right?

After trying several recipes for corn chowder, and a few attempts at creating my own, I finally hit home with this one! My husband was actually the one that suggested I use rosemary (one of my favorite flavors, so it wasn't a hard sale). I wanted to try a corn chowder with chicken so I decided to combine the 2 ideas... magic! It instantly became one of our favorite soups, and is a regular in our house. One thing I love about this soup is that corn and chicken are such kid friendly foods, even with most picky kids, that kids (mine at least) will happily eat it. Enjoy!