Consider this a list of all our favorite kitchen-related things. KK is currently 20 months, so I’ll update this list as we discover new favorites. As always, this is just a list of what works for us. Take what you love, leave the rest, make it work for you!
side note: Want to know more about our BLW journey? And how we introduced KK to solids? And what she ate that first year of her life? See this post!
a meal rotation
yeah, you read that right. i have a set of meals i offer for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks, and we rotate through them. I’ve always done dinner themes, but doing the same for all the other meals of the day that KK needs (and I need!) was LIFE CHANGING.
because deciding what KK was having for breakfast, for snack, for lunch, and for second snack EVERY LOVING DAY was absolutely killing me. creating a meal rotation solved all my problems.
here’s my full blogpost on it, and how you can create your own.. like, for example, thursday breakfasts are some sort of oats/oatmeal with some sort of produce. BAM, done. and afternoon snacks are some sort of protein, dry cereal or cracker, and produce. BAM, done. and monday dinners are always Sandwich Night. bam, done!
did you catch that? i created themes that would not only work for KK, but would also work for Brett and me. because I can’t make a million different meals each day. i’m not a short order cook.
i cannot adequately express my love for this chair. i love that i can pick a color that best matches my decor, I love that it doesn’t scream “baby thing!!!!" I love that it grows with your child, I love how solid it is, I love how freaking easy it is to clean (and no small crevices in which food gets caught), and I love that it’s ergonomically perfect.
to clean it, I just spray it with water and wipe it down with a soft cloth (both spray bottles and soft cloths live in our eating cart - more on this in a second!). one of my monthly routines is to give the highchair a good scrub, too.
both the BLW and the Montessori communities swear by this chair, and I say rightfully so. I will definitely be buying another one for future bebes.
we also have the tray and I love it. again, SO easy to clean. but I also love that this chair functions without a tray and that she can just be pushed right up to the table to eat with us without a tray.
these days we don’t use the tray all that often since she prefers to eat directly at the table with us with her plates. (more on her plates next.)
we also have this clip-on highchair in navy on our bar. not as delightful to clean, but it serves as another option of a safe spot to put KK so for that reason we love it. this is the most delightful thing to have at restaurants, on road trips, while camping, while hiking, while picnicking, etc, so usually it lives in our Emergency Closet or in my car.
we also have these plates, these snack containers, and these bowls.
brett and i use these plates, so I wanted a plate for kk that looked similar-ish.
we also have this silverware set (one of her first birthday gifts) and this set of BLW spoons.
we have these straw cups, too.
our lunchbox stuff + our packed lunches
see the full post of our lunchbox favorites here!
just listen to your dear friend haley and buy it.
our seed shakers
I learned this from Veggies and Virtue. we have three shakers (like this!) to which we have one nutrition powerhouse in each: flaxseed, chia seed, and hempseed. we keep the shakers on our dinner table and the shakers make it SO easy to sprinkle these seeds onto our food for added nutrition.
here’s Veggies and Virtue’s post on her shaker idea, and here’s her infograph on the three seeds.
for example, the other night we had orzo salad, chicken, and fruit. I shook some hemp seeds onto our salad and some flaxseed onto our fruit. bam! easy peasy.
kk’s stool (+ montessori practices)
we purchased a kitchen helper from this small shop and had them paint it white. I wanted a twin version so that future friends/siblings/cousins could use it, so our stool is extra wide, which I love. and I love that this one in particular had various heights from which to choose. so ours will be able to fit under our counter. YAY!
here’s a DIY version I liked, but also a good google search will yield tonssss of these types of Kitchen Helper stools if you are looking for something different.
she lovesssss being able to crawl up her stool to be with us while we prepare dinner. she’ll play with the real life things she finds on the counter (so I have to be mindful of what’s on the counter - but that’s a small price I’m willing to pay) or she’ll usually try whatever food samples I place in front of her. she also loves eating meals up on her stool.
as KK gets older, we’ll also incorporate a few things into our kitchen that allow KK to contribute and participate, but I’ll add that in later when we know more.
kk’s kitchen cabinet (her favorite!!)
all of our kitchen cabinets are locked (we use these locks) with the exception of one cabinet: KK’s cabinet. it’s a cabinet down low that she can reach, and in there I keep a few kitchen-related things (and toys!) with which she is allowed to explore.
i also have 3m hooks on the inside of the cabinet door.
I rotate it out every so often, but usually it’s real-life things, mixed in with a few play pieces
she loves her cabinet and while it definitely occupies her while I make food, she’ll sometimes choose to play in this cabinet during her independent play time. i just want kk to grow up knowing that i wanted her in the kitchen with me.
our door rack
we hung one of my favorite door racks on our pantry door to house allllll kk’s eating things, like her plates and her lunchbox stuff. not only is this perfect for corralling all those things that easily take over precious cabinet space (or that awkwardly tumble out of cabinets and off shelves because they just stack weird), but it also doubles as the best drying rack so that it’s not cluttering my counters.
what kk eats
the short answer is, she is offered what we eat, so our plates look very similar - like, at dinnertime, her food just might be cut smaller than ours, or the components might be separated, but it’s exactly what we’re eating.
we follow this meal rotation for all our meals. makes it so much easier for me to feed my family.
we follow the Division of Responsibility feeding method. I am a picky eater so it was very important to me to remove any sort of struggle or stress from mealtime, and this method is GOLD.
subscribe to my weekly menu plan if you want a peek at our dinners
my kk’s eating blogpost talks more about how we introduced her to solids and our BLW journey.
for breakfast and lunch, she eats eats something I’ve meal prepped (say, baked oatmeal and sliced apples), something we usually have on hand (more on this in a second, but let’s say, blueberries, shredded cheese, and peanut butter toast), and/or something that’s leftover from dinner (say, cut watermelon, taco meat, and pinto beans).
whenever I need snack, breakfast, or lunch ideas, I head to this website (or I save all her newsletters + ebooks and will flip through them when I need ideas):
like, I love her list of snack ideas.
see this blog post for my lunchbox + lunch favorites!
meal prep
Let’s backtrack and talk about the MVP of all this: meal prep. Because hi, hello: I’m not cooking for KK all day, every day. My goal was to add in a few things to my weekly meal prep that would make for easy, ready-made breakfasts and lunches for her all week.
I do a little meal prep every Sunday as a part of our weekly ritual of Grill and Chill.
Subscribe to my weekly menu plan newsletter - there I always mention what I plan to do for meal prep.
I take anywhere from five minutes to an hour and a half (depends entirely on that week’s mood and energy level), and I prep a few things that could make my life easier the coming week. What can I make now so that it’s easier to eat at home this week? And, depending on the week, I’ll either do this meal prep session in one continuous session, or broken up into several tinyyyy sessions as I find a few spare moments throughout the day. It’s all fluid.
Pre-baby I’d use this time to prep a few dinner components ahead of time, if that was helpful. And I’d see what breakfast/lunch/snack things I could prep for the upcoming week. Because I know that Future Haley loves to have those things ready to go in the fridge. Prepped produce, smoothie packs, mason jar salads, baked omelettes, mason jar yogurt parfaits, adult snack boxes, containers of soup, prepared sandwich fixings, etc.
And, I still do this. But now, I also think: what would be helpful to have on hand to make it easier to feed KK this week?
This usually means preparing produce. Whether that is cutting some citrus, baking some apples, roasting some veggies, cutting some cucumber, or thawing some frozen fruit, I do some version of this every week. Every single week. And I sing my. praises for Past Haley the entire following week.
And this usually means prepping some sort of egg-thing, oatmeal-thing, pancake/waffle-thing, and/or muffin-thing. Whatever I’m feeling for myself and KK that week. (And, I usually freeze leftovers, too, whenever possible. So if I’m not feeling like making any of them, I’ll just pull some things out of my freezer stash to thaw for the week.)
So between what I make for meal prep, and what we have for dinners that week (and following our meal rotation), feeding KK all week is so, so easy. Basically I just grab a few things from the fridge, dump them in front of her, and bam! Done.
if I had to recommend one resource regarding baby and toddler food, it’s this one. needing dinner inspiration? I check her monthly meal plan posts. wanting meal prep ideas for kk’s breakfasts? i look over her countless recipes.
her website reallyyyy helps me with snack, breakfast, and meal prep ideas. for example, see here for all her snack ideas!
if kk doesn’t seem care for a food
like I just said, I truly believe in that Division of Responsibility where I can control what foods are offered and where/when we eat, but she can control which of the offered foods she eats, and how much of each offered food she eats. This article explains this method better.
If she doesn’t care for a food, not a big deal. it can sit untouched that meal, no big deal. we don’t fight, we don’t beg, we don’t force. I always tell her, “you don’t have to eat it.” but yes, I keep offering said food at future meals. I also might change up how it’s cooked the next time (roasted vs steamed, for example) or the size it’s offered (halved vs quartered). I might offer it with a sauce or with something smeared on it. I might try a new seasoning. I might mix it in with something else. Etc, etc, etc.
she’s never forced to eat anything…or even try anything. all I do is offer it. no pressure, no begging, no negotiating, no praise, nothing.
I think she didn’t care for hardboiled eggs for the first, like, seventeen times. (The dogs were thrilled.) And then one day, I offered it in halves instead of quarters, and she ate the whole thing. Now she’s hooked.
Or, like, chicken, She’d bite into it and then toss it on the floor. (Again, the dogs were thrilled.) Then, one day, Brett offered chicken tossed in a little bit of avocado, and she ate it all. The next time, we offered the chicken in tinier shredded pieces than normal, and she ate it a few pieces. We just keep offering it with no pressure.
Oh, and here’s what I keep in mind when she drops food on the floor.
smoothies
i try to have a daily smoothie as apart of our daily schedule. see more on our smoothies here!
our eating cart
when it was time to start solids, I took KK’s nursing cart and transformed it into an eating cart. because while we wanted her to eat with us, I needed an easy (but not cluttered) system to keep alllll the things we needed nearby to clean her up.
our nursing cart explained in my postpartum favorites post.
so we have a rolling cart piled high with an absurd amount of rags and our beloved weighted baby wipe holder full of baby wipes. this way, no matter what mess occurs during the meal, we have plenty of supplies at our disposal to clean up after.
(it doesn’t have to be a rolling cart - a rolling cart is just what we had, so we grabbed that and affectionately named it our eating cart.)
see an instagram photo of our set-up in our breakfast nook here.
we also tucked our favorite questions book down here for easy access during meal times. this book was originally purchased when we were college babies and dating (there’s still a note from Baby Haley in it!), and we’ve referred to it throughout the years, primarily on long drives and road trips. but when KK was born and we were stuck at home both with a newborn and a pandemic, we craved some sort of date. so we started eating dinner at the table each night and pulling out our book of questions. and that’s why the book lives near the dinner table.
and, since our eating area also has a chalkboard, I’m adding magnets/magnetiles/magnetic letters/etc to the bottom basket. see our monthly themes for play (and our favorite things!) here.
speaking of: our big, magnetic chalkboard
we hung a big, magnetic chalkboard near where I cook. perfect for my inner calligrapher (prebaby Haley also had a calligraphy business!) and for a free way to decorate for holidays and celebrations, but also perfect for kids. coloring with chalk, playing with magnets, hanging school papers, displaying family photos. it’s another thing in our home that will grow with us - that makes me so happy.
also, see this post for our systems for how we preserve, display, and organize photos
our play kitchen
one of my favorite things in my home. our play kitchen was a diy-ish project, and it has a phone and mailbox. it’s one of kk’s favorite things. read more about it here - post also has a list of what we love to keep in our play kitchen to keep kk so captivated.
our toy rotation
because while I cook, KK usually plays.
here’s our monthly play themes (and our favorite things) that influences our toy rotation and keeps kk so engaged.
here’s our favorite bigger toys that stay out 24/7.
here’s more on our sensory tables.
our baby gates
baby gates I love love love are being built by Brett because I’m incredibly snotty and hate those typical, expandable baby gates. I want custom-built baby gates to be attached to the doorways of two sections of our home, I want the baby gates to match my decor, and I want the baby gates to be sturdy enough to endure the reign of our babies, yet beautiful enough that I don’t mind them staring me in the face during the aforementioned reign. (a long, long reign, I might add.) also handy for when we have a new puppy again. so Handyman Brett to the rescue.
brett announced, “turns out, I’m not a carpenter,” so we bought the gates instead. THEY’RE AMAZING. but, we were originally going to use these DIY plans, if that’s helpful for you!
I’m always sharing on Instagram stories a peek into our day-to-day lives: our routines, our favorite things, our dinners. I’d love for you to follow along.
As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
