Make green rice. Eat standing up. Get a tablecloth.
Things to cook, read, and buy — feeding toddlers edition
This is Cook, Read, Buy, a round up of recommendations from me and (sometimes! like today!) from contributors. Looking for advice about what to make for dinner? Stumped on what to get for your niece's birthday? Sound off in the comments and let's help each other out! Got a recipe, a read, or a product you want to rave about? Reply to this email and let me know — you could be featured in a future installment!
Cook: Similar to how last week’s pickle chip salmon can get little ones excited to eat fish thanks to a potato-chip crust, this baked cod recipe from Sarah DiGregorio for the New York Times offers a crust made of Ritz crackers. The dish comes together quickly, earning its well-deserved place on The New Family Table’s list of MVP recipes.
Read: It is a truth universally acknowledged that a toddler presented with a lovely meal must be in want of mac and cheese. Toddlers really can find something to dislike about any foods you offer. But while random bouts of pickiness and fussiness at the table are to be expected, prolonged refusal of entire food groups and severe anxiety about meals is not. This article by Solid Starts outlines when to seek help for picky eating in toddlers; as with all their content, this piece is well-researched and non-alarmist. Solid Starts content is reviewed by doctors and feeding therapists, and it’s far more sourced than the typical internet advice parents might find online. I relied on the Solid Starts food database app when introducing new foods to my baby, and the team also has a book coming out soon. (The book would make a great gift for any expecting parents in your orbit.)
Buy: When my daughter graduated from her high chair to a booster seat at the table, I became a staunch tablecloth user. The number of spills, messes, and scratches that my poor dinner table has been spared because I have a tablecloth and a placemat under everyone's plate truly can't be tallied. My current favorites are hand-me-downs from my mom, but I'd love a few more in my rotation. I've got my eye on this check number from Colours of Arley x Big Night and this bright pink twill option from Atelier Saucier. For some less expensive options, check out this fringed linen number, this block print beauty, and this cheery yellow gingham. I'd love to hear from you: Do you use tablecloths regularly? Where are you finding your favorites?
The next set of recommendations today come from
of the very fun and very useful newsletter, Travel With Toddlers. Check out her Where to Go with Toddlers in 2025 list for some major family travel inspiration!Cook: “We do a lot of no-recipe recipes in our house with a toddler, but especially for our 3 p.m. snack. Lately I've been toasting grocery store croissants, slicing them in half, and putting out various spreads (peanut butter, jam, cream cheese) and a few toddler-friendly fixins (cheddar cheese, carrots, cucumbers, granola) and letting my little one go to town. And I'm currently obsessed with my panini press right now. We are here for toddler food: grilled cheese, mini pizzas, and quesadillas. It's great for make-your-own stations at parties, too.” —Kayla
Read: “Browsing at the library with a toddler is basically impossible, so each month I choose an often-seasonal theme and research ahead, putting a bunch of books on hold. I love Sarah Miller's Substack, Can we read? for inspiration. We did food and cooking last month—our laugh-out-loud favorites were Dozens of Doughnuts by Carrie Finison, Lady Pancake & Sir French Toast by Josh Funk, Kadooboo! by Shruthi Rao, and Dumplings for Lili by Melissa Iwai.” —Kayla
Buy: “The toddler tower gets used every single day, either for cooking or ‘chef's snack’ while I cook. Something about standing up in the tower and experimenting with the different combinations seems to make vegetables more appealing. I don't know what it is, but I'll take it!”—Kayla
Cook: I noticed when my daughter was a toddler that she was far more open to green sauces, toppings, and dips than sauteed greens. I started making this spanikorizo (Greek spinach rice) by Sarah Jampel in Bon Appetit, for a twist on a known hit. Instead of green pasta, green rice! I love how the vegetables aren’t hidden — the rice is green, after all — but this is an easy way for a little kid to be exposed to spinach and hopefully learn to love it. And rest assured this recipe is a quick, pantry-heavy dinner, making it great for busy weeknights. Are there any recipes that got the toddlers in your life into eating greens?
Read: Diet culture hits kids early — shockingly early. If you, like me, want to support the children in your life in developing positive relationships with food, eating, and their bodies, you must think actively about how you will handle diet culture, food policing, and body shaming. I recommend starting with this article by the leading anti-diet-culture parenting reporter
(she has a fantastic newsletter, but this piece was published by Outside), where she summarizes the research and data, noting that “[r]esearch shows that kids begin equating ‘fat’ with ‘bad’ between the ages of three and five.” Sole-Smith suggests a simple but not always easy first step: Whether you are a parent, grandparent, relative, or friend of a toddler, please keep all your diet and body thoughts to yourself (yes, even the thoughts about your own body). The kids are listening. This is also a great time to introduce concepts of body acceptance and body diversity with fun books like Bodies Are Cool by Tyler Feder. (We’ve been reading this book since my daughter was a baby, and even now at almost-5 she still loves it).Buy: One of the under-sung hero tools for feeding babies and toddlers are good kitchen shears — truly the easiest way to cut things into pieces. I have and like these OXO kitchen shears. Several chefs and food writers love the Joyce Chen kitchen scissors, and they are a bit more designy. Kitchen shears are useful for cutting toddler-sized bites of pizza, pasta, cooked veggies, even meat. And you’ll find yourself reaching for them when you cook, too.
Cook from the Archives: This dumpling noodle soup has been one of my daughter’s favorite dinners since toddlerhood. Some ways to make serving a loaded soup to a toddler a bit easier: Consider offering the broth in a separate cup with a straw (and maybe add an ice cube or two to cool it down quickly); use kitchen shears to snip the noodles, veggies, or meats into easier-to-manage pieces.
To browse more of my go-to toddler feeding recommendations head to my storefront:
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100% agree about Bodies are Cool. I wasn’t prepared for how many times she would ask for this one.
This feels weird to put in a comment but maybe it will benefit more people but if you want that amazing Big Night tablecloth (I have the napkins and am obsessed), you can use the code Alexis10 to get 10% off! I feel firmly about always having real napkins but feel like the next frontier for me is moving into tablecloths when it's not the holidays.