In this episode of the PedsDocTalk podcast follow-up, Dr. Mona sits down with Amy Palanjian, founder of Yummy Toddler Food. Together, they break down how to take the stress, guilt, and mental load out of feeding your kids.

If dinner prep feels overwhelming or your toddler suddenly stopped eating their favorite foods, this quick dose of real, relatable parenting advice is for you!

• Letting Go of Meal Prep Perfection: Why realistic expectations make kitchen logistics much easier.

• Theme Nights to Reduce Decision Fatigue: How setting categories (like taco or pasta night) simplifies shopping and cooking.

• Leaning Into Smart Shortcuts: Why frozen veggies, canned beans, and store-bought sauces save time, money, and sanity.

• Creating Safe Table Experiences: How adding simple safety-net foods (like fruit or crackers) keeps mealtimes calm.

• The Social Media Food Myth: Debunking the idea that offering 100 foods before age one prevents picky eating.

• Understanding Toddler Appetite Shifts: Normalizing why toddlers naturally eat differently than babies.

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00;00;00;04 – 00;00;18;20

Dr. Mona

Welcome back to the follow up. It’s Doctor Mona, and this is a series on the PedsDocTalk podcast where we take a past episode and get you to the good stuff in less time than it takes to figure out what’s for dinner tonight. Because I’ve been there. Takes a long time. I’ll be honest, I thought meal planning would get easier as my kids get older.

 

00;00;18;20 – 00;00;43;27

Dr. Mona

You know, they eat what I eat. All that good stuff. Turns out older just means more opinions. Way more. Everyone’s got a take on what’s for dinner, and somehow none of those takes agree with each other. So I’m rerunning this one where I sit down with Amy, plangent mom, founder of Yummy Toddler Food and author of the book dinnertime S.O.S. we get into how to streamline meal prep so you’re not starting from scratch every night.

 

00;00;44;04 – 00;01;04;18

Dr. Mona

How to cut down on cost and waste at the grocery store, which I think we can all relate to right now, and how to bring the joy back into meal time minus the stress. Make sure you download the full episode wherever you get your podcasts, and tag PedsDocTalk the PedsDocTalk podcast, and at Yummy Toddler Food when you listen and share to social media.

 

00;01;04;21 – 00;01;11;11

Dr. Mona

Let’s get into this amazing follow up.

 

00;01;11;13 – 00;01;29;24

Dr. Mona

First thing I wanted to ask you is how do you recommend? Or maybe how do you do it for your family? Streamlining dinner prep for your family. You know, obviously there’s so many decisions what to eat. When am I going to prepare it? Do I prepare it on a Sunday? Or how do you kind of envision and hope people would kind of look at that process?

 

00;01;29;26 – 00;01;50;20

Amy Palanjian

So the first thing is to let go of the pressure of the idea of being perfect, because that is not a thing that exists and it’s just going to make everything harder. So you can just take a breath and know that you are in a particular phase of life where cooking might be different than what before you had kids or after the kids are older, which is totally fine.

 

00;01;50;23 – 00;02;16;16

Amy Palanjian

And then for me we assign categories each night of the week. So like Tuesday is always tacos or burrito bowls or something Mexican. We have a pasta night. We have a salad night when the warmer months or soup night in the colder months. So starting with categories means that I’m never starting from scratch so that I go into the kitchen and I know it’s pasta and then it’s easier to choose.

 

00;02;16;18 – 00;02;35;19

Amy Palanjian

Okay. We’re going to go with like white beans and spinach or we’re going to go with like a broccoli pasta. Like I can use what I have, or I can go to the store with pasta in mind and see what vegetables are on sale or what proteins on sale. So that is one thing that I do just to reduce the number of decisions.

 

00;02;35;26 – 00;02;58;09

Amy Palanjian

I find it to be very helpful. A second thing is to really take advantage of shortcuts. Everything from frozen vegetables. I mean, frozen vegetables are like the most amazing I love them. Yeah, I love them so much. And there’s this misconception that they’re not as good for you or they’re not as nutritious, which is just not true. And they’re easy.

 

00;02;58;09 – 00;03;19;22

Amy Palanjian

And you can prepare them in so many delicious ways. Like, the only way my youngest will eat broccoli is roasted frozen broccoli because it’s a little bit more tender than when you roast fresh broccoli. Yeah. So I would lean into that and then like canned beans and jarred sauces, like look and see what your store has, but just take advantage of what’s there.

 

00;03;19;24 – 00;03;42;22

Amy Palanjian

Like, yes. Sometimes buying jars of like, teriyaki sauce is more expensive. But when you look at the amount that you have to spend to buy all of the ingredients for something, it may not actually be more expensive. And also your time has value. Yeah. So like we have to sort of keep the context in mind. So I think there is the logistical challenge of making food.

 

00;03;42;24 – 00;03;57;15

Amy Palanjian

And there is that pressure that we feel from like the social media world that we all live in. Yeah, I think the more you can remember that whatever you’re doing is totally fine, like the easier the logistical part will be.

 

00;03;57;17 – 00;04;15;26

Dr. Mona

I love it, I actually we do the same thing. I don’t know, you do that. We do the same thing about night, which is like, you know, we have Indian food night, we have Mexican, we have there are Thai or Chinese or Japanese, you know, takeout night. Like, that’s just our night. And I love it. And I think you said it perfectly about the pressure because and I see it a lot.

 

00;04;15;26 – 00;04;33;26

Dr. Mona

I experienced it too. I had a lot of pressure when my son was an infant on feeding, like, because, you know, you’re like, oh, the diversity I got to introduce diversity. And then keeping it simple, like you said on, you know, if I prepare a meal, can this meal be prepared in a safe way for a baby lovlina or someone who’s obviously can’t chew?

 

00;04;33;26 – 00;04;51;05

Dr. Mona

And so I look at either, you know, pureeing it or making it soft or steaming it, and then there’s so much pressure there, you know, and I think social media has a huge thing to do with that. And so I love that. I think that’s so nice to just simplify the planning. I feel like the planning is harder because that’s all mental load, right.

 

00;04;51;05 – 00;05;01;24

Dr. Mona

Do you feel like for your family, like before you started having this sort of kind of pattern or plan of, okay, here’s the night that we’re doing. Do you feel like planning was harder than actually executing all of these things?

 

00;05;01;26 – 00;05;23;06

Amy Palanjian

I think it’s harder. I think it’s still hard because we have multiple children who prefer different foods now. But this is where the having the steam nights helps because the kids know when to expect things. And kids just love routine. They love knowing what’s coming. And so if a meal is not one of their favorites, we can be like, well, tomorrow is best.

 

00;05;23;10 – 00;05;48;04

Amy Palanjian

So that has been helpful. But I also put fruit on the table pretty much at every meal. And like some other side, like the whole grain crackers or sliced cheese or like I do not care about, all I want is everyone to have enough to eat. And so if there is a meal where I’m not sure if one of my kids will find foods that they like, I just add something else to the table.

 

00;05;48;06 – 00;06;09;29

Amy Palanjian

And like obviously that is coming from a place of privilege of having the food. But like, I keep an extra jar of applesauce on hand for that type of a thing, just because I want everyone to be able to feel safe and comfortable at the table and preferences change. Like I often think about how I would feel if someone was making all of my meals every single day.

 

00;06;10;01 – 00;06;26;14

Amy Palanjian

I would like lose my mind. It would be so difficult. And so when you put yourself in that, like when you think about it from that perspective, you’re like, okay, this is tricky for a kid because they know what they like and they have like no control. So I try to just like sort of keep it in line.

 

00;06;26;16 – 00;06;43;00

Dr. Mona

Yeah. And you know, we did mention about social media briefly. You mentioned it, I mentioned it. What do you feel like the internet gets wrong and let’s talk about it. Could be social media or the internet as a whole about the ideas of exposure and variety, and maybe how that ties into pressure and stress event.

 

00;06;43;00 – 00;07;04;29

Amy Palanjian

Yeah. So there is this idea that if you feed your baby like 100 foods before they’re one, that you’re going to set them up to not become quote unquote picky. Yeah. Every baby turns into a toddler, like your toddler is going to eat differently than they did as a baby. When that kid is a preschooler and is an elementary school.

 

00;07;04;29 – 00;07;27;12

Amy Palanjian

And as a young adult, they are going to eat differently than when they were a baby because we’re missing allowing the natural progression of development to happen. If you do all of those things when you have a baby, and then your toddler suddenly doesn’t want the food that they used to like, or they eat less, then you think that they should, or you’re expecting, you think you did something wrong?

 

00;07;27;15 – 00;07;49;15

Amy Palanjian

Yes. Where you didn’t. They’re just growing and changing, or they’re growing at a slower pace. Like one of the most common things. Questions that I get is like, why did my 14 year old suddenly want anything I give them? My 17 month old doesn’t like any of the foods that these like and like. The first thing is like, they might just not be as hungry to child.

 

00;07;49;17 – 00;08;16;13

Amy Palanjian

And we’ve taken like that out of like nobody knows that. So we’re setting parents up to think that there’s a problem when there’s not. And with the idea of variety and exposure, if you think about the way that adults eat, an adult can eat a really varied diet over the course of a month, we may eat like the same turkey sandwich for lunch or the same chicken salad for lunch, and then we go out to a restaurant on Saturday.

 

00;08;16;13 – 00;08;32;15

Amy Palanjian

Or we go out to brunch on Sunday, or we go to a farmer’s market and we pick up something different. Like when you look at it over a longer period of time, you’re being exposed to a range of things. You might see things at a store, you might talk to a friend who’s eating something. You might see a picture.

 

00;08;32;18 – 00;08;54;01

Amy Palanjian

But when we think about our kids, there are accounts that are telling parents, like every meal there has to be a new thing, which is just not true. And it is just like goes against the natural instincts of kids to want like they want familiar and safe and comforting. I think of like for my family, it’s like the core of what we eat is the same.

 

00;08;54;03 – 00;09;24;12

Amy Palanjian

Yeah. And then I might cut something differently. I might buy a different brand of something, I might get a different bread. And then throughout the course of our day, we’re going to interact with other foods. And that to me is like a much more sane way to think about writing exposure. Like you can read books about food, you can watch shows like cooking shows like you do not have to put something new on a plate every meal or every day.

 

00;09;24;14 – 00;09;34;18

Amy Palanjian

That’s just not the way that people normally eat. And I think it just makes everything way too hard. And even from like a grocery budgeting standpoint. Yeah.

 

00;09;34;21 – 00;09;59;09

Dr. Mona

A lot of waste can happen that way. Yeah, yeah, I think that is such a good point about the managing expectations. And I call it false advertising with what you just mentioned about the introduced these diversity. And this is how your child will be a great eater or also Self-feeding alone makes you a better eater. Now don’t get me wrong, I think self-feeding is really important and I’m a big proponent of self-feeding as early as developmentally possible.

 

00;09;59;09 – 00;10;15;22

Dr. Mona

For that child, it may mean six months, it may mean eight months, it may mean ten months. Right? We know that that some kids don’t take to self-feeding right away. Some of them need a little bit more time to click. And I’ve seen that with two children in the same family. One was like self-feeding at six and a half months, and then the other one’s like, I want nothing to do with this.

 

00;10;15;22 – 00;10;40;01

Dr. Mona

I know they the, the classic, you know, purees and then they go to like nine, ten months. So I think we have to be really clear. I agree with you a lot of accounts, you know, both of these things, but from a you’re right from a developmental perspective, we know that it’s going to turn whether you were a great infant feeder or whether you were more selective as an infant, there was going to be a turn at some point where they are going to have preferences, are going to want autonomy.

 

00;10;40;01 – 00;10;46;22

Dr. Mona

They’re going to say no. And then the parent is feeling like, well, I did everything and checked all the boxes and what’s going on now?

 

00;10;46;27 – 00;11;14;11

Amy Palanjian

Like if we can shift from the idea of like getting the kids to eat all of these foods to like, how can I make mealtimes enjoyable for everyone, right? How can I help my child feel safe and comfortable in a range of food experiences? Because that’s what they’re going to need when they go to school, or when they’re with grandma and grandpa, or like when they’re not with you.

 

00;11;14;13 – 00;11;35;22

Dr. Mona

And that’s your follow up. Just a small dose of the real, relatable and eye opening conversations we love to have here. If you smiled, nodded, or had an aha moment, go ahead and download, follow and share this episode with a friend. Let’s grow this village together for more everyday parenting wins and real talk. Hang out with us on Instagram at the PedsDocTalk podcast.

 

00;11;36;00 – 00;11;51;12

Dr. Mona

Want more? Dive into the full episode and more at PedsDocTalk. Com because parenting is better with support. And remember consistent is key. Humor is medicine and follow ups are everything. I’m Doctor Mona. See you next time for your next dose.