Annabel Karmel is the maven of children’s meals. She’s written 15 books, all focused around feeding young families. All of the ones that I’ve read (and I’ve read most of them) have been rooted in that winning combination of sound nutritional principles combined with a fun, child friendly presentation that only comes from a deep understanding of what children will and won’t eat. Annabel Karmel's Complete Family Meal Planner is a follow on to New Complete Baby and Toddler Meal Planner focusing on slightly older children this time. However, as with all of Karmel’s books, the emphasis is on ease and family friendliness, so that you are not making multiple meals, but rather, cooking one lot of food that is good for everyone in the family.

There are 150 recipes in all, broken up in to categories of breakfast, soups, snacks and lunchboxes, pasta, poultry, meat, fish, low-fat, vegetarian dishes, cakes and biscuits, and dessert. There are also chapters on organising the cupboard, fridge and freezer, and on nutrition. All of the recipes have been developed specifically for busy parents, and are therefore fast, healthy, and easy enough so that your children can participate in the preparation. Doing so will add further value to the recipes as children tend to be much more liable to eat what they cook. The recipes are also adult friendly, so you won’t be doing special meals for anyone.

Some of the recipes are quite simple, and are more about serving the food in a way that will appeal to children, such as the savoury breakfast muffins that look like faces, or creating a salad bar for your children to choose raw vegetables from. Others involve sneaking good food into your children, such as the "Dressing For Dinner", or "Chicken Balls in Sweet and Sour Sauce". Everything is nicely presented, too, with large, attractive photos, and most of the meals are even good enough for a fancy dinner party, so you can ditch the fish fingers (unless they’re Karmel’s posh ones) and serve everyone the same thing. I’ll drink to that.

Article Author: Maggie Ball

Magdalena Ball runs The Compulsive Reader. She is the author of Repulsion Thrust, Sleep Before Evening, The Art of Assessment, Quark Soup, and, in collaboration with Carolyn Howard-Johnson, Cherished Pulse and She Wore Emerald Then. …

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