HEALTHY AND EASY DINNER IDEA WITH CREPES

Our new favourite healthy and easy dinner idea is the simple french crepe (aka pancake.) Crepes are amazing as they are so versatile so they’re fantastic for large families with picky eaters.

Take Something Your Kids Love and Make it Healthy

It all started on a camping trip to France when my kids discovered the joys of sweet, not hugely healthy chocolate crepes.

Who doesn’t love a sticky gooey crepe? Not that there’s any claiming a mountain of chocolate sauce is anywhere near healthy.

Plus buying them in a cafe for 6 of us wasn’t cheap.

So when we got home I bought a crepe plate.

The kids absolutely loved it. It’s been one of the best kitchen buys I’ve ever made. (That and my faithful Magimix.)

Related: Easy Ways to Make Breakfast Healthy

I Gradually Made the Crepes More Healthy

We started with a few experimental crepes, the first ones were a bit of a disaster. And yes, we started off with chocolate ones. I wanted the kids to make sure they still loved them!

Then I started to get healthier on them! We started to have crepes for dinner with lots of vegetables. They can pick what vegetables they like.

We have one savoury crepe and one sweet crepe with cooked fruit. Usually cooked apples and some yoghurt but today it was cooked up strawberries.

They totally love crepe night. In fact, we have to make sure we don’t fight about who’s going to make the crepes.

Easy Dinner Idea Dish 1

Grated carrot with olive oil dressing (a little dijon mustard, olive oil and some cider vinegar), topped with linseed.

One of Galen’s favourites. He make it today.

Easy Dinner Idea Dish 2

Cooked red peppers. Lightly fried in a drizzle of olive oil.

Another of Galen’s favourites. He made this dish too.

Easy Dinner Idea Dish 3

Cooked cabbage. Fry an onion and a garlic in a little olive oil. Finely shred a savoy cabbage and cook for 10-15 minutes.

Easy Dinner Idea Dish 4

Some seafood. A few frozen mussels and calamari. Cook up a garlic and a pinch of chilli powder (or fresh chilli but I didn’t have any) in some olive oil. Add a chopped tomato and splash of white wine and let it reduce for a few minutes. Add the seafood. Fresh would be nicer but frozen is so convenient and helps me to achieve my goal of eating sea food 3 times a week.

Easy Dinner Idea Dish 5

Grated cheese.

On the fuss about “cheddar cheese” and “sheep’s cheese” and which bowl it went in. Sebastian got upset as the first bit of sheeps cheese was put in Celeste’s robot bowl and was therefore contaminated and inedible!

Basic Pancake Recipe

• 250 g flour,
• 500 mls milk,
• 3 eggs.

Whisk together!

We like ours to be quite a thin consistency so that we can make thin crepes. If you don’t have a pancake plate, you can just make them in a large frying pan. You can make them thicker or thinner depending on how you like them.

Easy Dinner Idea Dessert

It’s strawberry season! I bought 4 kg of strawberries at market today. Dante made strawberry muffins, froze some to make strawberry frozen yoghurt and made the rest into “strawberry jam”.

Just cooked them up in a bit of water, whizzed them up and added a little vanilla (optional.)

Something For Everyone to Eat

What I totally love about pancakes is that everyone gets something to eat.

The kids who "don't like vegetables" eat a cheese pancake followed by one full of cooked apples. 

Ideally I'd like them to eat more vegetables but I see fruit as a stepping stone to vegetables so I'm not going to worry about it too much.

Us adults get a "grown up style" meal with amazing cooked vegetables.

Related: Easy and Healthy Dinner Idea for a Busy Family Week Night

Come and Share Your Pancake Ideas

I hope that I have inspired you to try pancakes with lots of vegetables as an easy and healthy dinner that will feed a family of picky or fussy eaters.

I challenge you to have a pancake night.

Grab some photos and come and share them with me. I'll put them on the website so that they can inspires someone else to create a healthy and easy dinner night with pancakes!