One of the frustrations of holiday meals is all of that left over meat from the holiday meals, the turkeys for Thanksgiving and the ham for Christmas and Easter. If you have left over ham from Easter here are some ideas for how to make it into healthy meals for your children.

First of all you can make grilled ham and cheese sandwiches.

You can also dice it, fry it a bit and put it in Macaroni and cheese. I love that Kraft Macaroni and Cheese from the box.

When my children were young I used to delight in making large breakfasts for them. One of their favorites was when I would make breakfast sandwiches for them. I would get some pillsbury biscuits and bake them according to directions. Then I would dice up some left over ham and mix it into scrambled eggs put a load of cheese into the egg mixture and scoop it onto the split biscuits. It was yummy.

I would suggest maybe throwing a bit of asparagus into the mixture so that you have some greens if you can slide asparagus past your children. You could also put a bit of spinach into this. If you serve these breakfast sandwiches with juice you have started their day off with a good helping of all four food groups.

The other favorite among my children was a recipe that my mom used to make in our family.

She would dice up some ham (1-2 cups) in a bit of oil until the oil turned a bit colored and then she would put either sour cream or regular cream into the skillet. In the meantime she had boiled about 2-3 cups of egg noodles. When the noodles were al dente she would drain them and add them to the ham and cream sauce.

In wikipedia al dente is defined – “Pasta that is cooked al dente has a lower glycemic index than pasta that is cooked soft.[10] When cooking commercial pasta, the al dente phase occurs right after the white of the pasta center disappears.[11]”

Let the casserole simmer for about five minutes and if you want to you can slide some peas or spinach into it. (This is the only way I could get my middle child to eat peas)

It is very similar to Alfredo dishes that I have eaten at restaurants and it is delicious. Of course absolutely everything that my mother made was delicious. She had Betty Crocker beaten to smithereens. 🙂