"I am forever stressing about good nutrition and would love new ideas."Cue the blog! I realized that since we have gotten home from our trip, I have been so overwhelmed and distracted with all that purchasing a home entails, that I have only offered vegetables for dinner 3 times in 7 days. It is our job as parents to offer our children nutritious, healthy foods. So, how do you do that? What books have you read or websites have you found that have helped you? What do you do to "get" your kids to like vegetables? How do you feed picky eaters? What tricks of the trade have you figured out to help your family eat more healthfully? Please share with us.
Monday, June 16, 2008
Theme of the Week Challenge
I got an e-mail last week from Megan:
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2 comments:
Here's one idea for snacks: I dedicate one of my produce drawers to being my 20 month old daughter's snack bin. When she tells me she's hungry between meals she goes straight for her snack bin. In it I keep a wide variety of fruits: apples, grapefruits, mango, kiwi, grapes, peaches, avocado, etc. I also have little containers of cut up watermelon, pineapple, and strawberries. I toss anything I want her to eat into there like cut up crudite with dip, hard-boiled eggs, edamame, tomato juice cans, apple sauce containers, cooked corn on the cob, etc. She loves that she can pick anything and I've noticed that after several times of seeing one thing that she originally wasn't interested in eventually she'll want to try it.
Ideas for lunches: I roast a bunch of broccoli with garlic, and then puree it in a food processor. It becomes thick and sticky so I use my cookie scoop to freeze it into balls before putting them all into a bag. I also make a bunch of brown rice ahead of time and freeze it in 1/2 cup containers. I add one ball of broccoli to her rice when I make it. I also make my own marinara sauce and add pureed veggies of any kind to serve with her whole wheat pasta.
I also try to serve 2 veggies at dinner time.
But remember! It's your job to offer the food and it's their job to eat it. You can't force them to eat it or you will both be miserable. And they will go through phases. My daughter will go from not wanting to eat any vegetable to downing an entire bowl of broccoli out of the blue.
A fun book that helps you sneak veggies in (although you should also still offer them) is Deceptively Delicious.
Thanks for bringing this up Erin, I've been meaning to suggest it as well. My problem is that the Z-girl won't eat ANYTHING! She doesn't even try foods. So she ends up eating a lot of dairy - yogurt, cottage cheese, cheese, milk - and carbs - bread/toast, noodles. She's getting better now that she eats dinner at the table with us instead of in her high chair, but she still won't eat a fruit to save her life, besides the occasional banana. I'm excited to see what all these super-smart moms can come up with!
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