How to Get Kids to Eat Their Vegies (and more)

Vegies, the necessary evil. So, how do you get your kids to eat them?

Well, with some trial and era, I have found some ways:

Try them raw AND cooked (my son won’t eat cooked carrots or green beans but won’t stop stealing them raw off the cutting board). This I found out accidentally.
Try them with cheese. My young teen doesn’t love potatoes, especially baked, but if I sprinkle some parmesan cheese and butter on them or give her sour cream, she’ll eat the whole thing. She will also eat more broccoli with melted cheddar.
Try veggies cooked into eggs or on pizzas: mushrooms, red peppers, black olives, green peppers, onions and even scallions (dice them small so as the flavor comes out but the texture is diminished).
Try them with dip: red peppers, cauliflower
Serve them with salt: cucumbers with a little bit of sea salt on each layer, put some on the plate before stacking too.
Peel them. Some kids won’t eat cucumber or potato with the peel on. I peeled cukes for years for my oldest girls, then one day I did just strips off the sides, now I serve them with peels on and they never said a thing about it.

Do they hate meatloaf?

Spice it up with powdered garlic, onion, lots of (italian) herbs, add plenty of egg and don’t overcook (they’ll eat it up)

Fish (if they are not allergic) is one of my favorite foods. Scallops, white fish, salmon and more. I never imagined my kids would eat fish, but my girls love it (my son is daring he will eat fish sticks and the Morton’s style flaked fish but doesn’t think it’s fish for some reason lol).

Salmon in maple syrup glaze baked
White fish (go with mild-cod or something less fishy tasting) breaded and baked with a little squirt of lemon)
Scallops, must be cooked perfectly or else they’ll be tough, undercooked they’ll seem rubbery or slimy. Heap a pile of (sea) scallops in a small baking dish, put two tablespoons of butter on top then dump about a half cup of bread crumbs on them, cook according to recipe directions.

My favorite recipe resources are:

My old cookbooks: Betty Crocker (wedding present over 20 years ago held together by a ribbon)
AllRecipes.com (app is fun to use)
Pinterest
Magazines (my daughter got THE best brownie recipe out of a People magazine a couple of years ago and about 15 years ago I found the best creamed mashed cauliflower recipe out of Good Housekeeping or something similar)

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