Thursday, September 20, 2012

Recipes for success

In our mission to improve our diet we have started eating A LOT more vegetable than we ever had in the past.  We have started eating vegetables that I had never even heard of before last month, and if you have kids, you know that getting them to try new foods can be REALLY tough.  #1 doesn't like carrots, potatoes (yes potatoes! What kid doesn't like potatoes!?), or tomatoes.  #2 doesn't like tomatoes, celery, peppers, cucumbers and especially onions! #3 doesn't like peppers, onions, carrots, potatoes, cabbage or anything leafy and green.  And #4 doesn't like anything her brothers say they don't like during any given meal. In general they don't like anything spicy or anything that looks like onions or peppers, and this is the short list.

 I've done a bit of research on how to get the kids to eat better. A few weeks ago, while surfing the internet, I found an article that said in order to get a child to like a new food you need to expose them to  eat it 15-20 times and in different dishes.  15-20 TIMES?!?!  Thats a lot of dinners!! How am I ever going to get them to eat Zucchini 15 times?? ...or kale, or mushrooms, onions, turnips, beets, you name the vegetable and one of my kids thinks they don't like it. But today we had success! In fact, it was the second time this week that we had success, so I thought it was only fair that I shared the recipes with you.

Our dinner tonight was awesome! Three out of four children ate it and LIKED IT! They cleared their plates! Believe me, that is a huge success.  Maybe they liked it because I was an hour late putting dinner on the table and they were starving because I got wrapped up in a craft project but I am going to assume that they actually liked the food, especially since I really enjoyed it too! It has kale, swiss chard, tomatoes, and onions! I did #3 pick out the onions but I would still call it a huge success.  I don't really have a name for it but I am going to call it whole food hamburger helper.

Our other success was a carrot dish.  Carrots are one of the few vegetables that #2 has always liked.  Unfortunately, #1, #3 and #4 don't like carrots, and honestly, neither do I. So we turned it in to a dish that could have qualified as dessert.  We will definitely be having this again, probably next week! My four kids ate 2 POUNDS of carrots for dinner! It was amazing.  The few bites that I got were delicious! I highly recommend carrot soufflĂ©!

So I guess if at first you don't succeed, try try again.  I keep thinking about what I read.  Kids have to try something 15-20 times.  Maybe the reality is, it takes parents 15-20 times of making a food to find one that tastes good!

I hope you enjoy the recipes!

I would love your feed back! Please feel free to comment below or on my facebook page.

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