4.5 Years Later...
1 year ago
Friday, January 25, 2008
What do you make?
Okay, so I am at my wits end with food. I can't seem to make anything my family likes for lunch or dinner. Whether my efforts are great or small, they hardly ever eat it! I want to start eating healthier, but I also just want my family to eat, so what do you all make that your families like and eat? Especially your young kids? Do you have table rules, like you can't leave the table until you eat so much of something? How do you make your meals more healthy? If I had all the money in the world it would be somewhat easier, but I don't, so I can't afford a lot of the stuff that is obviously healthier, at least not all the time. And, going to the store often to have a constant supply of fresh stuff isn't always reasonable for me either. So, any tips or suggestions?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
6 comments:
Oh how timely this post is. Just 10 minutes ago I finished a dinner with my family- Hawaiian pizza, vanilla yogurt, canned pizza, and salad. I didn't even make the kids eat the salad, and both of them still stuck their noses up in the air and Calvin eventually got his way and left the table, wanting to watch Teletubbies. It's PIZZA for crying out loud!
My helpful tips that sometimes work (and you probably already know them all):
*try giving the kids fruits and veggies while you're preparing dinner. Sometimes they're hungry enough to eat just about anything
*hummus: it's a protein filled dip that my kids for some strange reason seem to like and dip crackers and carrots in
*one of the hardest things is to try and get our kids to try something new. So we resort to desert bribes, or just saying, "Bryn, I'll shout hurray and jump around the table if you take a bite of broccoli." It's humiliating, but works.
*when I give my kids too many afternoon snacks, they eat poorly, even if we're having their favorite meal. I always forget this.
*One of the meals I'm always shocked that my kids eat so well is pasta with homemade cheese sauce. I can give you the recipe for the cheese sauce if you want it. I also put the sauce on broccoli.
Good luck! Who knew feeding kids was so hard?!?
My best tip: buy fresh or frozen veggies (frozen usually have more nutrients than the ones sitting in the produce section anyway) and puree them in your food processor, or if you don't have one chop them VERY fine and you can then hide them in almost ANY food you make. You can hide them in spaghetti sauce, casseroles, burgers, lasagna, soup, eggs, whatever. It doesn't matter how that food get in them, as long as it does. Carson is at a picky stage and if he won't eat what I fix then he just doesn't eat...PERIOD!!! And we typically do not snack between lunch and dinner so if he's hungry enough, he'll eat, and if not I don't feel the least bit guilty sending him to bed hungry. Good luck, kids can make you want to pull your hair out sometimes can't they!
Oh Diana...I wish I could help you out, but I can't even get Eli to eat baby food. :(
Oh Diana...I wish I could help you out, but I can't even get Eli to eat baby food. :(
I love this question! We are on our way to learning new ways to eat better, too. Have you heard of Jessica Seinfield's cookbook called Deceptively Delicious? Check out the website too, but it's amazing. It's the same thing Annalisa said about hiding foods, but it's full of recipes! Also, I just tried a few new things that I love: mom taught me how to take yams (yup, the orange potatoe thingy from Thanksgiving) and mash it like mashed potatoes. It's AWESOME! Let me know if you want to try it, but honestly, it's so full of good stuff, and I think it tastes a hundred times better! Good luck!
I don't have kids, obviously, but I nannied quite a bit in high school and college. I also hide healthy stuff, but usually inside not-so-healthy stuff (because I think it's more important to get the good stuff than to avoid the bad). Three very popular ways to eat apples: 1) sliced and sprinkled with cinnamon sugar, 2) sliced and dipped in peanut butter, 3) chopped up and hidden in pancakes (topped with syrup, of course).
Other things that kids who have been subjected to my cooking tend to eat:
*banana boats (slice a lengthwise wedge out of a banana (don't remove peel if possible), fill with chocolate chips and marshmallows, cook at 250 for 20 minutes - kids like making these too).
*grilled-cheese sandwiches and quesadillas (pan-fried)
*UFOs: a slice of ham, bologna (sick), or turkey with a scoop of mashed potatoes on top and a slice of cheese melted over the mashed potatoes.
*scrambled eggs (with cheese) with peas / spinach hidden in them
*yogurt or Jello with bananas and strawberries
Post a Comment