Like all parents, we struggle at times to ensure that our girls are eating a well-balanced diet. Not just making sure we’re hitting all the food groups in the proper ratios each day, but also just in variety of foods. We could serve mac & cheese with some kind of fruit at every meal and the girls would happily gulp it down.
In an effort to branch out, I picked up <a href=”http://www.deceptivelydelicious.com/site/”>Jessica Seinfeld’s cookbook</a> at the library last week. It’s one of those “hide the vegetables” books, in which you puree the hell out of some veggies and blend them into recipes so your kids are, in theory, being tricked into eating them. Eating veggies isn’t a huge problem for us; C. would eat green beans all day if allowed, and both girls will kill some corn on the cob. But, again, I was searching for some variety. We’ve tried a couple recipes so far. A muffin recipe has been a big hit. The other two got mixed responses.
So I’m going to throw it to the group, since I imagine most parents of toddlers have gone/are going through this. How have you mixed up your menus to get your kids to eat new and different things? Again, I’m looking more for variety in main menu items than ways to get more fruits and veggies into our diets. Post your ideas in the comments, or e-mail them directly to me. I’ll share the most interesting ideas with the entire Brannan Blog nation later.
BTW, perhaps the best part of the Seinfeld book is her line in the acknowledgements that, right after she married Jerry, Chris Rock told her that it was inevitable that she was going to write a cookbook now that she was married to a celebrity.