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Calling All Veggies!

veggie_recipes

I must admit, we are in a serious vegetable rut around here.  In general, my girls eat pretty well, lots of healthy stuff to balance out the goodies.  However, one of my goals for our whole family is to increase our veggie consumption.  Problem is, my girls aren’t so into it…:)

They will happily eat carrots (raw & cooked), broccoli, cauliflower, lettuce, and sometimes spinach (if it’s “in” something).  They seem to eat anything baked into a muffin – carrot, pumpkin, zucchini.  They might go for dips — they like ranch!  I would love to expand their horizons — and mine!

I would *love* to add some more kid-friendly veggie recipes to our repertoire.  Wanna help me?  Leave a comment or link to a blog/site and share your favorite kid-friendly vegetable recipes.  Ways to involve the kids and simple, not-too-time-consuming recipes would be a plus!

As a thank-you, I will combine all the recipes posted by next Monday, October 20, into a lovely little pdf, so we can all download and enjoy a veggie cookbook for our kiddos.

Thanks for sharing….Happy Veggie Eating!

Comments

  1. Hi, I found your blog randomly and thought I would give an idea. My kids love celery, spread with peanut butter, and topped with raisins all in a row. We call it ants on a log. Good luck with your recipe hunt. I’ll check back and see what other ideas you get.

  2. Hi Amy,
    No recipes, but here are the 2 “tricks” that work with my kiddos.
    Steam carrots in apple juice. I put apple juice in a cereal bowl, add some cut circle carrots, cover with a plate and nuke.
    Cucumber sticks with yogurt dip. yeah, i know they are just putting them in sugar, but they love it and it’s a start!!

  3. Roasted sweet potatoes are our current go-to veggie. Wash ’em. Peel ’em. Cut ’em into one-inch chunks. Toss in a bowl with a bit of olive oil (just enough to coat). Single layer on a cookie sheet. Sprinkle with salt. Bake at 425 for 20 minutes or so (until fork tender). You can stir them every once in a while during the cooking if you don’t like browned edges.
    My girl loves to use her hands to toss them with the olive oil. I’ll also give her the salt in a finger bowl and let her sprinkle it over the potatoes.
    She’ll also eat corn as long as it’s on the cob.

  4. Hi! I foung your blog while blog-hopping and really enjoy your posts!
    My kids love cucumbers and bell peppers dipped in ranch. I found out recently that they actually like lettuce salads, plain or with raspberry dressing.
    Do your kids like potatoes? I cut potatoes into wedges, toss in a bowl of oil to coat, put skin-down on a glass baking dish, and sprinkle with garlic salt. Bake at 450 until “done.”
    These are also favorites…
    Broccoli: http://hotnsteamy.wordpress.com/2007/12/16/broccoli/
    Black Beans:
    http://juliecooks.wordpress.com/2006/09/26/caribbean-black-beans/
    Hope that helps! :)

  5. my son loves my lentil soup. he asks me to make it every week. and he always has seconds. i cut up one onion, several carrots, rinse an entire bag of lentils – throw it all in the crockpot with some frozen kielbasa or chorizo and 4 c of chicken broth and about another cup or 2 of water. then i let it go all day. i do the same thing with split peas and he loves that too.

  6. We love using peanut butter yogurt dip for our veggies. It’s really simple – 1/2 cup plain yogurt and 1/2 cup peanut butter (we use natural, no sugar added) and mix them together. Instant dip!
    Try adding jicama sticks to your tray of dipping veggies – they taste kind of like a cross between a potato and an apple.
    And, my kids love to pop edamame (soy beans) – just boil frozen edamame for about 4 minutes, drain, toss with some salt, and let cool.

  7. I make super-easy lasagna without meat and with “hidden” baby spinach–so far my very picky, no veggie eating 8 year old has never figured out the spinach is there. What I do is cook the lasagna noodles until they are done but still pretty firm, then spread some sauce in the bottom of a casserole dish and cover it with a layer of fresh baby spinach leaves, then noodles, then a layer of ricotta cheese, mozzarella cheese, more sauce, more noodles, more sauce, and topped with mozzarella cheese. I have made homemade sauce before, but now I usually use a jar of storebought sauce to save time, and I discovered a type called “garden veggie,” but I don’t remember what brand. It has chunks of carrots and other veggies in it. Bake at 350 for about an hour.
    Also, I have been able to get all my kids to at least pick at some salad by topping it with interesting toppings like raisins, tortilla strips, slivered almonds, mini ritz crackers, Chinese crunchy noodles, etc.

  9. One of our recent favorites is confetti rice or orzo (both are great!).
    I cook up the rice and then mix in some steamed veggies. I usually choose between 2-3 vegetables that different colors. Cut them up in small squares. We like peas, carrots, zucchinni, squash, broccoli, corn. I also add about 1/2 cup of cheese – our personal favorite is the 4-cheese italian blend from Trader Joe’s.
    We are also big fans of soup and I put lots of veggies in there. I always add carrots and zucchini to my spaghetti sauce. Baked potatoes with broccoli and cheese. Egg scrambles with veggies and cheese and ham/sausage. We make mini veggie pizza faces a lot – I cut up zucchini in circles (used for eyes with an olive on tip), shredded carrots (for hair), red bell peppers in slices (used for mouth), yellow or orange bell peppers cut in triangles (used for nose).
    I’ll see if I can think up some more for you…

  10. I’m so glad you brought this up! I cannot wait to hear others’ good ideas–I am always looking for more ways to help my kids eat veggies. Here are a few things my mom and I have come up with:
    My mom thought of spreading a very thin layer of peanut butter on a small lettuce leaf and folding it in half so it sticks. It was a great introduction to eating lettuce for my little ones–they love it! She also makes ‘cucumber sandwiches’ with cucumber slices with peanut butter or cream cheese in the middle.
    I make ‘applesauce’ or ‘carrotsauce’–I have done many variations, but here is the most common: Steam apples, carrots, and a bit of broccoli (or I have also done just carrots and added a small amount of broccoli). Puree the steamed vegetables until they are the consistency of applesauce. Add a bit of apple juice if necessary for consistency or taste. Go easy on the broccoli though or the taste is way too strong!
    I also have a great dip that my kids like for apples, carrots, cucumbers and such. I found it in a magazine a few years ago: ‘yogurt dip’. Take about 1 cup of plain yogurt, add 1 tbsp peanut butter and 1 tbsp of honey. Mix really well to combine thoroughly. Low on sugar!
    The other trick I’ve found for my kids (probably not all kids, but it works for mine) is a lot of variety and color. The meals where they eat the best are when there are plenty of choices: I call them ‘rainbow dinners’. Not everyday by any means, but often I try to set their plates with something like: whatever meat we’re eating, a few raisins, 3 thin carrot sticks, a little scoop of corn, one small broccoli tree w/ dip, 2 cherry tomatoes halved, a few crackers, 1 piece of cheese…lots of color, tiny portions. Their plate looks colorful and yummy, they have a choice as to what they want to eat first. And for the things they don’t like, there is only a tiny portion they need to eat–so it’s not overwhelming to them.
    The other thing I’ve learned is that teaching children to eat healthfully is a process. I keep thinking long term. I just keep putting new things (veggies and other items) on their plates. Let them taste it–sometimes they like it, sometimes they don’t. But I still put a tiny portion of everything we’re eating on their plate every night. We generally require ‘1 bite’ of something they don’t like. Sometimes after continual exposure, they actually begin to like the food–my son and tomatoes are an example of that. At this point my kids now like quite a few veggies and so I try to make meals I know that my kids like much of the time so that dinner is typically fun and enjoyable, not always a time of eating something they don’t like. But at the same time I’m regularly introducing more veggies and other foods to them.
    Can’t wait to hear more thoughts on the topic!

  11. That veggie cookbook is a great idea! I can’t wait to check back and download it. As for veggie recipes that are kid friendly, I like a batch of fresh hummos to dip carrots, broccoli, and celery in!

  12. My son refuses to eat veggies almost daily. I try to hide veggies in everything I can. I’ve started adding different veggies into my zucchini bread instead of just the zucchini and carrots. This week’s loaf is made with zucchini, green beans and spinach. I just finely chop the veggies in my food chopper. I was very skeptical about the different veggies, but they’re wonderful.
    I also put a lot of veggie purees into things. Tonight we had turkey meatballs and instead of using an egg I used pureed acorn squash. I put puree in my meatloaves, spaghetti sauce and I’ve even dipped chicken breasts into it before the bread crumbs.

  13. May I ask you a question? Why don’t you homeschool??? I am weighing everything out, and I thought you’d be a great person to ask because you are so great with activities and learning. Then to top that off your a teacher!! Please let me know your reasons. We have a preschooler and are trying to make the right decision. Thanks!!
    Melissa

  15. These are all such great ideas, and they come at the most perfect time! My son is refusing to eat much outside of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches right now. *Sigh.*
    Although he does eat hummus. He’s too young to eat it with carrots for dipping, but the dipping concept is all mixed up for him anyway. He eats the hummus off the pita bread and then wants “more dip” — without eating the bread. Oh well. Better that than the other way around!

  16. one word – SMOOTHIES! you can hide all kinds of veggies in a smoothie. This isn’t really a recipe, I just throw in a little of this and a little of that, but these are some common ingredients:
    plain yogurt
    bananas
    apples
    carrots
    frozen corn
    frozen berries
    milk
    juice
    etc…
    You can even add things like parsley or ginger. Not everything is a winner, but once I put a straw in it my two-year-old can’t resist trying it out!

  17. We eat a lot of “Princess Pancakes”
    Potato Pancakes made with Beets, Carrots, Sweet Potato, Broccoli Stalk. Finely shredded, lightly salted to get a little excess water out (you want about 3-4 cups of shredded veggies). Mix with 2 large eggs, 1/3 cup flour and salt and pepper to your liking. Medium heat, a drizzle of olive oil, plop down, lightly press cook til browned, turn over and brown.
    The princess part is because the beets make everything pink!

  19. My kids are really great veggie eaters, some of our favorites are green beans, snap peas, corn, asparagus, artichokes from the pressure cooker, sweet potatoes, steamed broccoli, corn on the cob, black beans, hummus, edamame, bamboo shoots, really almost anything. The trick for us is that we have always had the rule that you try at least three bites of everything on your plate. And offering vegetables over and over again. I read somewhere that it it takes 4 separate times of exposure to a new taste for it to become familiar and for a child to begin to develop a taste for the new flavor. As much as my children now love asparagus, the first time they tried it, they hated it! I’ve found that involving the girls in preparation helps their willingness to try new foods. Also the foods that require effort to eat, like artichoke and edamame are more experiential than just nutrition, which makes them lots of fun to eat together!