Food. Food. Food. Meal planning for the week. Trips to the grocery. Time to cook. I am pretty sure that meals take up about 90% of my wakeful hours. I need good healthy family friendly food. I want every one in my house to have eaten a balanced and healthy diet at the end of the day. Except on Fridays. We order pizza and ice cream on Friday.
Eating healthy is not as easy as it sounds. Since having a baby, my husband has realized a need to eat healthier in order to not succumb to a genetic predisposition to diabetes and heart disease. I have a toddler who, once upon a time, love spinach and broccoli. Now, he barely tolerates the presence of veggies on his plate. I am pretty sure that he would eat grapes and PBJ three times a day if I allowed it.
I have no idea how to make everyone happy and healthy all of the time, but I feel that I must take some action. I decided that I needed to start with the veggies. My family, every single one of us, needs to eat more of them. After reviewing some deceptive methods of getting veggies into everyday food, I was very disappointed that many of the recipes I looked at snuck in only an extra 2 tablespoons of veggie per serving (1/2 cup veggie divided by 4 servings). While that is better than nothing, I wanted to see if I could pack in more. If I am going to make this effort, it better be worth my time.
This past month I have decided that I am sneaking in some carrots. I decided that I was not going all the way back to purees for baby food. Grating would have to do. It turns out that I can mix in a LOT of carrots with ground meat dishes, and neither my toddler nor my husband noticed at all. I successfully mixed in a whole cup of finely grated carrots with a pound of ground meat in several different dishes including: stuffed peppers, meatloaf, and chili. Let's say that a 1/4 pound of meat is 1 serving. Then, everyone just got an extra 1/4 cup of veggies. That is worth my effort! I should stress that the carrots be very finely grated. My toddler will try to pick out regular grated carrots from his food. While that is fun to watch for a few minutes, is gets old and messy. I am excited to try to add carrots to meatballs and hamburger.
I still serve carrots and other veggies as side dishes with dinner in the hopes that my son will someday decide that he likes veggies again. Tonight, he pointed at his carrots, shook his head "no" and returned to eating his meatloaf.
I would love to know if any one else has a way to sneak larger quantities of veggies into their everyday cooking.
Contributed by Patricia
1 comment:
I'm impressed by your dedication to having consistent healthy meals in your family.
I have never tried to sneak veggies into other foods. I have been much more successful (or maybe I'm just too lazy with 3 young children to grind up those veggies) in being consistent on serving dinner as is, balanced and healthy. That is what is for dinner period. I don't force my children to eat any of it, but there is no other food after dinner. Some meals they eat tons (pasta nights, taco nights, etc.), some nights they only take a few bites but what I have found is that slowly but surely they are all becoming great eaters and discovering they like certain vegetables and meats when they give them a chance. My 2 year old LOVES vegetables and fruit and is getting better with meats. My almost 7 year old is an excellent eater and my 5 year old son...well, he is getting better and has discovered he really likes asparagus and green salad is his favorite - especially the cucumbers and tomatoes. He also will eat ANY fruit.
Good luck!
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