Hiding the Veggies! Shhhh......

My duaghter loves animals. Every time I would take her to the pet store or when we would see wild animals we would talk about what they eat. Some is made up a little. She eats carots because rabbits eat them and also because eagles eat rabits and that's why their eyes are so good. Might not be exactlty true but it works. It has worked on everything but asparagus and brussel sprouts and it was fun.

Hi A.,

You've already gotten a lot of great information. The two cookbooks mentioned are great, but do require some up front prep time. I personally would be careful with much juice of any kind since not only is it pasterized, (so you're really not getting the nutrients you think you are), but you get no fiber with juice. When you puree the fruits and veges you preserve some of that. And remember, Dr. Sears says it takes up to 15 tries of a new food to acquire a taste for it. But the more he eats the real foods, the more his body will crave the nutrients in whole foods.

Lori K.

I love the Deceptively Delicious cookbook by Jessica Seinfeld.
I put pureed cauliflower in mashed potatoes, tuna salad. Pureed butternut squash in mac n' cheese and applesauce muffins, carrots in spaghetti'os. Pureed sweet potato in pancakes, canned pumpkin in oatmeal, etc.
My 2 and 3 year old (and even my husband) don't notice it. In fact my husband, who hates eating veggies too, has said our meals seem to have more flavor to them.
My 3 year old likes to help me cook and I don't keep it a secret that we put extra veggies in the food. She now asks "what all goes in this meal?"
I cook and puree the veggies ahead of time, then pour the puree into ice cube trays, freeze them, and place the cubes in a freezer bag. 4 cubes is approx. 1/2 cup. I can easily grab the amount that I need and quickly thaw them for the meal. One butternut squash will usually fill two ice cube trays which can last me 3-4 weeks, so it's not like I'm constantly cooking and pureeing veggies. I do maybe one veggie once a week. Right now I have bags of cauliflower, sweet potato, carrot, butternut squash, and spinach cubes in the freezer.

try raw carrots? I also get my son V8 fusion juice. Its veggies in a fruit juice. He loves it, He is picky when it comes to veggies.

I have fed my kiddos "morningstar" brand veggie nuggete, they look just like chicked nuggets and taste pretty good. I have also started making mashed sweet potatos that they like. I just purchased some sweet potato french fries that I plan to bake in the oven.

get the book Deceptively Delicious, I've had the oatmeal cookies from that book and they are wonderful. They have squash and zucchini in them! Try it out.

When my brother was little we use to tell him green beans were green french fries, and he would dip them in ketchup and eat them up. Have you tried putting like butter flavor on them or seasoning maybe they are just to bland for him. The only other thing I can think of is make casseroles and put them in there for him to eat.

There's a cookbook out about this very subject. I'm not sure, but the name is something like The Sneaky Chef; don't quote me on that, tho!
As for myself, I love to hide veggies in things. I add blendered carrots to meatloaf, spaghetti sauce, anything that the color won't be a giveaway. Baby spinach is easy to hide in the above foods as well. Basically, if I can blenderize it, I can hide it in something my boys will eat. You can even put veggies in fruit smoothies. I'm not much of a veggie person myself, so I have to make sure that it's not tasteable for me either! Happy hiding!!
J.

I had a problem with my daughter eating anything but corn, applesauce and cottage cheese. So we named them, at first with like mac and cheese we got sponge bob shaped and then all mac and cheese turned into spongebob. Its been awhile since I've done it, but we had dora, diego, patrick i mean all those lil guys and there were several items that were spongebob or dora. It got her a lil more interested. Or we would tell her that one of the characters LOVE whatever it was. She is still a picky eater, but eats alot more. Like brocolli, add a lil cheese to it. Add something else that he likes. My daughter loves chicken, so pretty much every meat that I put on her plate is chicken or she thinks it is, then she has no problem eating it. She knows it looks different, but I tell her its chicken and she will eat away normally. There are somethings like green beans she just wont eat. But is eating way better then what she was. Best of luck with it, hope you find some way to get teh lil guy to eat.

there's another book called deceptively delicious, by jerry sienfelds wife. i here it's got some good ideas