If you have a veggie hater for a child, it can be difficult to figure out how to get them to eat their vegetables. Here are some tricks from fellow moms!
Pureed cauliflower in cheese sauce
You would be surprised how much cauliflower you can hide in macaroni and cheese! Works best on homemade mac n cheese, but you can do it with Kraft dinner too. Steam it first, then puree, that way there won’t be any telltale cauliflower crunchies!
Pureed broccoli, spinach, zucchini & onion in pizza sauce and spaghetti sauce
Steam and puree and these won’t be noticeable at all.
Carrot cake and zucchini bread
Especially done cupcake style in fancy paper cupcake cups, most kids are fooled into thinking these are actually junk food. You can even promote this by limiting it to one as desert.
Veggie lasagna
Add some pureed or finely chopped veggies to lasagna, even if it is meat lasagna
Hamburgers
Add some pureed veggies to the hamburger mix. And be sure to encourage pickles and tomatoes on the buns too, even claiming it makes them more like Burger King’s Whoppers, if you have to!
Juice
No, don’t make them drink V8. But there are many juice blends out there which incorporate both fruits and vegetables, so they will still taste like fruit punch juice to the untrained palate.
Smoothies
If you make smoothies for your kids, throw a few carrots or a couple pieces of celery into the mix. As long as there is a substantial amount of other fruits in it, they won’t notice!
Chicken & tuna salad sandwiches
Add finely chopped carrots, onion or zucchini into the salad mix.
Garden
Some kids will eat vegetables when they have had a part in planting it. Why not try making a pizza garden?
Make it fun
They might love veggies on skewers yet turn their nose up at the same thing sliced and on a plate. Or turn veggies into a face on the plate. Think how you can make it into something kids will love. That is what our parents learned with bumps on a log all those years ago!
Take advantage
Take advantage of knowing what vegetables they like. Sometimes it can be something as simple as loving bell peppers raw yet despising them cooked. The same is often true for carrots and celery too. It is better they eat them prepared as they like it than forcing them to eat the same veggie how they don’t like it.
Vitamins
Believe it or not, there are kids vitamins that are formulated for kids who don’t eat vegetables. So be sure to use these vitamins if possible so you know it is helping supplement their diet with what growing bodies need.
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