When I was little, I had to eat my veggies before I got to eat anything else.

No kids yet but I plan to hide it in their food if necessary like homemade spaghetti/pasta sauce, cauliflower alfredo sauce (seriously delicious!), cauliflower potatoes, etc. It's what I did with an ex of mine who did not like vegetables at all, LOL.

you really need to start them with veggies before sweets i know that is not always so easy , my oldest( now 13) was 5 yrs old before he know frozen yogurt was not ice cream, my middle son( now 10) is a fruit and veggie machine and my youngest ( now 8) is convinced choc -chip cookies are a meal . but you just have to start young . for me no matter if i eat all veggies i can not seem to loose much at all my boys skinny as rails . since my 2nd hysterectomy ( 1 partial & 1 full ) i have just gained and gained and gained more weight and haf the time i really do not eat .

I started my kids on veggies first, when they were babies. I don't know if that's the reason, but they love them now.

I usually serve a veggie tray while they're waiting for dinner to be ready and they munch on that. Sometimes I'll steam some and put them on the table too. I don't mind so much if they get full on veggies and pick at their dinner. I do mind if they get full on sweets and pick at their veggies , so veggies come first.

I make everything with about 50% veggies. You can put pureed veggies in soup, tomato sauce, cheese sauce, and you can shred them in others. I do 50:50 shredded yellow squash with ground chicken, one egg, bread it with a mixture of panko and whole wheat crumbs, and bake. I freeze the nuggets on a tray and then put them in baggies in the freezer. I do the same with turkey and zucchini and make meatballs.

Like other moms, I serve hummus, cheese sauce (I blend 50% cauliflower into mine), or ranch dressing for dipping.

My daughter loves baked potatoes, so if you mash steamed cauliflower into it, it's undetectable. Roasted broccoli or cauliflower and grape tomatoes are other favorites along with corn and peas (of course).

I make her try new veggies all the time. If she doesn't like it, so what - it's all about one bite at a time.

I almost forgot - spinach and broccoli "nuggets" are great, especially if you make them into shapes they like. Dr. Praeger makes some, but they're easy to make on your own - you can use fun cookie cutters to make them into stars, hearts, dinosaurs or whatever!

You can make other veggies into "fries" and they're a hit.

i'm very lucky my son loves cucumbers and broccoli, he actually requests it (he's 8)

Veggie nuggets looks freakin' delicious! What an awesome idea. Thanks for sharing the recipe.

Also, you say you blend 50% cauliflower in your cheese sauce... How does that affect the texture? I'd love to try that. Do you have a recipe you could share?

I don't know if this was said..

but get them to grow their own. That's how my mother got my sister addicted to carrots. Because she got her to grow some, and then she wanted to EAT and EAT and EAT because they were 100% her making. Then she kind of grew fond of them

Ranch dressing to dip things in - helps a lot. He will eat sweet veggies like snap peas and carrots plain. He loves salad which has always surprised me!

Our rule has always been that you have to eat the same number of bites of each food as your age. So when he was 4, he had to eat 4 bites. I wouldn't purposely serve him something he truly hated, but he always had to try the bites. And re-trying foods after a few months is good too. "Taste buds change."

The texture changes slightly, but not enough to bother me or my daughter. Just steam a head of cauliflower, puree it in a food processor, and mix it into your cheese sauce. this is a great link though I always make my mac and cheese in different ways every time. Lately I've been making the "miracle mac and cheese" with skim or 1% milk, then instead of adding more milk in the end, add the cauliflower puree instead. It has no butter or flour, but it comes out super creamy. I make sure to use extra sharp cheese and to season the milk with salt/pepper/garlic powder (or adobo). I skipped that the first time and it came out bland.

That sounds like a great method. I wonder though if the calories might be skewed a bit since the starch from the pasta that normally gets tossed remains in the dish. Maybe not all that much but maybe someone has an idea? I hate to fool myself about calories counts.

I'm not sure. Honestly I never count calories for her (she's 4!) but if you just count it normally with skim and full fat cheese, it's 398 cals for 1/4 of the recipe or 265 for 1/6. It's pretty rich so I'd opt for no more than 1/8 at just under 200 cals.

Growing some of their food does help. My kid loves gardening. She eats those grape tomatoes off the vine like candy.

I remember another old thing I used to do -- use a veggie peepler to cut it into ribbons or grater to grate it. Sometimes they don't like the cooked taste, but the raw is too "hard" for little teeth still if just "sticks" even if they like raw taste better.

A.

Oh, thank you so much for posting both links! I just realized that I kinda do the same thing for "alfredo" sauce. I just didn't think of using different cheeses and switching out the types of pasta, heh!