My kids rock. They are in general not picky. But as I type this, I have a gut feeling Max will be my payback for this moment. He's 9 months, and still doesn't really eat baby food. He would throw things up when we first tried, now he just has a massive gag reflex and shuts his lips tight when we try to give him a taste of something!
Maren wanted 'girl time' with me a few days ago, so her choice was to make dinner. And she wanted to create her own recipe. Which that can get interesting sometimes, and needs a little help from me. But this night, she picked spring mix salad from the garden, red peppers, cut yellow squash, and taco meat mix for a taco salad. She did the entire preparation herself and served everyone too. She ate much more enthusiastically and not her usual pokey self because she was so proud of herself. I was pretty proud too.
Today she helped me pick all of the ripe vegetables from the garden. We picked about 4 lbs of green beans, only a handful of peas, some HUGE zuccini's and yellow squash, and salad. I bribed her with a penny per vegetable she picked, and she realized the total racked up quick plucking the salad leaves.
But we got inside and washed it all, she wanted to eat it right away. So she decided for lunch we should make BLT's from our garden items. (turkey bacon for those of you who raised an eyebrow at me and my non-pork preferences!) She makes great choices when she's given healthy options... well... those are the only options I give her ;) But to those who say their kids are entirely too picky, plant a garden and let them take pride in the achievement of providing for themselves and see if that sparks an interest! It sure helped Kellan with his anti-tomato/anti-strawberry phase. He gladly eats them now!
If you can't plant a garden, go hit the farmer's market while it's summer! Give them their own bag to carry the goods and they take so much more ownership for their own health just by feeling involved. Plus fresh is so much better, and tastier. If I fed them canned vegetables this blog might have a different undertone!
2 comments:
You are so inspiring! That is a great way to get kids to eat healthy. I am going to try it (Jimmy is my very picky eater, not Sabrina though she will eat whatever, but will love the fact of it being her own and doing something herself) And, now I'm hungry :)I want some fresh fruit and veggies!
Good job supermom.
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