10 Ways to Add Vegetables to Your Child’s Diet without Alarming Them

Even at the fanciest restaurants, chefs create vegetable dishes that are unique and attractive, giving vegetables a new appeal.  Why not do the same for your kids?

Get your kids involved in cooking and preparing vegetables.  A great start is with juicing them.  Kids love to push the vegetables into the juicer and watch them come out as juice.  Add apples other fruits to sweeten it up a bit.   Here are some suggestions for adding veggies into their life and yours:

1. Shred zucchini on the smallest shredder into spaghetti sauce.
2. Make a sweet potato pie with maple syrup instead of sugar.
3. Make a yummy healthy dip like tzatziki sauce and cut some carrots into circular pin wheel shapes.
4. Change your child’s mind about  vegetables….Build a ginger bread house this year using different types of foods  such as vegetables, using broccoli & cauliflower for trees. Google Food Scapes by Carl Warner for inspiration.
5. Make sweet potato fries with olive oil or bake a sweet potato and add a little butter, coconut sugar and cinnamon.
6. Involve your kids in making a spinach pie or quiche
7. Buy a vegetable spiralizer that creates long spiraling noodle like shapes out of vegetables.  Lightly steam them to al dente add butter and salt or lightly sprinkle with cheese.
8. Make a soup and juice all kinds of vegetables. The stems of chard and celery are particularly salty & are perfect for juicing and adding to the broth. Add the juice at the end, you don’t want to over cook it!
9. Make a creamy panaang curry and add juiced carrots for color and vitamins and flavor. Add your child’s favorite meat &any other vegetables and pour over rice.  Pannang curry is sweeter and milder than other curries with a real comfort food quality.
10. Make an artichoke dip with Greek yogurt chopped spinach, “Spike” (healthy seasoning) to taste & just a couple of tablespoons of cream cheese. Serve it with carrots and celery