Nutrition - How I Trick My Kids into Eating More Vegetables

Every mother wants their children to eat their vegetables, and I'm no different. Neither are my children, they don't want to eat the more nutrient packed types of foods like spinach and kale. So I work them into other foods so that they don't even know they are eating healthy.

Easy ways to get vegetables into kids:

V8 Fusion Juice
Ranch dip with carrots / celery / peppers
Peanut Butter dip with celery
Cheese Sauce on Broccoli

A way to sneak vegetables and other high nutrient foods into kids: Baking!

I buy quick oats and grind them with my coffee grinder to make flour and then substitute it for 1/2 (up to 1 C) of the white flour required.

I buy flax seed and grind them with my coffee grinder to make flour and substitute it for a 1/4 of the flour requirement and cut back on a bit of the fat. (trial and error) This add essential omega 3 to their diet for brain development and since both my kids are bright I'd say it worked!

I use a magic bullet type blender to blend spinach and kale with the required liquid to add vitamins and nutrients to the recipe. I drain the liquid and throw out the pulp. This only works IF it's a chocolate recipe and I add a bit of extra coca to cover up the green color. NOTE: don't blend a lot of the vegetable about 1/4 of the magic bullet blender cup and top up with the required liquid.

To chocolate chip cookie recipes I add craisons and dried blueberries for vitamins. I use the oat and flax flours with the white flour. Approx 1/2 white flour and the other 1/2 a mix of oat and flax flour.

I love recipes for banana breads, chocolate zucchini cake and fruit muffins. I use the oat and flax flours and add cranberries, dried raisins, dried blueberries, dried goji berries and whatever else I find in the kitchen.

Muffins are the easiest to make healthier. Not just with the flour substitutions but by substituting the butter for a canola oil or another high omega 3 oil. If a chocolate muffin then I blend spinach with the milk.

My favorite cookies to make are garbage cookies.... Take a basic oatmeal recipe add flax seeds, craisons, and throw in whatever else you have in the baking drawer to make them healthy then add lots of m&ms. They are good and healthy.

I use omega 3 brown eggs in all my baking.... the yolks are almost orange they are so packed full of nutrients.

Children need cholesterol for good brain development so don't worry about the fat content.

I use apple sauce in place of some of sugar and cut back on the butter a bit.

I grind up nuts to a flour so they don't know they are eating them. - This is only OK if your child doesn't like crunchy bits in baking and isn't allergic to nuts.

The best Muffin, Chocolate Zucchini cake and Banana Bread recipes are in the Best of Bridge books.