My REAL Journey

As long as there is food, there will be picky eaters. Sometimes it calls for sneakiness. That’s right. Underhanded, devious, shifty tactics of sneaking ‘good’ foods into what they eat.

While visiting my daughter a while back, I noticed a book on her table called The Sneaky Chef by Missy Chase Lapine. It has a ton of recipes that kids love but with an added twist of sneaking in foods that you typically wouldn’t find. One example is Brainy Brownies. The sneaky ingredients are spinach, blueberries, oat bran, wheat germ and whole wheat. Yes, that’s right; I said spinach in the brownies! I’ll be honest. When I tasted them I was expecting them to taste like chocolate cardboard but I was pleasantly surprised! I noticed a bit of fruitiness but didn’t realize it was blueberry and I certainly didn’t taste any spinach. They were pretty tasty in fact.

My plan is to make these for our other two grandsons this week and we’ll see how they rate them. I’m thinking the 2 year old will devour them. If he could eat ‘cake’ three times a day he would. J

Other ways to be sneaky:

* Mix cereals with sugary cereals.  - If you have your kids with you when shopping then you know how difficult it is to get through the cereal aisle without them grabbing the brightly colored boxes of neon colored cereal. No parent likes to watch their child eat a bowl of pink sugary pellets first thing in the morning. There’s no rule that says you can’t mix a little bit of sugary cereal with the healthier choices. They think they’ve won the battle but we all know that the parent is smarter in the tactical plan of breakfast. J

* Be creative with Smoothies. There is something about letting a kid throw a bunch of stuff in the blender and seeing how loud we can be when the blender starts. They cover their ears. They run around the kitchen. They do a little dance. Ok, maybe that’s just at our house. J It’s the perfect way of hiding those foods that your kids would never eat on their own. Throw in raw spinach, bananas, pineapple, or whatever you find in the fridge or freezer. Keep in mind that the final color does have a bit of an effect. If the smoothie is purple (blueberries) or pink (strawberries), the kids will love it. If the smoothie turns out the color of mud, it might be harder to convince them to try it.

* thought for the day*

"On the subject of spinach: divide into little piles. Rearrange again into new piles. After five of six maneuvers, sit back and say you are full."   Delia Ephron, ‘How To Eat Like A Child’