How to get your kids to eat vegetables for only $1.25 plus tax

Our kids were great eaters as babies and toddlers.  They would eat whatever fabulously healthy vegetable I would give them.  Once they became preschoolers, however, they learned to say "no" and exert their independence.  That's when vegetables lost their appeal.  For years, we have bribed rewarded our daughter by permitting her to have dessert or a treat after she finishes the vegetables on her plate.  Apparently our son did not inherit my sweet tooth because that trick doesn't work with him.  He would rather starve than eat his vegetables.

Our vegetable peeler has been MIA for the past few weeks, so when I saw some peelers on sale 75% off at CVS last week, I had to buy one.  Our son found this cheap peeler to be quite fascinating.  It has a plastic oval container around it to capture the peels for "tidy" peeling. (Don't believe those claims on the packaging because it still makes a mess.)  The peeler resembles a rocket from our son's perspective, so every day since my purchase, he has asked to peel vegetables and then proceeds to EAT them all on his own initiative.

 

During his first peeling attempt, when the bin grew full, peeling became more difficult, so he said, "Mom, I think it needs new batteries."  Clearly he is growing up in an automated world if he thinks a manual peeler needs batteries.

I guess the mantra is true that a man just needs the right tools.  My husband has never been one to enjoy home improvement projects, and with his 60+ hrs/week job, church commitments, and his complete devotion to our family, he rarely has any free time for such projects.  He really surprised me when he bought this enormous saw with his Christmas money.

Since then, he's been quite the handyman, and I'm loving all the built-in shelving he fashioned from scrap wood for our recreation room.  It's all about having the right tools!

If neither bribery nor gadgetry can convince your child to eat vegetables, a parent could always resort to deception.  Jessica Seinfeld certainly got a lot of press for her book, Deceptively Delicious: Simple Secrets to Get Your Kids Eating Good Food.  The gist of her book is to puree vegetables and then mix the vegetable goop into similarly colored foods with flavors that overwhelm the vegetable flavor.  For example, one of the easiest vegetables to disguise is cauliflower since it has a mild flavor.  She recommends mixing cauliflower puree into cheesy or Alfredo pastas.  Green vegetables like spinach and broccoli can be mixed into tomato based sauces or chili without too much detection.  I want my kids to grow up knowing how to eat healthy and having the desire to be good stewards of their bodies by choosing nutritious foods.  So, while I may not deceive them through sneaky meal preparation, I do try to add more vegetables into our sauces and soups.  How do you get your children to eat vegetables?