I’ve been writing a lot of posts and recipes recently which are much more to do with my general love of food than about my original stealth health for picky eaters mission.  One of those things where life just gets in the way I guess but on reading a friend’s blog, where she mentions “me” time and using her blog as a way of recording things she wants to do so she has to go ahead and get them done got me thinking about using my blog as much for actually blogging as for recipes.  So here we go on my thoughts on fussy kids who won’t eat vegetables and what you might be able to do to get round that.

The first thing to remember is that any veg is better than no veg.  So if they’ll only eat baked beans, then give them baked beans.  But even baked beans can be improved.  I do have a recipe for baked beans which I will make soon and share here which is packed with different types of veg but in the meantime you could try taking a couple of carrots and maybe an onion, steaming them for about 10 minutes and then pureeing them in a blender and adding that to the baked bean “juice” with maybe a squirt of tomato puree for good measure.  A little apple puree, whilst not being a vegetable of course, can add some extra sweetness.  I’d recommend adding only say a tablespoon of the additional ingredients for a day or so and then gradually increasing the amount over the course of time so that they are getting more and more.  I have all sorts of purees like this frozen in ice-cubes so that I can make them in bulk.  You could try this with things like tinned pasta too.

If the only veg your fussy eater will eat is from a can, then whilst not ideal, it is, again, better than not having any at all.

There is a common misconception around fresh food that it is better than frozen.  It may be true as regards some food stuffs, although I don’t know which but when it comes to vegetables it’s generally not the case.  “Fresh” unless it is picked straight from your own garden and cooked that day is generally going to be at least a few days old and in many cases, it will be weeks old.  Frozen is harvested at its peak and then frozen within hours of harvest so actually, it’s fresher!  Does that make sense?  So if they prefer frozen veg, give yourself a big pat on the back – all is good!

Adding pureed vegetables to foods can take all sorts of forms.  You could add it to gravy and sauces or mashed into mashed potato.  And don’t feel you have to stick to adding purees to savoury foods – pureed veg can be undetectable in cakes, particularly chocolate ones.

Sometimes, we get tied up in thinking that vegetables should be eaten cooked and on our dinner plates.  A lot of children like fruit salad and prepared fruit, so why not add in a few sticks of carrot and or cucumber with their grapes and apple?  Red pepper slices mixed through a fruit salad sit perfectly well with the other flavours.  You can work this the other way round too, particularly in salads adding fruits like strawberries and peaches with feta cheese and a few pine nuts or pistachios.  At the end of the day, what you want is for them to think of both fruit and vegetables as integral to their diet – it doesn’t matter about the order in which it is eaten.

Stuffing vegetables with rice and meat is another way of starting the process of trying something new.  There is a fun element in taking the “lid” off a stuffed pepper or having a slice of pepper with an egg poached or fried in the centre.

Soups are an amazing way of heaping in the vegetables and for some reason, a lot of quite picky kids don’t even pause to think of the fact that they are wolfing down loads of veg when they are eating soup.

Another way that I use is grating carrot, parsnip and sweet potatoes into mince for bolognese or lasagne and even cottage pie.  When it is finely grated, it seems to have a very similar texture to the meat and they really don’t notice it’s there.

Add vegetables to your smoothies.  Spinach in particular works really well for this and carrots too.

Mask parsnip with banana as I do in my banoffee pie recipe.  My grandmother used carrots in the War in place of apricots and peaches.  I’ve yet to try out her carrot and apple crumble recipe so that too should be on my “to-do” list!  If all else fails, there’s always carrot cake.