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Taming Picky Eaters

Published July 15th, 2008 in Picky Eaters. 2 Comments

My brother and his family were visiting for the first week of school holidays. On the food front this posed two challenges for me. His two sons are picky eaters and they consumed a lot of junk food. As my nephews are older I know that their behaviour influences Brie Boy and Baby Bell.

Fortunately for me, they were busy catching up with friends and this reduced the number of meals we ate together. Here’s my approach for the three dinners and three lunches we shared.

Dinner One
This had to be a quick, easy dinner due to a busy schedule, a large gathering and watching a rugby union test match. I decided to go for soup as it could be premade and then warmed through. My kids like minestrone and I was hoping that they could exert their influence over their cousins by showing them how much they like it.

I pureed half of the lentils/beans as I accept that most kids will have trouble eating these or even seeing them! I serve my minestrone with parmesan cheese and pesto. To start of on the right foot, I gave the boys some of the parmesan cheese to nibble on whilst they were waiting as most kids like cheese.

When I served their soup I sprinkled shaved parmesan on top so they couldn’t quite see all the vegetables in the soup. My two tucked in, the older nephew surprised me and ate all the soup and even tried some pesto. He admitted that he couldn’t really taste all the vegetables in it. The younger nephew has a limited diet and ate the soup and pasta but left the vegetables. Not a bad effort from him. As he was still hungry I had some mince in the fridge just in case. Unbeknown to him I pureed the soup vegetables and mixed through the mince. He loved it!

Dinner Two
It was one of the boys birthday and so I decided we should celebrate with dinner at the local Teppanyaki restaurant. We have been before (here’s my post about it) and it was a great, fun way to eat. I told the boys it was like a big bbq. Again the older boy surprised me and ate the meat, chicken, salmon, tuna and fried rice but passed up on the cabbage as did all the kids. The younger boy said he would only eat the chicken but ended up preferring the meat and without being prompted also ate the tuna. They enjoyed the night and asked to come back when they were next visiting.

Dinner Three
This was an impromptu dinner and was just me and the four kids. I decided to base the dinner around the game “roll the dice” as they don’t play games at dinner and to see if it would encourage them to eat veggies they say they don’t like.

Luckily I had a meatloaf in my freezer which would give them something they were familiar with, however it made with sun-dried tomatoes and leeks so I was crossing my fingers that this would go undetected. The youngest only eats potatoes mashed so I thought I would try roasted potato wedges renamed as chips. For the other vegetables I served broccoli (cooked) carrots, celery and red capsicum (all raw) as I know Brie Boy and Baby Bell happily eat them and might extend peer pressure.

The boys loved rolling the dice to see what they would eat. The older nephew who is more adventurous than this brother and also likes carrots, didn’t complain about anything on his plate and asked for seconds on the meatloaf.

The younger nephew didn’t believe the wedges were chips but then managed to eat three of them as well as all the broccoli. He wasn’t as keen on the carrots, celery and capsicum but did eat a small stick of each after Brie Boy told him they were crunchy and yum.

As I was on a roll I cut up apples, pears and strawberries for dipping in a very quick and easy chocolate fondue (melt white marshmallows, chocolate and cream together – its divine). All fruit was easily devoured.

I almost managed to get ‘five a day’ in one meal.

Lunch One
This was a little bit of what they can’t see, they won’t know. I made hot cheese and ham rolls with a couple of extra ingredients; avocado, tomato salsa my kids (unexpectedly) love with pureed pumpkin mixed through it. The youngest nephew finds it hard to eat anything green and pull off the avocado which Baby Bell ate much to his surprise. The older boy surprised me by commenting how much he liked the salsa.

Lunch Two
A morning at the skate park and a walk along Manly beach led up to a plethora of junk food options for lunch. Our original intention was pub food of grilled fish, salad and wedges but it was late in the day and the kids were hungry. The golden arches were calling to the boys but we managed to divert their attention by showing them how they cooked the meat on an upright spit for doner kebabs and they could have tomato sauce with it. Doner Kebabs for me is a healthier junk food option.

Lunch Three
Pizza restaurant. My nephews only eat ham and pineapple pizza and I had intended to order a special kids pizza of ham, pineapple with capsicum and mushroom tossed thru the tomato paste. However this was thwarted when my brother arrived earlier than expected at the restaurant and preordered from the kids menu for his kids. I ordered my kids their favourite pizza of salami, capsicum, mushroom and olives, however the kids menu pizza was a small serving and they ended up trying some of our pizza without too much fuss. They did pick off the olives.

The boys were drinking soft drink with lunch and this had been their drink of preference all week. I had allowed Brie Boy and Baby Bell to consume some during the week. I told them soft drink was a sometimes food and we had already had some this week and didn’t need more than once a week and was pleasantly surprised they accepted my response.

Overall, I managed to expand my nephew’s vegetable repertoire and my kids didn’t eat as much junk food as first assumed.

The older nephew is nine years old and his acceptance of the food I offered showed me that as kids get older they become less picky. But I agree that it’s a long way to wait when they start showing pickiness around the age of two.

It also reconfirmed my theory that parents are so caught up in wanting their child to eat that they continue to offer safe options as they afraid they will refuse other choices and this prolongs the picky eating.

Hopefully my brother and sister-in-law will start to offer any some less safe options at dinner from now on.

How often do you offer your kids less safe options?

Under The Weather

Published July 2nd, 2008 in Uncategorized. 1 Comment

Under The Weather A quick update why there has been no recent posts.

It’s the start of winter here and for the first time in years the flu bug has bit and bit hard. I have been non compos mentis for over a week now. My MIL who looks after Baby Bell once a week so I can have a ‘blog’ day has taken some time out for the next two weeks so it has been a double whammy.

Oh it’s fun being a mum when you are under the weather.

Today is the first day I have been turned the computer on since my last post and I have a feeling that it won’t be on for much over the next week either. It is almost school holidays here and my brother and his family are on their way down from sunny Queensland to visit for a week.

I hope to be back blogging later this month.

The Great “Hiding Vegetables” Debate

Published June 24th, 2008 in Eating Their 'Greens'. 0 Comments

Last year saw the launch of two cookbooks, Deceptively Delicious and The Sneaky Chef on how to hide vegetables in your kids food. These books started a heated debate with health experts and the ‘mums’ world on the value of hiding vegetables in encouraging your kids to eat their greens.

Getting kids to eat their vegetables can be frustrating, difficult and testing on families and the success of these two books and the ensuring debate highlights this.

Hiding vegetables is not new, it is something mums have been doing for generations and is a great way to help your non-veggie lover start eating vegetables provided there are other strategies used in conjunction with this.

Each Yuck to Yum recipe includes a section on how to hide vegetables as part of an overall strategy to help you combat the dinner battle and vegetable struggle.

Yum to Yum recipes and blog show you other strategies to use;

Incorporating characteristics in meals that make food fun to eat for kids, ie finger foods, dipping and scooping
Making dinner visually appealing as kids eat with their eyes
Making dinner sound fun as kids also eat with their ears
Listing task kids can help to make dinner
Playing games to encourage healthy eating as kids love playing
Suggesting books to read to your kids with themes about healthy eating and picky eaters
Suggesting ways to make unfamiliar food familiar
Ways of introducing vegetables

If all these strategies are used together and not in isolation it will help to promote healthy eating in your family.

There is so much to say on the issue I have decided break the debate into parts and post each part separately;

Reasons why hiding vegetables is a viable option as part of an overall strategy
Answering the critics to why you shouldn’t hide vegetables
If you chose to hide vegetables – ‘a how to’ guide

Stay tuned for the next post in this series and bookmark this page because as I post each part to the debate I’ll link to them here.

It’s Okay To Play Airplanes

Published June 17th, 2008 in Game Time. 6 Comments

It’s Okay To Play Airplanes We have all heard that you should take away distractions when kids are eating dinner.

However this post is about using games as a distraction at dinner as it takes the focus off eating and makes dinner fun, not a chore.

A kids world is all about play and playing games at dinner is a great way to create a happy dinner experience.

I find playing games creates a relaxed and enjoyable environment which helps my kids look forward to meals rather than been forced to sit at the table until they have finished what is on their plate or eaten the ‘required number of bites’.

When we play games, I find my kids get involved in the game, have fun and eating becomes a by-product. Nine times out of ten, dinner is eaten and they forget to whinge or complain about anything they don’t like.

Introducing a game at dinner requires little effort for mums as they require no advance preparation. Much more effort is required when you have to persuade, plead or coax your kids to eat.

We play games at dinner is when:

I’m tired and have no will to be creative
The kids don’t feel like eating what I have cooked
They are tired by dinner time
Introducing new foods

As well as making dinner fun, games are a great way to develop and nurture family relationships. As an added bonus, game playing can help cultivate social and verbal skills.

Below are a few games to help make dinner fun rather than a battle. I have designed some of the games to help children learn about food and to try new foods.

Do you play games over dinner with your kids or do you think that dinner is not the time to play games?

Games For Younger Children

Lets all eat the same
Involve the whole family in an eating game. Taking turns, everyone names one food on their plate, then everyone puts the food on their fork and eats the same food at the same time. An extension on this game is to call out what mode of transport the fork is such as an aeroplane, car, boat or ship.

A Mouse In The House
A great one if your child isn’t eating. Place one piece of food on a plate and pose the question is there a mouse in the house? Turn away giving your child enough time to eat the food then turn back and if the food has disappeared, exclaim ‘why there is a mouse in the house!’ Ask if the mouse is going to come back, etc, etc. Keep going until all the food is eaten.

Roll The Dice
This game works best when there are six separate food items on the dinner plate. Give each item of food a number from one to six. Roll a dice and whatever number rolls face up means this is what you eat next. This is a favourite with my kids and they love having a dice each. Hint - always have on the plate a dislike food item.

Blast Off
Your child is the commander of a rocket ship which must fly to the moon. However the rocket needs to be refuelled to get there. To refuel your child must eat 10 bites of dinner so they can blast off. After each bite of dinner start the countdown 10 after the first bite, 9 after the second bite and so on. Once you get to one, you can blast off to the moon by making a noise, jumping up etc it’s your choice. This game can be played over and over again until dinner is eaten by refuelling another rocket, fly the rocket to mars, etc.

Monster Bites
This games involves taking bites of dinner in different sizes. Ask them to take a bite like a monster which obviously will be a big bite whereas a mouse bite will be a tiny little one.
Big bites - monster, dinosaur, lion, crocodile, pelican, whale, hippo, horse, bull, anaconda, elephant, komodo dragon, buffalo, bears, mammoth
Little bites - mouse, mosquito, butterfly, ant, starfish, meerkats, possum, turtles, hermit crab, budgies
Medium bites - duck, owl, frog, cat, deer, rabbit, panda, kangaroo, monkey, zebra, llama, sheep
Use your imagination and have lots of fun

Games For Older Children

What’s It Taste Like?
This game should help increase the variety in your child’s diet. Serve a meal with a few favourite ‘accepted’ foods and include a previously rejected food. Every family member has to describe the taste and texture of the food on their plate. Start with one at a time and parents go first. You may be surprised how many foods can be added to your child’s repertoire from this game.

Fluffy Bunny and Bunny Fluff
This is a fun way to get kids to try new foods. Going clockwise around the table each person has to say ‘Fluffy Bunny’ until Mum choses to say ‘Rabbit Ears’ and then it reverses counter clockwise and the saying changes to ‘Bunny Fluff’. Mum gets to decide when to say ‘Rabbit Ears’ to reverse the saying. Anyone who gets it wrong or makes a mistake has to try the new food or food they have previously expressed a dislike for.

What Food Am I?
Everyone has to guess what kind of food you by describing it. For example, you might say “I’m red but my cousins are green or yellow. I can be stuffed or put on a pizza.” Hopefully everyone will guess capsicum (bell pepper). You can also try pretending to be the food.

Things You Eat
The first person starts naming something you can eat. The next person must think of something starting with the last letter of the previous word.

What Rhymes
One person chooses a food on the plate and then going around the table everyone trys to rhyme with it. Take it in turns to choose the food.

Kids vote broccoli as one of their favourite vegetables

Published June 10th, 2008 in Eating Their 'Greens'. 3 Comments

Fruit + Vegetables Kids ranked carrots, broccoli, corn, and green peas as their favourite vegetables. However mums buy (in order of top-purchased vegetables per week) potatoes, baby carrots, tomatoes, lettuce/salads and corn. Spinach ranked last. This is according to a newly released survey by Produce for Kids of 1500 mums and children.

In my last post I noted that when you have a picky eater, mums tend to offer safe choices for fear their children will dislike the alternatives and then get stuck in a rut of serving ‘safe’ foods. It seems that this is reflected in this study. I’m sure many mums would have been surprised that their kids like broccoli as it is often wrongly maligned as a ‘universally hated’ vegetable. So this is your chance to add more greenery to your meals.

The survey also showed 70% of kids liked using dips to eat their fruit and vegetables. So when you serve vegetables also have a side serving of hummus, hollandaise, pesto, ranch dressing, tzatziki, guacamole, thousand island dressing ready for dipping.

Dipping is a fun way to eat for kids and I have incorporated this characteristic into some of my recipes; Dipsticks, Run Chicken Run and Green Martians on Flying Saucers. More recipes will be posted soon.

When it comes to fruit, mums and kids in the survey say bananas, apples, grapes, strawberries and easy-to-peel citrus fruits top their lists.

Another study last year (The Packer’s Fresh Trends 2007) show similar favourites for kids although broccoli this time only just made the top 10. This survey also based its results on the best selling fruit and vegetable produce that mum brought for the household.

Potatoes, onions, tomatoes and carrots top the list as the most popular vegetables in households with kids, while bananas, apples and grapes rank as the most popular fruits.

Kids Favourite Fruit & Vegetables

Some of the least-favourite items include pomegranates, papayas, beets, apricots, artichokes, cranberries, eggplant (aubergine), mangoes and kiwi fruit.

A survey by Heinz this year in the UK found the least popular vegetables for British kids are eggplant 39%, brussel sprouts 37%, celeriac 32% followed by cabbage 16% and mange tout (snow peas) 12%. Carrots came out on top.

I had no luck on finding any information about Australian kids.

The top three vegetables for both my kids are cucumbers, carrots and red capsicum (bell peppers). Brie Boy also loves tomatoes but Baby Bell won’t eat the seeds and will happy munch on lettuce which of course Brie Boy won’t touch.

They differ widely on fruit; Baby Bell is sticking with the trends as watermelon, apples, rockmelon (cantaloupe) and bananas are the only fruit she will eat. Brie Boy is happy to bend the rules and whilst he will eat pretty much any fruit put in front of him he loves mangoes, passionfruit, pineapple and plums.

How do your kids measure against the list?

The Great Big Vegetable Challenge

Published June 4th, 2008 in Eating Their 'Greens'. 6 Comments

I recently came across The Great Big Vegetable Challenge blog by an English mum who has a fantastic way of getting her vegetable phobic son to eat vegetables.

The UK Telegraph featured them in a story which I will paraphrase for you to give you the gist of this successful strategy.

Eight year old Freddy has refused to eat vegetables most of his life and would only eat potatoes and corn. His mum, Charlotte was at the end of her tether and like every other mother she tried everything from cajoling him, bribing him, getting angry to ignoring his picky eating.

So when you have a picky eater you tend to only offer safe choices because that all you think they will eat. This is exactly what his mum did and only cooked broccoli, carrots, peas and beans but it didn’t work and the vegetable battles continued at every meal.

Believing there had to be a better way, she decided to present him with lots of different vegetables in lots of different ways, in the hope he’d like something and that she could make him see how ridiculous it was to refuse everything that’s a vegetable.

So The Great Big Vegetable Challenge was born. It is a journey of trying all vegetables from A to Z. Charlotte cooks each vegetable three ways so that Freddie can see that even though he doesn’t like peas boiled and served plain, he may like them as pea pesto or in a creamy pea soup. Freddy gets to rate each recipe.

Charlotte started a blog of the journey and to also ask people from all over the world to send vegetables recipes. She cooks the recipes, posts pictures, Freddie’s comments and ratings on the blog.

And it is working. Freddie is trying all vegetable three ways and even liking more than some of them. This A to Z adventure started in November 2006 with A for asparagus and they are now up to T for Turnip.

Charlotte acknowledges that the success of the challenge has been due to;

Not narrowing Freddy’s vegetable choices
By only offering him certain, ‘safe’ vegetables to combat his pickiness meant she was mirroring his behaviour when there are actually thousands of different vegetables to choose from.

Allowing Freddy control over what he ate
Even though Freddy wasn’t cooking the recipes he become involved in the process and was more inclined to try new things.

Allowing Freddie to rate each recipe of what he did and didn’t like help establish this sense of being in control.

Through the blog Freddie became excited by communicating with people from all over the world and sending them feedback on their recipes. He also experienced a sense of responsibility to his audience to try their recipe.

Removed herself from the equation
The vegetable challenge is about Freddy and broadening his food horizons rather than Charlottes’ emotions tied to the Freddy rejecting his vegetables and taking it personally.

“It was about taking the heat out of the kitchen and turning meals into joyous, fun, warm social occasions rather than opportunities for one person to score points against another” she says.

If you have a vegetable hater in your family follow The Great Big Vegetable Challenge lead and try a mini challenge with your kids.

Eat the vegetable alphabet over 26 nights, ie night 1 is an A vegetable, night 2 is a B vegetable etc. or make every Sunday night for the next 26 weeks the night to eat through the vegetable alphabet.

Like Freddy, get your child involved in selecting the recipes, they can be sourced from family members, neighbours, recipe books or surfing the internet. Allow them to rate each recipe from 1 to 10. You could even make a scorecard for them.

Make your challenge fun and a family event. Praise your child for trying the vegetable not for just for eating it. If they don’t try it, you have exposed them to another vegetable and trying new foods is all about exposure. Remember to take the emotion out it.

Did you enjoy this article? Please pass it on to others at your favourite social networking site, or share your own thoughts in the comments below.

The Very Hungry Caterpillar

Published May 27th, 2008 in Book Reviews. 0 Comments

The Very Hungry Caterpillar teaches kids the importance of healthy eating.

One sunny day, a caterpillar pops out of an egg. He is very hungry and begins searching for food. The tiny, ravenous caterpillar starts eating ‘anytime’ foods; apple, pear, plums, strawberries and oranges. When he finds some ‘sometimes’ food he becomes greedy and doesn’t’ listen to his internal cues of fullness and gobbles up chocolate cake, ice cream, pickle, salami, lollipop, cherry pie, sausage, watermelon and cupcake. That night he has a stomach ache! He feels better again the next day when he eats more anytime food, a nice green leaf.

The Very Hungry Caterpillar is now ready to prepare itself for the chrysalis stage, and afterward emerges as a beautiful butterfly.

After a few reading of this book to Brie Boy + Baby Bell, they started to have lots of fun making the noise of the caterpillar getting the tummy ache and joined in with the chant of “but he was still hungry.”

The style of the book is fun and the author has cut holes in the centre of each piece of food making it look as if the caterpillar really has munched it’s way through it. The illustrations show the different colours and different shape of foods.

While The Very Hungry Caterpillar teaches that fruit and vegetables is the best food for us to eat and we can’t eat chocolate and ice cream, it has other side benefits of teaching the days of the week, counting and an introduction to science/biology when the little caterpillar turns into a beautiful butterfly.

Other Reviews
I read all the reviews on The Very Hungry Caterpillar on Amazon and Dooyoo and picked up these comments from kids, teachers and mums to show how well the message of the book works.

“So on Saturday, he eats a bunch, and I mean a BUNCH of junk and gets sick that evening. No wonder! Mixing salami with a lollipop, cake, ice cream and watermelon just doesn’t make for a great outcome. But on Sunday, he eats another green leaf and feels much better. I think that says a lot about how important it is to eat good things.”
Child

“I have been teaching 3-5 year olds for seven years, and they love this book. They ask me to read this book every day. We have made art projects to go along with it as well as food experiences. The children learn the days of the week, they learn foods that are good for you and foods that are not.”
Teacher

“My favourite pages has to be when the little caterpillar eats through all the goodies and has a very sad look on his face only to become happier again when he eats the leaf the next day. Something important to teach children who pester you with demands of treats all day. You can turn round and say that the caterpillar was much healthier after eating fruit than cake.”
Mum

“While children enjoy laughing out loud to the caterpillar’s eating habits, they are able to learn the importance of healthy eating.”
Teacher

“And there’s usually a life lesson to be learned in these sweet little books (like eating too much cake and candy can give you a TUMMY ACHE!)”
Mum

Activity Ideas

Questions to ask

Which foods did the caterpillar eat that helped him to grow?
Which foods made the caterpillar feel sick?
Why did these foods make him feel sick and not the other foods?
Why did he feel better when he ate the green leaf?

Butterfly Dinners
At dinner pretend to transform your kids into “kidderpillars.” They have to pretend to be the very hungry caterpillar who eats his way through dinner to emerge as a butterfly. Once they have eaten their dinner they can fly off like a butterfly.

Caterpillar Dinner Art
With your child create a caterpillar face with a paperplate, pipecleanser and pencils. Then every time your child finishes their dinner, they can draw a piece of food on a paperplate and add to the caterpillar body.

The Very Hungry Caterpillar Fruit Salad
Help build up child’s sequencing and memory skills with remembering what fruit the caterpillar ate and make a fruit salad with them.

1 Apple, deseeded and cut into bite-sized pieces
2 Pears, deseeded and cut into bite-sized pieces
3 Plums, deseeded and cut into bite-sized pieces
4 Strawberries, hulled and cut into halve
5 Oranges, peeled and cut into bite-sized pieces
Mint leaves (optional)

Mix fruit and mint together and eat.

Healthier choices
Talk to your child that some foods are healthier choices than others. Describe these as anytime and sometimes food.

Anytime food are foods that are good to eat almost anytime. They are the healthiest ones, ie fruit and vegetables.
Sometimes foods aren’t off-limits, but they shouldn’t be eaten every day. At most, eat them several times a week, ie cake, icecream.
You can also introduce Once-in-a-while foods. These are the least healthy and the most likely to cause weight problems, especially you eat them all the time, ie chips, donuts.

‘Green’ Vegetables
Discuss that the caterpillar eats green leaves, but we eat green vegetables. Name all the green vegetables you can with your child; spinach, broccoli, cabbage, brussel sprouts, peas, celery, beans, zucchini, asparagus, cucumbers, capsicum, lettuce, bok choy.

You can suggest that you include some of the green vegetables you talked about in tonight’s dinner.

Green Martians on Flying Saucers (Vegetable Fritters w Chicken + Avocado Dip)

Published May 20th, 2008 in Recipes. 4 Comments

Vegetable Fritters w Chicken & Avocado Dip Welcome to the AB blogging pack and thanks for getting all the way down the feed list to ‘Y’. This is my first post since joining. My blog is aimed at parents with children under 10 or so years of age. This isn’t some of you and no doubt you will delete my feed. However, before you hit delete could I request a small favour. Please click on my email bookmark below and email this or another Yuck To Yum post to a friend who is a parent of small children. It would be greatly appreciated and would help promote my blog.

For those of you on the AB blogging pack that are parents I hope you enjoy my blog. This post is a kid friendly recipe and gives you more than just ingredients and method. If offers you several strategies to help prevent the dinner battle. This post will give explain more about my recipes.

Why it’s good for Mums
Fritters are easy to disguise vegetables and any leftover fritters are great for morning tea or school lunches.

Why it’s good for Kids
Kids love to dip food and they can dip the fritters and chicken into the avocado dip. It’s also semi finger food.

Ingredients
350g chicken tenderloins
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoon lemon juice
2 corn cobs, kernels removed or 310g tin corn kernels, drained
150g zucchini, grated
2 eggs, lightly beaten
1/3 cup milk
1 cup self-raising flour
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon ground coriander
salt and cracked black pepper
2 large ripe avocados, halved, stones removed, peeled
120g (1/2 cup) sour cream
Salt + pepper to taste

Method

Toss chicken in olive oil, 1 tablespoon lemon juice, salt and pepper and allow to marinate until cooking
Place the avocado, lemon juice and sour cream in a bowl. Use a fork to mash until smooth. Transfer to individual dipping bowls.
Whisk together the corn, zucchini, eggs and milk. Gradually stir in the sifted flour and cumin, coriander, salt and pepper.
Heat a little oil in a non-stick frying pan over medium heat. Using a tablespoon, place heaped spoonfuls of the mixture in the pan and cook in batches. Using a spatula, turn them once, until golden and cooked through. Keep warm in preheated oven as you cook remaining fritters.
Add chicken to pan and pan fry for 3-5 mins and golden brown on both sides.

Tips
Use any vegetables you like; grated carrot, diced capsicum, finely chopped spinach, grated sweet potato or potato, peas, diced beans, shredded cabbage, diced tomatoes.

This is a great way for using up vegetables in your fridge.

Marinating the chicken in the olive oil and lemon prior means you don’t have to add additional oil to the pan when cooking.

I used wholemeal self raising flour and find that it makes no difference and the kids are just as happy.

Hidden vegetables
Use any pureed vegetable you like and mix in. My suggestions are zucchini, squash, cauliflower, pumpkin, sweet potato, spinach, eggplant, mushrooms, parsnip, peas

If you child is picky about eating ‘green’ or other colours select carefully what vegetables you use. If your child can detect hidden vegetables stick with the white options – cauliflower, parsnip, squash and zucchini (peel skin).

Busy Mums
Fritters can be made in advance and successfully reheated in the oven or microwave.

2nd Sitting
Fritters can be reheated in microwave or oven.
Pan fry chicken when required
After making the avocado dip, sprinkle with extra lemon juice and cover with plastic wrap to prevent browning.

Spice It Up
There is loads of potential to spice this meal up;
Fritters – cook the kids first and then mix thru 1 teaspoon of minced chilli
Chicken – add 1 tablespoon of sweet chilli sauce to marinade
Avocado Dip – add diced Spanish onion, diced tomato and Tabasco sauce to taste.
Substitute the avocado dip for tomato salsa or spicy tomato relish. Serve with green salad leaves.

Creating a Scene
Serve 1-2 chicken tenderloins (depending on size) on top of fritter. Serve avocado dip in separate bowl for dipping or alternatively spoon on top of chicken.

Hands On

Toss chicken in olive oil and lemon
Sift flour
Grate zucchini or other vegetables
Break eggs and lightly beat
Mix fritter batter
Mash the avocado and mix with sour cream and lemon

Game Time
Tell A Story
Start a story at the beginning of dinner but only tell the first line, then everyone has to have a bite before you can tell the next line and so on. Make the story silly, funny and it doesn’t have to make any sense at all.

Alternatively, each child can add to the story after they eat a bite of dinner. My son loves this game but I give you fair warning that toilet humour will raise its head when they join in.

Your Feedback
If this recipe appeals to you and you bookmark it to cook for a family dinner, please stop by after the dinner and let me know how it went. I really want to know what you think of the recipe, how your kids reacted, how your hubby reacted, was it easy to follow etc. While I love hearing all the good stuff, I also don’t mind hearing from you where things went wrong so I improve it.

PS I apologise for the terrible food shot, I think my camera is dying.

Sometimes Not Taking Any Notice Works Too

Published May 13th, 2008 in Avoiding The Battle. 0 Comments

Not Taking Any Notice As a working mum, I always leave work later than anticipated and then sit in peak hour traffic looking at my watch wondering if I’m going make it to after school care on time. I have two pick ups so this makes it even more maddening.

When I picked up Brie Boy the other night at 5.59pm (just made it!) he was chomping on an apple and Baby Bell wanted one to. When we arrived home Baby Bell went straight to the fruit bowl and bit into an apple. After two days at child care she is always tired and this makes dinner harder, but as she has a hot meal at child care so I try not to get too work up over what she eats for dinner these two nights.

I was making an avocado dipping sauce for chicken and fritters however the avocado had not ripen in time so I pulled a tomato salsa from the freezer as my alternative and only served a little on the side as I didn’t think either kid would be interested in eating it. I hardly paid any attention to them during dinner as I wasn’t expecting them to be hungry after eating the apples, I was starving having only eaten a banana and yoghurt all day, the latest issue of a cooking magazine had arrived and I was feeling very tired and not up to the battle.

Well image my surprise when I looked up and they had nearly finished their dinner and they were licking the salsa with their fingers. They ended up eating all the salsa and leaving none for the Big Cheese.

It reminded me of another dinner a while ago where I also got distracted by reading at the dinner table and the kids ate their dinner without coaxing or game playing.

Whilst I know reading at the table is not recommended it did make me realise that if the kids have your attention they will play up to it and they work out pretty quick that the dinner table is one place where they have your full attention.

So every now and again (especially if it’s been a tiring day) take no notice of the kids, have an adult conversation with your partner (or read if you are on your own) and don’t stress about what or how much they are eating (they won’t starve) and they may just surprise you.

The Perfect Mother’s Day Gift

Published May 6th, 2008 in Avoiding The Battle. 2 Comments

Vouchers for Mum Mothers Day is this Sunday and I’m not a fan of the commercialisation of Mothers Day and having to buying presents. However, as I have been a Mum for six years it is nice to be appreciated a least one day a year by the kids.

I have always like the idea that kids make home made vouchers that promise a special service that you can redeem at any time, ie putting my toys away, to be on my best behaviour, one big hug and kiss.

As Brie Boy is now 6 I thought it would be a good time to start this as a family tradition for Mothers Day or Fathers Day and mentioned it to The Big Cheese. He had a lightbulb moment and suggested that some of the vouchers could be redeemed at the dinner. My mind went racing with the potential of getting kids to eat their greens, try new foods, have a peaceful dinner, the list is endless.

Here are some suggestions you could use. Obviously, it will depend on each child and their age.

I will not ‘yuck’ Mummy’s cooking
I promise to try something new
I will help Mummy cook dinner
I will not whinge at dinner
I will eat more than 3 bites of dinner (valid for one dinner)
I will come to the dinner table when asked the first time
I will help with the washing up
I will not pick a fight with my brother/sister at dinner
I will try a mushroom (or other hated vegetable)
I will eat up all my greens (valid for one dinner)
I will set the table for dinner
I promise to be good at the dinner table
I will eat something that is red, orange and green for dinner tonight
I will be a big boy/girl at dinner and will feed myself
I will be quiet and not run around at the restaurant

This website makes it easy to make and print out the vouchers.

I would suggest that when you redeem a voucher you make your child aware that is going to happen prior to dinner and not just spring it on them.

Do you like this idea and do you think it will be successful with your kids?

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Taming Picky Eaters

Under The Weather

The Great “Hiding Vegetables” Debate

It’s Okay To Play Airplanes

Kids vote broccoli as one of their favourite vegetables

The Great Big Vegetable Challenge

The Very Hungry Caterpillar

Green Martians on Flying Saucers (Vegetable Fritters w Chicken + Avocado Dip)

Sometimes Not Taking Any Notice Works Too

The Perfect Mother’s Day Gift

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