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Vegetable Recipes for Children

By: KC Kudra Vegetables might be one of the best ways to get vital vitamins and minerals into your family's diet but how many times have you told you children to eat their vegetables? Probably quite a few.

Almost all children seem to have an aversion to vegetables. They will kick up a fuss, cry, and push the vegetables around their plate.

Vegetables do not always have to be the enemy. The key is to find a creative way to prepare them and your family will become vegetable lovers rather than vegetable haters!

Do you remember when you were a child and your mother dropped a soggy green lump of cabbage on your plate. Did you want to eat it? Almost certainly not.

There are various ways to encourage your children to eat their vegetables. You might even need to trick them! Broccoli is an example of a vegetable, which is high in vitamin and mineral content, and there are plenty of ways to prepare it. Here are some tips:

Raw - leave a platter of raw broccoli cut up into bite size pieces in the fridge as a snack for your children. Serve it a little bowl of salad dressing for them to dip it in and you will have an instant hit. Make sure you leave the tips of the broccoli on the platter and encourage your child to eat them. If you are creative, you can make a game of it.

Bribery - Do not laugh, it works! Tell your child that if he or she eats their veggies, you will give them a special treat when they are done. It is important that you follow through and give him or her the treat.

Use cheese. Cheese and broccoli go very well together. If you pour a cheese sauce over the broccoli, you are adding texture and changing the flavor. You might find your children eat the broccoli in cheese before whatever else you have served with it.

Lasagna is delicious with broccoli added. Smothering it in cheese can add to the flavor and disguise the broccoli. Children will be too busy enjoying the cheesy flavor to bother picking out the bits of broccoli. Vegetable pizza is another way of sneaking in broccoli. Nearly all kids love pizza so a healthy vegetable pizza recipe will produce something they associate with fun rather than veggies.

Try chopping it up. You can pre-cook the broccoli, cook it for a few minutes, and put it in the food processor. You can then add it to whichever recipe you are preparing and the kids will not know it is in there.

This might sound strange but it works. Make your kids a milkshake with milk, ice cream, and chocolate syrup. Add some broccoli to the shake and blend it. Your kids will not be able to see or taste the broccoli as long as the ice cream is chunky.

Vegetables are high in essential nutrients, especially for growing kids, so it is great that there are so many ways to get them to eat their veggies!