Kids & Food: Hiding good stuff in bad stuff.. or just ok stuff!

So, I wanted to post about a few things I do to get some "good stuff" into my picky girls. And maybe get some new ideas from fellow mommas... **hint hint** that means comment. :)

Donni will eat anything just about so this really doesn't apply to him lol.

First off I want to say my girls are the pickiest eaters ever..as babies they would eat everything and then all the sudden wouldn't eat anything (I am trying to avoid this with Donni by offering him a wide variety while he will eat it without a fight!) I mean Alana practically lives on pizza and mac n cheese most weeks. She has a variety of "snack" and "breakfast" type foods she eats but dinner is really limited. The big issues with my girls is meats and veggies shocker right?? lol. More shocking is that Alana is better with veggies then Kaila. But the only Meat Alana will touch is Pepperoni on her pizza..

Using a bribe and fibbing on what a food is...

I was very proud of Kaila Thurs night because she ate a boneless thin porkchop (it will be one of my Thursdays um in 2 weeks? lol) she said it looked like Mcd's hashbrowns when it was cooking (she was "helping" me) and actually wanted to try it! I almost fainted... lol. First she ate the outside hashbrown looking part first (breading) and liked it.. then I bribed her to eat more for an M&M.. and she decided she just loved it and ate the whole thing and asked us for more :-0.. OMG, is this my kid I wondered??

No way.. She even had multiple pieces in her mouth.. no nibbling she was going crazy.. she then proceeded to ask me to make it for dinner every night.. lol... But don't tell her that we lied when we told her it was chicken.. The only meat she would (knowingly) eat before then was turkey lunchmeat and chicken nuggets from McD's.. so I figured chicken might sound better then pork...I tried to bribe her to eat some veggies... nice try mom!

And then I bribed Alana with M&M's to try her veggies... she will eat green beans and corn normally but we had carrots, broccoli and cauliflower. I tried to bribe her to try the pork but was unsuccessful which is not shocking. But she did try her veggies.. she gagged but still ate it and got her M&M. It actually got quite comical because she wanted the M&M's so she would grab the tiny piece of veggie and shove it to the back of her throat trying to bypass the gagging... now thats dedication! She used to do this with green beans too but now eats them with no problem.

And Disguising/Hiding good food in bad food.. or just okay food...

One of my favorite tricks is adding 2 eggs to macaroni and cheese at the same time you add the cheese and butter..you add those in place of most the milk. I still add a tablespoon or so of milk. It makes it creamier and gets eggs into my girls that otherwise wouldn't touch an egg with a ten foot pole. Next time I think I am gonna try to add pureed carrots too!. anything orange :).

My next Thursdays post I did another secret (but forgot to take pics of the secret) I made a recipe that required spaghetti sauce.. I use one can of spaghetti sauce and one can of tomato sauce and add spices to make my spaghetti sauce.. I put the can of tomato sauce in the blender and added a about a cup total of frozen carrots and frozen peas, feel free to add more, even blend the meat in!. (I keep bags of frozen veggies just for this purpose. really no need to cook them before hand.) add spices and mix up. Sure its a little darker then normal but then you add that to the can of spaghetti sauce and you can't tell one bit.. also what I did and will share on Thursday lol.. I added eggs to the noodles before adding sauce so there is some more eggs they normally wouldn't eat otherwise.. you have to check thursday out for more information! :). You can also do this with pizza sauce.. this really only benefits Kaila because Alana won't touch spaghetti sauce only plain noodles.. which is why I want to start adding some to the mac n cheese next time!

My girls like a boxed chicken alfredo that includes chicken and all.. well they won't eat the chicken cubes in it.. shocker right? They just eat the noodles, so what I started doing is putting the sauce with the chicken in it, into the blender and mixing it all together.. they are none the wiser..

So Peanut Butter is great IMO but Alana won't touch it.. so I add it to some vanilla icecream therefore making peanut butter icecream... It's yummy. I also add a little milk to the mix so the icecream isn't to thick from the peanut butter. You can do this with bananas, all kinds of stuff if your kids won't eat it.

So what are some of your tricks??