Eat Your Greens
I have 2 boys very close in age. They have grown up together, and the oldest doesn't remember life before #2. So tell me, if they were raised eating all the same stuff, why oh why will one eat anything (his favorite sushi is ikura-salmon roe) and one would be happy getting all his sustenance from cereal, bread, and cheese? And seaweed. But that's just odd - it's from his days at Japanese kindergarten, and I will be eternally grateful to the school and teachers for expanding his culinary horizons, if only a little. But I digress.
I read all the books. I put foods in front of him multiple times, I've modeled good eating behaviors with a rainbow of fruits and veggies, we have been growing food from seeds and cooking together so he has a hand in what he eats. Nothing has worked.
Except...being sneaky. In a moment of desperation inspiration, I pureed some spinach into marinara sauce.
No complaints.
Emboldened, I chopped spinach small and sprinkled it on homemade pizza as if it were oregano.
"This is yummy!"
And so it began. I have been pureeing veggies into sauces for a very long time, and it still works. Sometimes I make a chili with all kinds of different veggies. I puree the whole thing and pour it over rice. It's one of his favorite meals.
And then recently, a miracle occurred. I openly admitted to him that I put veggies in a lot of what he eats, and he didn't freak out. In fact, he was totally cool with it. I think with him it's more of a texture issue than a taste issue, which I myself can relate to. To this day I don't like my food to touch on my plate. I'm the only person at a potluck eating only 3 items at a time. But we're not talking about me.
So I'm just going to keep on keeping on, doing what I gotta do, to make sure he gets the nutrition he needs. And praying that someday my blender won't get the workout it's getting right now.
Although, with my daughter's penchant for fruit smoothies, that blender has a lot more work to do.
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