Friday, August 27, 2010

Hiding the nutrition

A list of the healthy foods I have recently tricked my kids into eating: Many of them are on the list of Superfoods; blueberries, avocados, olive oil, spinach, broccoli, dark chocolate, kiwi, apples, beans, oats, oranges, salmon, tomatoes, yogurt, turkey, eggs. Organic Yogurt and fruit: Ice cream cone filled with organic fruit yogurt, topped with frozen blueberries and a frozen strawberry. Put into freezer until yogurt is frozen. The perfect after school snack - they think it tastes like fruit ice cream. The cone (0 fat, 0 sugar and 15 cal) adds almost nothing to the snack but "fun." Bananas, Almond butter, raisins: Sliced bananas long ways, spread with almond butter, add raisins - Ants on a log. Blueberries, Dark chocolate, bran, oats, flax: Bran muffins with added frozen blueberries and dark chocolate chips. Sometimes I also add a mashed banana. (Scotty is the only one who does not like these). Carrot Juice, Organic Greek yogurt, blueberries: Smoothie. V8 splash as the base plus the added fruit and yogurt and some ice, blended in the blender. Instead of regular peanut butter and jelly: Nutrigrain waffle, natural peanut butter, topped with sliced grapes and drizzled with honey. Instead of regular spaghetti and meatballs: Wholegrain spaghetti noodles, Ragu traditional (has no high fructose corn syrup), turkey meatballs. When I feel they are in need of some diet balancing: We have buffet night. I put out a buffet of leftovers, crackers, cheese, yogurt, fruit, vegies, meatballs, lunch meat, peanut butter bagels, etc. They have sectioned plates, and have to put a different food group in each section. Must finish all sections before having any seconds of anything. They love this. Somehow they are tricked into always being excited about buffet night. Quick eggs: I keep hard boiled eggs in the fridge a lot, however the kids don't really like to eat a cold hard boiled egg all that much, especially the yolk, and I don't always have time to scramble or fry eggs. But, if I dice a hard boiled egg and put it in a little cup with a tiny bit of shredded cheese on it and micro it for like 15 seconds, they will gobble it up. Olive oil: I've been using it instead of any other oil for cooking and baking lately and no one has cared a bit. Olive oil is a quite healthy oil. Beans: I've been sneaking in some refried bean on their quesadillas, but only some of the kids go for it. Broccoli: top it with cheese of course. I'm on a mission to sneak in some avocados and spinach.

4 comments:

  1. I'm proud of you!! I'll try some of this on your Dad!

    ReplyDelete
  2. If you grind up Spinach (cooked or uncooked) with some olive oil you can make a spinach pesto... mix it with tomato sauce and they'll never even know!

    Also, you can try pureeing avocado and spreading it on sandwiches and quesadillas.

    Hope these work for ya!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Laura, I pureed spinach and added at least half a bag of it frozen into my sauce for my lasagna and my kids scarfed it down!

    ReplyDelete