[carolynpep73]

I'm pulling my hair out trying to come up with ideas for dinners that Olivia will actually want to eat. My once great eater has turned quite picky. Her scope is now, chicken, spaghetti, mac and cheese, grilled cheese, hot dogs and lunch meats. Since it's just her and I, I end up wasting a lot of money on foods that I can't finish and she won't eat. I'm looking for recipes, slow cooker ideas, anything you can through out that you think she might like. I don't allow much mac and cheese or hot dogs, but I'm getting pretty sick of chicken...at least the recipes I have. She really likes pasta but she's not too big on veggies. Help!

[Lori Elena]

Brian likes it when I make lemon pepper chicken (boneless breast of chicken, quick spray of Pam, sprinkled with lemon pepper seasoning and baked in the toaster oven) and rice pilaf. For him, I cut up some of the chicken and mix it up with the rice. It's incredibly easy and he just loves it!

HTH,
Lori

[ERAmy]

well, i have the odd ball kiddo. he LOVES soup, any kind pretty much. adores seafood and fish (can put away his weight in crab legs).

[arthymom]

Definitely try crock pot chicken stews. Add peas and carrots and there you have some good veggies.

Can he have eggs yet? I love serving eggs over easy w/cheese on top and a whole wheat muffin w/butter for dinner. Doesn't solve your veggie issue but it is a good source of protein.

Beef stew

veggie pizza

This is a bad one but it worked w/ds. We did desert when he got picky. If he ate his entire dinner he got ice cream (low sugar...Edy's low sugar low fat) for desert. It worked w/him.

Also...Here's a thought: Homemade mac and cheese. You add the cheese, milk, butter and melt in a saucepan slowly and add to a pasta. We did that.

And you can buy hot dogs that are all natural beef no fillers or nitrates and cut them up tiny...take the skins off to eliminate choking hazards.

Good luck...very normal. My ds is now 5 and he outgrew the really picky phase...Not to say that he tries new things daily, but he is more willing to.

Our daughter, well, very different. If I let her near the garbage can she'll eat that too. She is my eater!

[TXTennis]

She is a mac and cheese lover. She also likes the quesadillas we make with cheese and ham, turkey or chicken, and you can throw in some veggies with it.

[dance_muffin]

Our little one is a terrific eater! Her favorite is spaghetti and meatballs. But have you looked at the cookbooks the Sneaky Chef and Deceptively Delicious? They got rave reviews for sneaking in the veggies to almost every dish. Might be worth a look at.

[CEB]

Curtis has an off and on relationship with veggies - sometimes he will be cool with eating them and other times for days on end they get spit right back out. We find that we can consistently get them to stay in the mouth if, as someone else noted, they go in with something cheesy (ie veggie pizza and quesadillas are favorites). Other than veggies though he is a good eater.

[cbmstephanie]

Besides all of the stuff that you mentioned Maria loves beef stew and ravioli. She will eat either cheese ravioli or beef ravioli and sometimes I can sneak in spinach ravioli. She will eat any kind of noodle and she loves white steamed rice. Eggs, bacon and potatoes are also faves. Good Luck!!

[jeannecr]

I agree, spinach ravioli or veggie lasagna is a good way to sneak veggies in. My son also loves black beans and rice, and I can add tiny diced veggies without him noticing. Also, he loves Chinese veggie fried rice so much that he just gobbles it up, veggies and all!

[jroandco]

I am laughing b/c I didn't know veggies were a food group. I mean once upon a time they were, but golly that was eons ago. George hates everything even remotely close to resembling veggies-other than those Gerber Graduates sweet pots and carrots. Won't eat the sweet pots I make. He can spot a veggie in a hurricane! If it was hatched in a crock pot-FORGET IT!! I cannot wait for the day that he bounces back, hoping that his sister can help snap him out of it. He doesn't even like hot dogs, lunch meat, jelly. Yep, our pb&j is pb only. Won't eat regular mac and cheese has to be the spirals. But then he'll turn around and eat fancy cheese and red pepper hummus.

dance_muffin, Thanks for the cookbook ideas. I have tried others, but will look into those when we get back.

carolynpep73, Good luck. I feel your food woes.

jessica

[KKR213]

John's favorites change every few days! He also likes mac and cheese but not plain pasta.

Chicken and brocolli casserole.

Ham steak with mashed potatoes and corn.

His new favorite veggie is asparagus steamed in those glad steamer bags! Very good! I served it with pork chops.

He also likes quiche and there are some veggies in there.

Hot dogs are always a favorite but I don't give him those often especially since I hate them!

It is tough coming up with new ideas!

[judymend]

Peter Jack is a really good eater - his favorites are not the easiest to cook, but here they are...
Arroz con Gandules (Rice w/Pigeon Peas);
Manicoti Shells stuffed with just about anything really (chicken, ground turkey) w/some shredded cheese on top;
Red Kidney Beans w/the Arroz con Gandules or White Rice (he loves anything that is a legume).

We use Sofrito as our flavoring for making our food, and that consists of:

Onions, Green Bell Peppers, Culantro, Cilantro, Garlic and a bit of salt...I makde this in large batches and i freeze it and use it daily. I think it flavors the food so well, but then again, its what I grew up on, so I love it, and Peter Jack seems to be aquiring the same love for it.

He loves beef stew and loves, loves, loves any kind of soup! He loves veggies, so I include as many as I can in the soup consistency because he enjoys it so much.

He also enjoys Pastelillos de Carne, which I make with ready-made dough and fill them with cheese, chicken, ground turkey and/or veggies, he loves these! He also loves veggie pizza.

[JustBarbara]

DS loves his spagbowls - and sometimes I throw in some broccoli or green beans but he also likes steamed broc and carrots, soups - especially pea and carrot with bread for dipping! Rice and red beans - sometimes I add chicken or steak and make us burritos. Any kind of chicken with sauce and rice. Mini ravioli with a little butter. Pancakes - I'll sometimes just toss in a can of corn so they become dinner/savory pancakes. Shells stuffed with moussaka ... my sister made moussaka for us over vacation and just to be safe I asked her to cook some spag shells and lo and behold he loved the two combined. Avacados - plain - guacamole and humus (not together) on pita, tortillas or wheat bread. Falafel, humus and lettuce/toms pockets. Mashed potatoes - add anything to it, he'll eat it. Fruit - any kind of fruit especially blueberries, bananas, grapes and all kinds of melons. Mac and cheese, hot dogs, lunch meats - I don't buy them for myself so he's not getting those at least for now. We both love to eat - but he's now going down to 2% milk because well, he loves to eat and drink his milk.

[GuatabeeAMum]

Our ds is also anti-veggie these days, but here are a few ways we can sneak them in:

1. When making spaghetti I throw green pepper, onion, carrots, and celery in the blender with Prego and presto healthy sauce and he eats it cause he doesn't know the veggies are there. The carrots make the sauce a sort of weird orange shade, but oh well.

2. I throw frozen peas in while cooking the macaroni for mac and cheese and then he gobbles it up.

3. When I make stew, I always make baking powder biscuits and then when I serve it instead of ladling the stew on top I first mush up the carrots and peas on the biscuit and then ladle the meat and potatoes which are the only part he would eat normally on the biscuit. Since its mushed up he can't pick it out and he loves bread enough to eat the biscuit even with the musched up veggies.

Good luck...I'll be watching this one closely as I need more ideas for my anti veggie guy too.

[BosMom]

I think a lot of this is a 'two' thing. My son has days when he'll eat hardly ANYTHING, and others when he'll eat his weight. I have an aunt who is a pediatric nurse and she said (when I was stressing!) - "Don't worry; they'll eat when they are hungry." (I wish I'd learned that lesson when I was a kid... 'cause I learned to 'clean my plate' and eat when I was NOT hungry', a habit I've perfected as an adult. )

I've found frozen spinach can be slipped into just about anything. He's a big fan of pasta (and who ISN'T during this ENDLESS WINTER), so I'll throw frozen spinach (a LOT of frozen spinach) into the marinara sauce (or alfredo) and pour that over the warm pasta (penne is easiest for him to eat) and he gets MORE than a serving of veggies and doesn't even know it! Getting him to eat vegetables has become a GAME to me... and I'm determined to WIN! Some days he gets more fruit then vegetables... but that's not bad either.

A recently identified 'favorite' is mesquite turkey sandwich meat. (I roll it into a log.) I noticed he wasn't fond of things that felt like a ball in his mouth, so I mash a lot of things like meatballs. And I've found he wants things with strong flavor (not bland stuff). I just will not bring hotdogs or other processed foods into the house. I don't eat it normally, and don't think he should either.

Oh! Something else I just wanted to mention... Look into what your child is fed in daycare. I had my son in a daycare that fed him chicken nuggets and canned fruit all the time (and other kid crap foods) which (thankfully) he would NOT eat. (This kid was never going to eat canned fruit... He came from the place that grows the fresh stuff!) I've moved him to a daycare where he's fed only whole grains, milk or water (no juice), and FRESH fruit! (Last week he came home with dark red stains all over the front of his shirt. I was kinda miffed given I had given them a box of bibs to use, until I learned the stains were from fresh blood oranges. ) I offer this only because they could be feeding her garbage and you're trying to get her to eat good stuff.