What's Cooking?
SweetPTater
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Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Toddler Friendly Veggies?
For those of you with young toddlers, how do you/did you prepare their vegetables? I want to get more veggies into his diet, but the only veggies he'll eat are canned and maybe frozen (heated in the microwave) if he's in the right mood. I've tried roasted, but they don't seem to be soft enough for him because he'll try to chew them, then immediately spit them out. He only has front teeth and no molars yet, although I know they don't necessarily need them to chew.
Can anyone share some recipes or preparation ideas? He eats what we eat, so adult friendly would be a plus. Lord knows a few extra veggies wouldn't hurt us right now either. If you do roast them, do you add salt?
Re: Toddler Friendly Veggies?
Combinations worked well for DD. I did all of her baby food, so everything was just steamed until soft and then blended or mushed with a fork. As she got older, the chunks got bigger until it was pnly slightly soft and finger food. Anyway, she always loved mashed banana and mashed avocado (together). I did fruits with some veggies (together), too.
Most often, I'd take a bite or a scoop off her plate and she'd get interested after she saw me eating.
Kind of weird, but at that age, I was making a lot of veggie popsicles. I think it felt good on her teeth and she inhaled them. I would puree whatever vegetable, but mix it with a fruit to give it a little sweetness (or use those purees from a pouch), then freeze it in a mold. Other than that, when she was just a little older, she would eat peas, corn, raw cucumbers and shredded raw carrots pretty well.
Now she is starting to understand bribery a little more. I have to play a game with her to get her to eat a vegetable (bribe her with something she really wants - this week it's blueberries). Her usuals are broccoli, peas or corn steamed with a little butter/salt on it or even a green salad works a lot of times. For every 1-2 bites of a vegetable, she gets one blueberry.
We've tried this and all it does is get him interested in trying to shove more of his food in our mouths.
I made all of DS's baby food too - he ate everything when it was pureed and spoon fed to him. It was so easy! Now that it's in chunks he's more likely to throw it off his tray than eat it.
My son definitely got into an anti-veggie phase over the last few months. Before that he'd eat pretty much anything. Now, we also resort to bribery a lot. Eat all your peas and you can get some blueberries...or the other day was eat your peas to get a meatball (lmao).
Normally I either micro or steam veggies and just add a little evoo or butter and some s&p. With carrots, I usually give them a small drizzle of real maple syrup, or I may just do a little butter and cinnamon. He has no issues eating corn any which way. He recently started loving snap peas because he likens them to being crunchy like crackers.
He doesn't really eat roasted ones except for things like sweet potatoes.
You can also cut the veggies really tiny or puree them with marinara sauce. I've also used my mandoline to make really thin strips of zucchini, squash etc. to look like spaghetti, and then just served it with spaghetti and whatever sauce. I did this before having DS, anyway, because it's a good and healthy way to bulk up a pasta dish.
ETA: here's an example of the zucchini strips (which links to another recipe too): http://ellysaysopa.com/2011/08/31/spaghetti-and-zucchini-ribbons-with-tomato-almond-pesto/
Thank you for all of the suggestions! I actually hadn't thought of steaming them. He's probably bored with them since it hadn't occured to me to add much seasoning in the way of butter or salt either.
I love the idea of pureeing them and adding them to sauces or making popsicles or smoothies. What great ideas!
I'm going to look into bread and muffin recipes too.