I'm just sayin'...it worked for me...(and honestly that says a lot)....

I have shared before about my mission to get my children to eat their veggies.  I did everything by the books when they were babies as far as introducing them to a variety of veggies so that they would develop the taste and  "crave veggies in their daily diet".

Ya...whatever.

My children's "veggie craving" faces look more like this....

and some days a little like this...

I'm not kidding.  It's not a pretty sight.  Even though the above pictures are not of my own children I actually do have a picture of Eva that looks pretty similar.  I got such a kick out of the faces she was making while trying to choke down some vegetables I actually grabbed my camera.

Which made the whole situation SOOOOOO much better (not one of my best "mom moments" - ha!)

I think it's safe to say I'm always looking for ways to sneak veggies into my children's diet.  I have put pureed veggies in juice, I have made smoothies and snuck spinach into them (they had NO idea!), and I've added pureed veggies to food (with some successes and some failures). 

A few years ago my mom got me the book the Deceptively Delicious by the wife of the great Jerry Seinfeld.  The whole book is about sneaking veggies into kiddies foods.  One of the ideas she gives is to always have a veggie tray available to your children.

That whole idea lingered in my mind for quite awhile...like a few years...and just this week I finally decided to try it (not sure why I was dragging my feet on the idea, but oh well)...

OH. MY. WORD.

I put the veggie tray out when I notice my kids getting hungry.  As a family we had got in at bad habit of munching on food while I am making lunch or dinner.  Now I just set out the veggie tray - because honestly WHO CARES if they fill up on VEGGIES!  I have had to refill the veggie tray about 4 times in the last four days.  In fact, the kiddos came in from playing tonight and as I was making dinner they both said, "Mom, where's the veggie tray??!!!!"

Ahhhhh....my master plan is working.....munch away my little ones....munch away.....





"Welcome to the church of Holy Cabbage.  Lettuce pray."

--Unknown

And just because I believe it to be true I had to include this one too...

"It's odd that the produce manager is more important to my children's health than the pediatrician"

--Meryl Streep