Muffin Tin Monday- April Fooling JDaniel Into Eating Healthy Foods
Happy April Fool’s Day! Yes, I am four days early. I am just starting a little early. Hope that you get to enjoy a full week of April Fool’s tricks and treats.
The upside down tree tin is filled with tricky foods. There are mandarin oranges which are low in calories and good for you. Sugar free green jello is in the second cup. JDaniel didn’t notice. He just loves jello. The sandwiches are on whole grain bread and are filled with cheese, turkey, and a sweet potato spread. They were just wonderful. Across from the first sandwich are rice cakes with blueberries. The second sandwich has avacado across from it. JDaniel announced that the avacado tasted horrible. He picked it out at the grocery store. He will never pick it out again according to him.
Do you try to sneak healthy foods into your children’s food?
What have you done that worked?
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Sweet potato spread is so creative!
Poor JDaniel. No more avocado spreads! 😉
No I’m not that creative… the best I can do is Ragu – it has 1/2 cup of veggies in it.
We sneak veggies all the time! The sweet potato spread is a good idea. To add to yours, we slice fruit in our peanut butter sandwiches, instead of sugary jelly. I grate zucchini into just about everything, since it cooks down to almost nothing and adds fiber and a serving of veggies. I use pureed squash in Georgia’s Kraft mac and cheese, since it’s orange already and the boxed cheese is so salty she can’t taste it. I also put peas in as well.
Our issue tends to be protein, which Georgia hardly ever eats by choice. Do you have any creative solutions for that?
That is so funny about the avocado! I can’t tell the difference between regular jello and sugar-free either!
I’m not a fan of avacado either.
My kids are pretty good eaters, so I don’t do many tricks.
I think all Jell-o tastes the same. I am always trying to sneak steamed veggies in with sphagetti sauce and adding pureed veggies in other things where they can be camouflaged. My oldest is a good eater but my youngest hates veggies so I have to be sneaky. What is in your sweet potato spread? My oldest likes sweet potatoes.
Great way to sneak in some healthy and tasty foods.. wonder if he would like avocado as guacamole?
When he gets older and you can tell him things like this is what big people eat or what mommy and daddy love to eat, that might sway him. Kate LOVES to be as big as she can, so if eating “grown up” food does it for her, that’s great!
Love it! I wish Dawson was better at eating healthier foods, I’ll keep trying! 🙂
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great ideas!
sweet potato spread with turkey sounds delish!
happy april fools!
I’ve been doing this with my granddaughter when she’s here. I use the mini tin and fill one with mini chocolate chips and one with about 1/4 package of fruit bits. The tins are so small that she ends up eating them all including the vegetables into the peanut butter, fresh oranges, and dried peas.
My garden is the other encouragement for healthy eating. They will eat the asparagus and peas raw. We pull the carrots and they gobble them up. I let them each pick a variety of cherry tomatoes (this year we have a purple, orange and traditional red) and they eat those like crazy. They shy away from the peppers because last year I planted my jalapenos by the bells and they ate some of the bright red ones…ummm…yeah, I think I ruined them ever wanting to eat peppers again.
The muffin tin idea is one of the most creative healthy eating encouragements I’ve run across. You are brilliant.
When my children were little I was always trying to sneak healthy foods into their diet. An easy great way to do it is with shakes or smoothies. My children just loved when I made fruit shakes either with crushed ice or yogurt and I would put wheat germ or a veggie in there and you couldn’t even tell. 🙂
My kids change their minds daily about what they like and they don’t like. I’m not sure they would go for sweet potato spread though.
Too funny on the avocado. LOL The only way I can get fruits and veggies into my 3 year old is by giving him V8 V-Fusion juice. Besides that, the only fruit he will eat is banana and then not all that often. He does like sweet potato chips though! 🙂
I call plain organic yogurt “dipping sauce” for things our 2 year old might not otherwise eat. I’m lucky really that she thinks green beans are yummy. The baby sitter made sugar cookies while watching her (as an activity)… took her a while to come down off that high. Yikes.
I agree with a previous commenter…I am not that creative either! I simply say, what fruit or vegetable are you having with lunch or dinner? I figure if I give her choices she’ll pick one and so far it works!
I love your healthy meal mtm! I know you see a lot of sweets on my blog, but we have those as special treats and really do try to eat pretty healthy.
My kids are skinny minis, so I don’t worry about how much they eat, but more that it’s real food. I do my best to keep healthy snacks available and don’t purchase chips and the like to keep in the house.
I have tried so long to learn to like avocado but I just can’t. That and bleu cheese.
Haha, cute idea 😉
I so need to visit your house for lunch. I love these muffin tins. And you totally got me for a second on the April Fools Day.
Fortunately all but the baby like avocado now. Or maybe unfortunately, less for me. Just kidding. They also eat the little bits of raw veges I give them as long as they can dunk them in ranch dressing. We are trying to make more healthy meals all around.
I have purchased a book called Sneaky Fitness which is co authored by Missy Chase Lapine the author of The Sneaky Chef. There are 50 all new sneaky chef recipes in this book that I am dying to try. We’ve been using some new recipes each week from the Biggest Loser Cookbook too.
Love your meal today. Gotta try sweet potato spread with them.
Sweet potato spread…yum! I’ve never tried it. Did you make it yourself?
I dish up a meat, a starch, and a veggie almost every dinner. If they eat it, great. Otherwise, I just keep trying different things.
Keree is not a avocado fan at all. Otherwise, the sandwiches sound yummy.
I work daily with 12 children and have the “range” of eaters. We love smoothies here…yogurt, berries, ice…blend away and serve in dixie cups with small straws. We also sneak in any pureed veggies into meatloafs, sauces, etc. The kids don’t even notice:) As for avacado…we have done rasp, blueberry, and avacado ice pops…the other flavors cover the avacado:) Plain avacado..no way:) Thanks for all the tips!
I’ve found that offering a “dip” of some kind encourages mine to eat veggies. Not always, but frequently. They’ll dip anything. 😉 I’ve also started the muffin tin meals recently and love the concept! My kids are pretty good eaters normally, but the do have their stubborn moments when they won’t try anything at all!
So funny! I love it! And my kids can detect veggies they don’t like a mile away! But I still try 🙂
Sweet Potato spread? That sounds so yummy!!!