Fin

So, after much procrastination we finally finished the vegetable challenge. Our final vegetable was purple, yes purple, cauliflower. Thinking the novelty might make a difference, I purchased it on the advice of my 4 year-old. Novelty or no, I wouldn’t recommend it. Once cooked it was just weird. The flavor was the same, but the purple reminded me too much of the red cabbage juice pH indicator I’ve made in the past. And let’s face it, since when did purplish-blue vegetables seem all that appetizing? A total of zero children ate it. One was sick, so she doesn’t count. Strike out.

We also added some baby food broccoli (see the post where I made it and unsuccessfully fed it to my baby, being stuck with many frozen broccoli cubes) to the rice. It was good. I’ll have to do that again.

I was asked if I would continue the challenge. Probably not to this scale. I have found some new recipes I plan to incorporate into our dinner table and resurrected several we haven’t made in a while. I’ll still try to broaden our vegetable palate, however. All in all, this was a success in that we realized how few new recipes we needed. We do eat a large variety of vegetables. And, our kids were inspired to try some new things. Not sure if they’ll continue to eat them once the incentive is gone, but at least they tried it once.

So thank you, Jamie Oliver for inspiring us to eat a little healthier and try some new things. Our total vegetable count for the month was 56 different vegetables. We would have hit another if we’d have eaten the turnip in the fridge. I still had several more on my list that I just didn’t have time (or produce) to work in like kohlrabi, shallots, bok choy, jalepenos, and other fresh herbs. Not bad, I’d say. Not bad at all.

I may post our final numbers on who ate what later. But for now, try something new. You just may like it!

Sweet Squash

So I’ve learned that it is near impossible to find pumpkin this time of year, canned or otherwise. I scoured the stores and came up with nothing. Luckily, I discovered a gem in my freezer: one more container of pumpkin! Yay! I had hoped to work that into our count. My kids devour pumpkin bread, with or without chocolate chips. This happened to be without, but was still met with enthusiasm.

That’s good because the acorn squash was not met with such enthusiasm. I try to dress it up with a bit of butter and brown sugar, but it’s a hard sell. Even Emma spit it back out. Speaking of Ems, she’s becoming more picky now (in the last 24 hours.) She’s been introduced to little snack puffs and thinks she should just eat those and crackers instead of real food. Maybe she’s just at that point where she wants to feed herself and I need to start adjusting. The trouble is she doesn’t have molars yet so her mashing abilities are limited. I tried some tiny pasta today. That worked alright. We’ll see what we can come up with. In the meantime, I need to hide the snacky food around mealtimes. :)

Sam I Am

I do so like Green, Eggs, and Ham. Thank you, thank you, Sam I Am! Tonight was a little al improviso. I had planned to make a kohlrabi dish, but couldn’t find it in the store, along with pumpkin. But that’s another story. So I decided to make quiche using leeks instead. That turned into Green, Eggs, and Ham with leeks replacing the onions. I liked it that way. Oh, and for those who don’t know. This is a crustless quiche where you mix Bisquick with eggs and milk and pour over spinach, ham, leeks (onions), and Swiss cheese. Very tasty, and a little catchy for the kids. By little I mean they maybe ate one bite to get the star on the chart. Oh, well. They’re about done with this experiment, as shown by my conversation below.

Here is an excerpt from a conversation with Kate yesterday:

Kate: Mom, is it May?

Me: Yes.

Kate: April was vegetable month so no more veggies! Yay!

Mom: Hmm…we’re not done yet.

Of course, they have been reporting to me daily about their vegetable consumption. Kate even took vegetables in the lunch line and ATE THEM! Whoo-hoo! Bit by bit, they will become eaters of vegetables. At least in time to feed their own children something green.

Speaking of which, I missed Tuesday of last week. It just got lost in the shuffle as I was preparing to leave town. We ate…what did we eat?…Pasta al Forno (aka Ratatouille or my version thereof.) Gotta bill it big. This baked pasta dish has a pink sauce with eggplant, peppers, zucchini, onions, and garlic. It makes a ton so I don’t make it often, but it sure was good.

Two more days to go! What can we cram in?