Rainbow Pizza

After my daughter refused to eat a perfectly good dinner and I completely lost it, I had her look through a new cookbook that I recently bought: The Great Veg Challenge, based on the blog by the same name (The book ended up costing $35 with the lousy exchange rate and shipping). The blog is written by a mom who got her two kids to try a range of vegetable based dishes starting with the letter A and going on through Z. I constantly have aspirations of getting my kids to try different dishes and this seemed like a good place to start.

Gina looked through the book and settled on Rainbow Pizza, a pizza made with chopped up rainbow chard stems, garlic and lots of cheese. I didn't have high hopes that she would like it, but she was enthusiastic about making it and did help me put it together. I used pizza dough from Trader Joe's. She helped me chop up the chard stems, and then I sauteed them in olive oil and garlic.

The sauteed chard looked pretty in the pan with the little bit of green among the pink and orange stems. The kids helped spread the oil on the dough, sprinkle the parmesan cheese and then the chard. Some slices of mozzarella cheese on top and it was ready for the oven.

The final product wasn't as colorful after baking but I thought it was good. Dylan also ate it and finished off his piece. As for the other two, no go. Andrew wouldn't try it in the end (big surprise) and Gina didn't like the finished product. Back to the book to try something else.

Th

The Green Smoothie

When A was 2 yr old, he would eat broccoli all the time. Sometimes, it would be the only thing he would eat for dinner. At some point though he gradually started refusing to eat broccoli and then anything that resembled a vegetable, except for raw carrots. He even refuses to try dishes that contain a few bits of parsley.

Recently, A has been requesting the Odwalla Superfood Smoothie which is recognizable by its lovely shade of green, instead of chocolate milk when we have gone to Starbucks. The first few times I talked him into something else, but then I decided to let him try it. And he liked it. Looking at the ingredients, it's not surprising as the first two ingredients are apple and mango. The green color comes from wheatgrass.

We were shopping at Whole Foods yesterday and A found the 1/2 gallon container of Superfood Smoothie. I did not want to spend $7 for juice so I promised him that I would make a green smoothie at home. So tonight for dinner I mixed in a blender a very ripe frozen banana, a handful of frozen mango chunks, partially thawed, two spoonfuls of lowfat Greek yogurt, some orange juice and 1/4 cup chopped spinach (Trader Joes frozen chopped spinach, microwaved for 1 minute). I mixed everything in the blender for about 2 minutes to make sure it was well blended. It was definitely green though lighter in color than the Superfood Smoothie.

The verdict? A thought it was great and wanted more. G decided she had to try it as well. She also really liked it and took a few guesses at the secret green ingredient. I guess this is one way to get the kids to eat more veggies.