Beyond “Eat Your Peas, PLEASE!”–Getting Kids to Eat Vegetables

The owner of the camp my daughter is going to stopped by for a visit with us. During her visit we discussed diet, because it will be a big adjustment for my daughter to be navigating a gluten free diet without me. She asked my daughter if she like raw vegetables or cooked vegetables and what she liked. Then she told us that there were only four types of vegetables that they could get kids to eat: corn on the cob, lightly steamed broccoli and peas. I think she forgot to mention the fourth one. Anyway, I thought it was very nice to have the short list of cooked vegetables that kids would eat.

To prepare my DD for camp and to try out the “these are the cooked vegetables that kids eat” theory I decided to try to get everyone to eat some peas.

First, I cooked the frozen peas in boiling salted water for 5 minutes. It was super salty. I find, if you put salt on veggies and say “YUM, THESE ARE SO SALTY, THEY TASTE LIKE POTATO CHIPS!” without actually asking them to eat anything, they can’t help but try them just to see if they indeed taste like potato chips. Of course, they don’t taste like potato chips. But they do taste a little salty. And probably not as bad as they thought they would.

I served the cooked, salty peas in glass shotglasses with chicken noodle soup and after declaring that the peas tasted like potato chips I poured my peas into my bowl of soup and everyone else followed shortly after. My DH happened to have a friend over, and she was the first one who poured her peas into her soup. Then my son followed suit and finally my daughter. Not everyone liked the peas–but everyone tried them!

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