High Heels to Hot Wheels

What's the one food you could never live without?

That is a loaded question. There are so many foods that I love, so I really can't say one particular food that I can't live without, but I can tell you that garden fresh tomatoes, goat cheese, parmesan, basil, rosemary and thyme are all ingredients that I can't cook without. Actually, all those together sound like the perfect dish, so we will go with roasted tomatoes with herbed goat cheese as the food I can't live without!

What's a treat your kids love that's actually healthy?

Hunter LOVES edamame!! His favorite color is green (which he will tell you whether you ask or not), so it only makes sense that he would like "beans" as he calls them. It is fun for him to "pop the beans" out of the pods and also serves as a great activity when I am trying to cook or we waiting on our sushi at the restaurant. When it comes to late afternoon snacktime, I try to offer only choices that won't make dinnertime a nightmare. We went through a period where he would barely touch his dinner and we realized that we let him snack too much in the afternoon. He gets an afternoon snack at school, so once he gets home he has very limited options for snacks. It usually starts with a request for something like fruit snacks and when that gets shot down we give him a couple of fruit options or the always dreaded option of "nothing". If he is hungry enough he will usually take the banana option over the nothing option.

What's your best tip for feeding a picky eater?

As a baby Hunter would eat anything I put in front of him, so it was super rewarding to get to make his baby food from fresh vegetables rather than feed him from the jar, which I might add there is nothing wrong with, but as a person who LOVES to cook, it was really nice to prepare my child's food. Now that he is a toddler it isn't quite as easy. Not to be all Mommy Dearest or anything, but we have always set rules at the dinner table about having to have a few bites of everything on his plate. We keep our expectations slightly low and don't put things on there that would end up in a dinner table standoff, but I try to balance a kid-friendly item with something healthy that I know he likes. Of course he is going to eat the turkey dog before his asparagus, but I know he likes asparagus, so we insist that he eat a little of everything before he says he's done or wants more of the "good stuff". Feeding toddlers and kids of any age is really a matter of trial and error. I try to continually prepare the healthy dishes that I know that he likes and throw in some new stuff every now and then and while it can be a little droning at times, I am more concerned that he is eating healthy than the variety of food that goes on my plate. I also believe that you can prepare the same thing for adults and children, but jazz it up just a little for the adults and keep it simple for the kids or you can add just the slightest amount of cheese to anything and it suddenly becomes far more appealing to the kids.

What are your favorite Blog Posts?

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