Thomas has always loved his fruit. I’ve never had any trouble getting him to eat it. Vegetables on the other hand have become quite an issue. He has started to become hungry and asking for food at around 5pm (we eat at 6). I was happy for him to have some fruit at this time until I realised that he was having about 4 servings of fruit a day – not that there’s anything wrong with this but I decided if he was really hungry at this time then I would offer him some vegetables to eat. This wouldn’t interfere with his dinner (as he was eating vegies anyway) and also was a way of introducing some new foods.
We did have some success with cucumber a while ago and teamed with a favourite fruit, this was a real success. When trying to get children to try new foods, I always find it helpful to offer something they are familiar with on the plate as well, that way it’s not quite as daunting.
What you need:
Grapes (red or green – red is good for contrast)
Cucumber cut into slices about 1cm thick
Toothpicks
Stickers (optional)
Small star cutter
Natural yoghurt
To make these grape and cucumber wands, I cut some star shapes out of cucumber slices and cut each grape in half. To the toothpicks I added some ‘Thomas’ stickers. I stacked about 3 slices of the leftover cucumber in the middle of the plate and filled the star cut out in the cucumber slices with some natural yoghurt (this didn’t get eaten but it was there as an option).
It is a little bit of trouble to go to but if it gets some extra vegetables into your kids then I’m happy to spend the extra couple of minutes!
I think these are so clever and cute.
Thanks Jackie
. Much more irresistible than cucumber slices on a plate!