When She Won't Eat Her Veggies

It finally happened, as I secretly knew it would, she stopped eating her vegetables. Our once great eater, who we could count on to down anything we put in front of her, has become a tad picky. Some days she won't eat anything but bread, cheese and fruit and other days she is a little more willing to go for a few veggies, and some meat. But lately veggies are on her do not eat list. Great.

With a growing toddler we know, as parents, that vegetables are very important. And since Molly seems to be a "runt" we want her to eat lots of veggies to grow big and strong. While we aren't to terribly worried because she does eat a lot of the super foods that are good for babies/toddlers we do want some veggies in her diet.

So, what to do?

We get sneaky. : )

Our latest trick uses apple sauce as the disguise. We make our own apple sauce and infuse it with kale or spinach. It turns an awesome green color but mostly keeps the taste of apple sauce. Molly loves it and most importantly eats it!

Green Apple Sauce

by Hallie Vincent

Prep Time: 5

Cook Time: 0

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Apple Sauce w/hidden vegetables

Ingredients (1 small batch)

• 1 apple (we prefer gala)
• 2 ounces water (alter for desired consistency)
• 1 bunch Kale or Spinach

Instructions

• Cut the apple into small squares and add to blender
• Pour in water
• Chop up Kale and add to blender
• Mix all together until reaches desired consistency

So for all those Moms with kiddos on veggie strike, give her a try.

And here is to hoping she starts eating the green beans, brocoli, and peas again.

What's for Dinner?

I have not posted about what's for dinner in quite some time, mostly because we are dieting and our meals are pretty boring.  But a few days ago we cooked our first meal with veggies from our backyard garden!  It was very exciting to harvest peppers and tomatoes from our backyard and use them in our dinner.

So what was this meal?  Chicken and shrimp kabobs with cherry tomatoes, yellow bell pepper, green bell pepper and pineapple.  The cherry tomatoes, tomato slices and green bell peppers came from our garden.  It was a simple and delicious meal with lots of fun summer colors.



We put all of the meat and veggies on the skewers and then added salt, pepper and some dash seasoning. Cook on the grill at low heat for about 20 minutes. Perfection.



Looking forward to making some homemade salsa with our veggies next.

Peppers...we are growing peppers

Okay, so I must admit that when we planted all of our veggies sent from Burpee Home Gardens I had no idea what all we were planting. From what they had told me I thought we just had a variety of tomatoes and basil. Well, I was wrong.

As we were doing our daily survey of our veggie garden Chase spotted a beautiful green bell pepper, almost ready for harvesting! We are growing peppers! I was SO excited. How cool is that?



We have both already decided to drastically expand our garden in the near future. In the meantime take a look at our ever growing tomatoes and our new found peppers.

tomatoes!

We have some serious progress in the veggie garden...tomatoes! They are SO cute and I can't wait to eat them. Almost all of the plants have at least one tomato, most having two or three.



We are beyond excited that we are actually producing food in our own backyard.

veggie and yard update

A few days ago I posted about our first veggie garden.  Well its growing and growing!  Here are a couple shots of the progress.  We are starting to see a few buds on the tomato plants, hopefully those will continue to grow into something we can eat!  The only issue we are having is with some bugs...its been very humid here and not quite hot enough = breeding ground for plant eating bugs.  Going to hit the local nursery today to see if they have some knowledge to impart.



Our yard and plants are also looking great!  We went out of town the week after we put the grass down but our fantastic neighbor watered for us so its looking healthy and green.

our first veggie garden

A couple weeks ago, before our sodding project, Chase and I built and planted our first veggie garden.  Its just a small beginner garden that we plan to expand on but its a good start.



We decided to do our gardening in a raised box bed made with our own bare hands. A couple untreatd 2x6x8 and a piece of untreated plywood with holes drilled in for drainage. Simple and effective.



We used the plants provided by Burpee Home Gardens and Paisley even helped me plant them.

Right now the veggie garden is made up of 4 different varieties of tomatoes and some basil. We can't wait to use our own home grown tomatoes!

A Unique Opportunity

Yesterday I got a very interesting email in my inbox. It was a representative from Burpee Home Gardens, a company that has been producing products for the home gardener since 1885.

Burpee Home Gardens is starting a new line of products as part of a campaign called I Can Grow designed to help the next generation of gardeners succeed with their vegetable and herb plants. They were searching for novice gardeners (me) to blog about their own gardening experiences. The people at Burpee had come across my blog and offered me the opportunity to guest blog on the Burpee Home Gardens website and talk about my experience in gardening. Wow! Seriously? I thought for sure it wasn't the real deal. Well it turns out it was!

Burpee Home Gardens is sending me some of their latest vegetable and herb plants along with a new book they developed to help Chase and I get our very own home garden started. How exciting!

I will be posting at http://www.burpeehomegardens.com/blog so go check it out! I will keep everyone here updated and be sure to link to my posts when they are published.

Also check out the Burpee Home Garden website, it has great tips and advice on home gardening.  A great resource.