Updates

Just a few updates on our progress:

• The boy eats homemade salsa and likes it! 
• I have to adjust some of my shopping habits: I'm used to buying asparagus for 2 people not 3. 
• The girl likes (and regularly requests) maroon carrots. Since regular carrots are one of her acceptable vegetables this is not a big surprise, but the flavor of maroon carrots is closer to what I'd call a homegrown taste: a bit minty and stronger than the one-note sweetness of supermarket orange carrots.
• Both kids are willing, though not hugely enthusiastic, to eat sauteed sugar snap peas. I'm planting extra in the garden this year.
• The girl will eat a small amount of roasted cauliflower and has been willing to taste strawberries and pears. She also dealt with dried cherries in the oatmeal chocolate chip pecan cookies and was willing to eat cinnamon raisin bread without yelling about the raisins.
• Both kids tolerated the appearance of a few mushroom slices on their homemade pizza.
• Not much progress on getting the boy to accept asparagus or either kid to accept green beans or kale (even with a lot of butter)...

Fiona recommends

Fiona has been getting into the idea of eating a more diverse selection of foods and making sure they are healthy foods, too. Here are some of her recommendations.

• TEDtalk with Jamie Oliver video on youtube. "It really gets you aware of how much we're eating and how the wrong stuff can really hurt people." "ow."
• Print out your school lunch and breakfast menu after watching the video and circle the healthy stuff and cross out the unhealthy stuff (we don't eat school lunch, but it helps with awareness).
• Look at the foods/recipe categories listed on the NY Times Recipes for Health page and note which ones you eat and which ones you are willing to try.
• Part of being a healthy eater is learning how to cook. All our cookbooks are packed away right now because our house is under construction so we've been looking on-line for recipes and ideas. So far Fiona's favorite one is Eating Well's Healthy Kids recipes (a bit meat heavy in the main course department, but plenty of side dishes listed below).  I should note we haven't tried any of these recipes yet, but she finds the presentation appealing (half the battle, in my opinion) and she's going to go through and pick some out for us to make together.