I’m constantly trying to make my son meals that are nutritious and healthy. It is always a struggle to get him to eat vegetables. He mostly thinks we are trying to poison him and will not even try a food he thinks is a vegetable. He apparently is not color blind because anything green will not enter his mouth. I also have a hard time getting him to eat protein because he still doesn’t have many teeth and eating meat is hard. I try to find protein in other forms such as beans, dairy and turkey sausage. But even those things sometimes are a challenge. So tonight I tried something new and wanted to share in case others are going through this.

I made some homemade chicken nuggets, but with turkey and used a vegetable puree (carrots). I used ground turkey, pureed carrots, and dipped it into an egg/butter mixture then into a bowl of bread crumbs, basil, parmesan cheese, thyme, salt and pepper. Dip the nuggets from one bowl to the other and spray some olive oil cooking spray. Load up on 400 degrees for 20 minutes and voila!

I threw some sweet potato puffs and a strawberry muffin I’d made (with squash puree) from the weekend on his plate and for the first time in a long time, he cleared his plate! Thankfully I made a few extra and will freeze these for easy dinner nights or weekend meals/snacks.

Prepping the nuggets

the final product! He ate it all minus the beans but had a pouch at least for some veggies.

Fresh turkey nuggets

Last weekend however, I spent 2 hours making my own purees to put in refillable pouches. ONe way we’ve been able to get him to eat vegetables is through those organic fruit/veggie pouches but they sometimes have added sugars and get very expensive. So i found some refillable ones and blended the EXACT same combinations (pear/pea/spinach, sweet potato, apple, mango, etc) loaded them into the pouches and BAM! He hated it. I was almost in tears, or maybe it was the sweat running down my face, but either way, it sucked. I decided baby number two (whenever he or she is created) will start out on these pouches and never know the store-bought ones. Way to find a silver lining my husband encouraged me. But it sucked. I was defeated. Oh well…back to the drawing board.

Earlier this week I made brinner and followed a recipe for healthy french toast, or brioche as we like to call it when we think we’re French. This time I used some pureed squash and carrots and mixed in with the wheat bread, flax meal,eggs, cinnamon, dash of vanilla and he thankfully ate it up! Yay. but of course the very next meal was fish sticks and tater tots.

Brioche! Eggs, veggie puree, flax meal, cinnamon, vanilla

My point in all this is that everyday i try and not everyday do I succeed. Having a son who is small in stature and barely on the charts makes me always want to try more but there is only so much my sanity can take. To all parents out there who struggle to make healthy meals, and to those who do but struggle to have their child eat them, you are not alone. Thankfully my son does not like sweets but on the flip side, a few extra calories here and there wouldn’t hurt him either.

Each day is back to the drawing board so I wanted to share some successes in case anyone else out there had some to share. I wish each day was a success but alas, life wouldn’t be near as fun if I didn’t have to pick up food off the floor every night!