I’ve said before that I’m always trying to get kids to eat healthfully, and I’ve even shared my tips on how to get kids to eat vegetables. You’ve also heard me say that I’m cheap. So when someone from Produce for Kids® asked if we might want to do a giveway, I said, “Heck, yeah!”
But what, pray tell, is Produce for Kids®? Well, for that, I will blatantly copy from their website. Ready?
“Produce for Kids® encourages healthy eating among families by providing simple, healthy meal solutions and resources for parents, while raising funds for local children’s non-profit organizations.” Okay, sounds good to me.
But, like, how much money and for whom, you may ask? Why,
“. . . More than $3.7 million for children’s non-profit organizations including Children’s Miracle Network® Hospitals, Let’s Move Salad Bars To Schools and PBS KIDS® among others.”
Excellent. Sound good to me. So whatever are these fine folks up to these days? For the answer to this compelling question, I will blatantly cut-and-paste from an email:
Produce for Kids® has launched its annual Get Healthy, Give Hope campaign with 16 major supermarket chains across the country, including your local Price Chopper stores, to help raise money for local children’s hospitals.
Now through July 28th, thanks to the annual Get Healthy, Give Hope campaign hosted by Price Chopper and Produce for Kids® the more produce shoppers add to their shopping lists the more hope they can give to local children. Produce for Kids is excited to kick off this year’s campaign with a new partnership with Sprout® and LazyTownTM. During the campaign, Produce for Kids will offer shoppers collectible Ideal MealsTM– quick and easy healthy meal ideas, which are free and can be found in displays featuring LazyTown characters from the popular, health-focused, children’s series airing exclusively in the U.S. on 24-hour preschool television channel, Sprout.
Ideal Meals offer shoppers chef-created/nutritionist-approved easy solutions for breakfast, lunch, dinner and dessert. Featuring fresh fruits and vegetables as the main ingredients, Ideal Meals are great for busy families who crave fast meal options that don’t require stopping at the local drive-thru.
Okay. I like me some recipes. I’m always up for giving a new recipe a shot, even when it crashes and burns like that time I served them probably-vegan sweet potato and lentil stew. And some of these Ideal Meals recipes looked pretty yumma-num-num.
Such as. . . ?
Well, how about these smoothie pops?
Serves 16
Preparation Time: 20 minutes
Ingredients:
· 1 large peach or mango, peeled and chopped
· 1 large nectarine, peeled and chopped
· 2 medium bananas, sliced
· 1 pt. strawberries or raspberries
· ¼ cup orange or fruit juice
· 2 cup low-fat vanilla yogurt
Directions:
Place all smoothie ingredients in a blender and blend until just smooth.
Place 16 paper cups on a baking tray. Pour smoothie into paper cups. Place tray in freezer and freeze until slushy, about 20 minutes. Remove tray from freezer and insert one popsicle stick into the center of each cup. Return to freezer and freeze until firm, about 2 hours.
To serve, tear away paper cup and place on plate. Enjoy!
Serves 4
And for those of you who are now pretty fed up with our imaginary conversation, here’s the answer to the only question you probably really care about, which is WHAT IS THE GIVEAWAY?
The giveaway is a $50 Price Chopper Gift Card along with some delightful Produce for Kids® Ideal Meal cards! Yippee!
In order to enter, please comment one time below and share a fruit-or-vegetable triumph from your own household that may help other readers to get their families eating more healthfully. If you have never actually had any fruit-or-vegetable triumphs yet, your alternative comment can be to name one of the Ideal Meals recipes that you’d like to try. Except it has to be a recipe that’s not the smoothie, because that’s too easy, people. You must comment by Friday the 20th at noon. Then I’ll select a winner among the qualifying entries using my ol’ friend random.org
Finally, a note on karma: if you do win the $50 gift card you can spend it however you like, but if you blow it on cookies and ice cream, thus not providing nutrients to your children OR money to children’s hospitals, but you will feel shame, shame, shame every time you look in the mirror. Conversely, if you share this blog post via email or on Facebook with your friends, I believe that, even if you don’t happen to win, The Universe will reward you somehow, some way. So share away!
Good luck, everyone!
Meghan
Best way we got Nate to eat more veggies was to let him poke around Papa’s garden. He decided that cucumbers are the best things ever when fresh picked from the garden!
Maggie
I was desperate so I gave my toddler frozen peas straight from the freezer. He loved them, so that’s now a dinner staple. He’ll also eat corn that way.
Judy K
I love the idea of having a salad bar in a school cafeteria. The vegetables served at our school are canned mush. Who wants that? My food triumph came last week. I bought some fresh corn-on-the-cob from Barber’s farm truck. My 5-year-old daughter took one bite and pretended she didn’t like it. Then, she said, “Mom, don’t look.” I covered my eyes and she ate the rest of the ear of corn. Yeah!
Patti
IMO and experience, the best way to get children to eat veggies is raw. Plant a garden, let the kids help tend the plants, and then let them munch away right outside. Don’t use nasty sprays and a little dirt won’t hurt them! 🙂
Kathy t
I let my 2 yr old pick the fruits/veggies @ farmers markets. She buys them “all by myself” then munches on some while we walk around. She polished off 1/2 pint of blueberries before we made it home one day.
Vanessa
I was successful getting my son to eat some fruit by calling it the rainbow and having to eat your colors! (strawberrries=red, blueberries=blue, kiwi=greet, etc)… that worked!
Nata
I am very lucky to be the mom of a 2-yr-old that has always loved all fruits and veggies. When she was a baby, I made all of her baby food from scratch and I think that’s what contributed to her good eating habits. It was so easy to just cook and purée everything at home. Plus it’s cheaper than jarred baby food.
Claire
My son had a combination of jarred, homemade foods and finger foods. Now at age 4, has yet to meet a fruit or vegetable that he doesn’t like. (Fruits he wasn’t crazy about till around 2.5, but veggies have always been a hit.) The turning point with him and fruit came when we were on a trip to Maine when he was 2 years 7 months. Picking blueberries and blackberries in my aunt’s backyard did the trick. I highly recommend a berry picking excursion for kids who aren’t into fruit.
Veronica
My 3 year old daughter has always loved fruit but we are still working on veggies with her. I always keep cut up veggies in the fridge and put them on the table at meal times, so they are always accessible to her. So far it is going well, she is eating raw broccoli and loves it! Quite a triumph!
Ro
Simple trick, always offer the veggie first! Then the rest of the meal. Fill up on the good stuff first 🙂
Jillya
I felt like a winner the day my daughter asked me to pack up the leftover green beans after dinner so she could take them to lunch as a snack! The trick was letting her do the seasoning: I put on a tiny bit of olive oil and then let her hit them with onion, garlic and other spices. She did a great job – they were actually really tasty!
christine g.
My son will only eat the fresh green beans I steam then drizzle with lemon juice. And he’s always ready to eat fruit that he picks himself..like a pint of blueberries at a time off our bushes!
Danielle M
Our “chips” are the carrot slices that are cut like potato chips. Our girls are only 3 & 1 so I am sure eventually they will find out what real potato chips are but for now they love carrot chips (actually they eat carrots anyway but love them chip style)
Mary Daikos
OK, I could try the caramel maple yogurt dip because it looks like it might have the highest possiblity of success with my 5 year old. No triumphs here, yet.
Jahnavi
My 4 year olds favorite veggie is okra!! Buy fresh not frozen. Cut them into small circles. Spread on a baking tray, drizzle oil and grill in oven for 12 minutes. Then in a pan on the stove top sauté them again in a teaspoon of oil. Add salt and chilly powder/curry powder to taste
Laura
Making faces/animals/volcanoes/etc with fruits &/or veggies has not grown old in our house. Sprucing up a pancake with kiwi eyes, a mango nose and a blueberry mouth or making a turkey out of half a pear with apple slices for feathers appeals to my kids. (And for my boys the fun is this: “Oh, Pancake Man, now you can’t breathe because I’m EATING YOUR NOSE!!!” or “Pancake Man is now a cyclops because I ate one of his eyes!”) Occasionally they will turn their mashed potatoes into a volcano spurting “deadly” peas instead of lava. “Do you want to see me eat LAVA?!” Sure guys. Lemme see.
stacey
The Garden Vegetable Pasta & Fresh Salad dinner sounds good! And easy to make!
Mari
My son loves edamame! I think it’s the combination of the saltiness and the fun of popping them out of the pod.
Lisa D
My son hates to drink liquids of any kind, so trying to keep him hydrated in the heat is difficult. Good thing he loves apples and melons. He will never refuse water if I offer it with fruit.
K
Pick your own farms and growing your own garden invest your kids in fruits and veggies. Our biggest successes with our daughter have come from the willingness to try things she has invested effort in growing/gathering. Besides that, aim for fruits and veggies that are fun to eat and a little unusual, like edamame or star fruit. Unique + fun = consumption in my household.
Tammy D.
We love to roast them! With a little OO, balsamic, good seasonings, salt and pepper. Oh so good!!
Sara
My guys love particular veggies (red peppers, cukes, sweet potatoes, peas…). I think my biggest success is when my 3 year old picked out the following combo for lunch: green beans, blueberries, and tomatoes (with a mozzarella cheese stick to round things out a bit).
Ellen
I have next to no success with getting my 4 year old to eat vegetables — but I’d like to try the Sausage and Veggie Cassoulet from the Ideal Meals website, since my son does like kielbasa.
Jen
My girls don’t love eating green veggies… I had tons of zuchini from the garden so I made zuchini bread and added chocolate chip morsels and they LOVE it!!!
Samantha
Sugar snap peas dipped in hummus is popular here, as well as apples with peanutbutter. Raw veggies are great!
Kristin Gregor
If it is dipped in chocolate they will eat it! I save Easter, Christmas, Halloween chocolate, Hershey bars, chocolate chips, whatever, melt it in the microwave, dip fruit in it and place it out, the kids love the treat.
Zucchini hides in many foods, any muffin, any sauce, it cooks fast and the kids don’t know it’s there unless you tell them. I also buy baby carrot food and add that to sauce or Mac and cheese, not too much though or they will taste it.
Kelly W
Do banana splits count? I’ve had good luck using spaghetti squash in place of pasta or as a side dish. I have to say I’m a little envious of all the comments about the toddlers still loving the healthy treats. I miss those days. My kids are older and it’s a bit harder to convince them, especially with the ice cream truck rolling down the street everyday. It’s hard to compete with Mr. Ding-A-Ling!
Christina
My 5 year old loves fruit and I actually have to cut her off some days or she will eat too much. Veggies are a different story though. She likes baby carrots which I make easily accessible to her in the frig. I find that she will eat more veggies if I let her pick them out at the store- she really loves going to farm stands.
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