1. Stock a countertop fruit bowl. It turns out some produce actually stores better on the counter than in the fridge. When you see it, you are more likely to reach for it. My kid eats twice her weight in apples a year because they are the easiest thing to offer her when she complains that she's hungry. We also stock cherry tomatoes, kiwi, mango, bananas, limes, mandarins, pears, limited quantities of grapes. We let avocados ripen on the counter and then move them to the fridge. We also counter-store savory options it is easy to forget you have like garlic, winter squash, zucchini, and peppers.
2. Stage your fridge. We have hacked a chest freezer to maintain fridge temperatures. We try to stock the easiest to reach upper levels with more nutrient-dense, calorically light options. You have to physically move a bunch of prepped crudités, salsa, hummus, berries, and easy reheat grilled cruciferous veggies to get to the tortillas, eggs and cheese hiding below. We even store some of this less-healthy food in a basement fridge/freezer so if you want it, it will cost someone a flight of stairs worth of exercise.
3. Eat your weeds. Weeds are just plants out of place, right? Maybe the plants are in the right place and our perspective is distorted. I now think of spiky perennial artichoke as a weed while Granny thinks of it as a delicacy. So when I inevitably fall so far behind on weeding that there is no hope of defending the perimeter (or interior) of the veggie beds, I checked out some books on edible weeds and did some googling. Now my kid will eat wild-harvested oxalis (sourgrass) and snack on artisanal dandelion leaves.
4. Plant finger food in Zone 0 and 1. I've strewn peas, beans, cherry tomatoes, cucumber, kumquat and alpine strawberries in containers on the walkway between the backdoor and the garage. Like an endless Easter egg hunt, the kid or I will pause to enjoy a fresh off the vine snack we found ripening in this high-traffic area.
5. Travel to exotic lands. Ideally to places that don't offer the standard kids menu beige processed food lineup. Your kid may discover they like sautéed banana, papaya or zucchini.
6. Perpetual Soup. If the week looks really busy, my texting accountability buddy and I will kick off a pot of "sopa perpetua." This is usually a kitchen sink affair of whatever aging/freezer burning veggies we want to move, maybe a lentil, tofu or other protein, maybe some miso paste if we don't have stock. Simmer it on low, sometimes for days on end. Then we report back on how many meals/bowls of it we managed to eat. The ultimate comfort/convenience food. Even my kid got in on this when she was playing a video game that has a seasonal event where every character in the town contributes an ingredient to a shared soup. She contributed cinnamon and sugar but it still came out pretty tasty.
7. Garnish your kid's plate. They asked for pasta or chicken nuggets, but throw some sliced cucumber, seaweed snack, carrot sticks, or apples on there and they will probably disappear too. If they don't, you can disappear them yourself when you're clearing the abandoned plate. Sometimes I can get my kid more actively involved in an "eat the rainbow" project, where we try to find and consume a fruit or veggie in every color of the rainbow. This can also work for carnivorous husbands. They may not grill broccoli or bake potatoes if they are prepping a meal just for themselves, but if you "strew" those items around the counter in easy reach while they're searing their sous vide, they might scrape some onto their plate if only to avoid offending you.
8. Lunch envy. Most schools in our state do free lunches for everyone, but this Charter has kids pack in a lunch. I asked my kid what lunch items her classmates bring that she wishes she got. Sometimes she mentions desserty junk food and occasionally I'll oblige. But sometimes she mentions things like hummus or carrots sliced into coins that I had no idea she would be willing to eat.
9. Game- blindfolded taste tests. There's some trust that goes with this one, that you're not going to feed your kid exclusively challenging foods, but if you can assemble a mix of old favorites and things you can't fathom why they avoid, you can sometimes get them to branch out a little. My kid won't eat all tomatoes, but she'll sample one if she thinks it might be a grape or tomatillo.
10. Kid-lead charcuterie boards. We had this concept of bringing toppings to "garnish" budget pizza slices at a girl scout meeting. This was a space-themed meeting. In searching for appropriately sized and colored food objects to stand in for planets, our kid was willing to partake of capers, olives, pineapples and blueberries. Not a common pizza combo, but now she doesn't flinch when she sees them as toppings on pasta, yogurt, cereal, etc.
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