Jennifer Tyler Lee gets her kids to eat vegetables because she doesn't demand that they eat vegetables. Instead, she treats cooking like a craft project, letting the kids help choose and prepare something new, once a week, to see what happens. Invariably, they try it.
The result is "The 52 New Foods Challenge: A Family Cooking Adventure for Each Week of the Year, With 150 Recipes." (Avery Books, $20). Lee's philosophy grew out of a game she called Crunch a Color, brainstormed in desperation for her finicky daughter. Jamie Oliver has become a huge fan, as have the Williams-Sonoma stores, where she'll appear May 2 (Mall of America location).
Here's how she helps kids develop healthful eating skills.
Q: So this isn't about sneaking vegetables into foods, like making broccoli brownies?
A: No, not at all, and there is a really important reason why. Kids need to know what goes into our food. All of us do. The way in which we're eating as a nation has changed dramatically. We eat out a lot. We're disconnected with the food we're eating. Helping kids understand what goes into a meal is a really important skill, like any other we need to teach our kids in order to set them up for a lifetime of healthy eating.
Q: Is there such a thing as a picky eater?
A: This is a tough word because labeling them means they can own that label. In my family, my daughter is a finicky eater and my son is not. This all comes back to taking the focus off the eating and putting it on the experience of cooking together, because here's what happens: If you're at the table and it all comes down to, 'Are you going to taste the broccoli or not?' then it's a confrontation.
Here you take the focus off that and put it on the experience: finding the food, growing the food, cooking the food together. Whether they taste it or not doesn't matter because you had a fantastic experience. But the kids are going to be more likely to taste that food. Get them engaged in making that choice on their own.
