Whole30–Introducing kids to healthy, whole foods!

I’ll be very frank, the Whole30 would be a challenge even if I didn’t have ANY kids… but I have 2…under the age of two! So this is extremely challenging. I know that my investment in our health will pay dividends in the future, so I am powering through – desperately waiting for the “Tigers Blood” days ahead when I will have enough energy to cook and prepare 3 healthy (whole/clean) meals a day AND take care of two kids and manage the daily household tasks that need doing.

But it did finally occur to me this morning, that my daughter LOVES to help and LOVES to pretend to cook in her play-kitchen… so I could probably enlist her help in the REAL-kitchen and introduce her in a more personal way to the new healthy foods that we were introducing on her plate and also include some of our other daily things like learning colors, counting with numbers, sorting, shapes, etc… so that’s what I tried this morning and let me tell you… I kinda feel like a bit of a genius!

Not only did my toddler LOVE to help “cook” she tried EVERY. SINGLE. Veggie that we were prepping and we had ample opportunities to discuss the different colors, shapes and quantities of things we were using.

 

We started by cleaning and then dumping the veggies into a big pot (we used a pot because it won’t break if dropped). She started with the carrot (a familiar raw veggie)

As she was dealing with the brusselsprouts and carrots, I was cutting the zucchini & summer squash which I asked her to count as she placed them into the pot.

One thing to be careful of when little hands (and mouths) are helping prepare meals is that they don’t put already chewed on food BACK into the mix…

Since she started eating baby-food this child has NOT liked squash (of ANY kind) but she braved the zucchini and squash during our prep and at least TRIED them.

Then it was time to mix. As she stirred I added Olive Oil and let her add the sea salt and pepper.

During our final “mix” she decided it was time to suck-it-up and give the brusselsprouts a try (I don’t think ANYONE likes them raw… but if she’ll try them now… MAYBE (hopefully) she will give them a try later today at dinner after they are roasted).

I dumped it into a roasting dish and gave it back to her so she could pose for one final pre-cooked shot with her masterpiece. She was very proud of her “cooking” efforts and I was very happy to have finished dinner prep and found a way to include our daily “lessons”! A win-win!