Pulling out the Big Guns

My son is a picky eater. It drives me crazy. But he's been that way since birth, so I'm used to it. He frequently goes through stages where he refuses to eat certain things. Right now it's dinner. Obnoxious. Tomorrow morning we have an appointment with the feeding clinic to come up with new eating strategies. We've been in contact and/or working with them on and off since The Toddler was 4 months old.

We had a nice little battle at dinner time last night. Afterwards I thought to myself, "You know what? If the Toddler wants to skip dinner every night, then it's time to pull out The Big Guns."

What are the Big Guns? It's my Serious Business Strategy for keeping The Toddler well nourished. I hide vegetables and other nutritious things into the food he is actually willing to eat. Oh yes.

I've done this off and on over the past couple of years, but I usually taper off when he decides he wants to eat again. 

This morning, I came up with a quick and easy way to enhance something he actually loves to eat - muffins.

I used Martha White muffin mix that you can find at any grocery store. You are only required to add milk. The package only make 6 muffins, so I used two packages to make a dozen.

Here's what I did:

After combining the milk to the muffin mix, I added a couple of awesome ingredients:

1 medium carrot (about 3/4 cup), peeled and finely grated.

2 tablespoons of Wheat Germ 

Approximately 1/2 a cup of finely-chopped dried, mixed fruit (I used an electric chopper)

Then, I baked the muffins according to the package directions.

Super easy, and great results.

And look - The Toddler ate them and liked them. Here's proof:

He also requested another muffin for his afternoon snack. Victory.

And by the way - don't worry about us dealing with The Toddler's eating shenanigans. We are pretty familiar with what works and what doesn't with him at this point. We've found that with patience and creative thinking, we are always able to get him to eat again.

But if you are looking for a good resource for getting your child to eat, I would recommend the book, How to Get Your Kid to Eat, But Not Too Much by Ellyn Satter. And you can get it right here:

You're welcome, world :)