Cookbook for Kids

Lydia is our picky eater.  It drives me crazy.  Usually she will at least eat a few bites of her dinner even if she says she hates it.  I won't give her anything else so she eats what I cook but I hate the complaining.  I have found that if she is involved in making a meal, she is more likely to eat it.  Especially, if it comes out of her cookbook, Pretend Soup.

There is a recipe in the book for Hide and Seek muffins.  We had them once before and used frozen blueberries since I didn't have strawberries.  This week we made them with strawberries and Lydia said she actually liked them better with blueberries which is surprising since she will not eat raw blueberries.

 Lydia added and mixed up all of the ingredients with my supervision and sometimes assistance.  She put 1/4 cup of batter in each muffin cup.  Then she dipped the strawberries in sugar.

 The cookbook has regular written instructions and pictures with short instructions. You "hide" one strawberry inside each muffin.

 I have found that muffins are one of the easiest things for the kids to eat on school mornings.  I don't have to cook anything since the muffins are made the night before or several nights before and the older kids can serve themselves.

When I told Lydia she could make the pizza from her cookbook, she said, "But it is vegetable pizza. I've already read that recipe and I know it is for vegetable pizza. Wesley and I don't like vegetable pizza." All the recipes in Pretend Soup are vegetarian because it is written by Molly Katzen.

I let Lydia knead the dough for the pizza.  I doctored up the can of tomato sauce by adding a little sugar and some Italian seasoning.

Josiah and I ate a lot of raw zucchini slices.  He kept saying it was cucumber but his older siblings weren't falling for it.  I told them they had to put a couple of slices of zucchini and mushroom on their pizzas.

I let the kids load them up with cheese.  One big mistake I made and didn't realize it until the dough had been rising for an hour is that I failed to read that recipe should be doubled to make eight small pizzas.  We only had three small pizzas so Chris and I ate leftovers.

Lydia ate her pizza with the vegetables on it!  Wesley took his vegetables off and Josiah ate his pizza and veggies. I did have a bite or two of Josiah's pizza and I really liked it.  I love homemade pizza!

In September, while our kitchen was being remodeled, Wesley brought home a cookbook from school and wanted to make Italian meatballs.  We couldn't make them at the time so I photocopied the recipe.  We have made the meatballs a few times since our kitchen was finished.  This week I let Lydia help me make them.

She ate the meatballs for dinner with pasta and a little sauce (my best homemade sauce yet; I combined several favorite recipes)  and she and Wesley took the leftovers to school the next two days.  The next time we have roasted vegetable meatloaf, I will have her help me and hopefully she will eat it.  When I made it two weeks ago, she first refused to eat it until she realized we wouldn't give her anything else.  She eventually ate five bites but it took her forever (over 15 minutes) to decide to eat it.

Do you have any kids cookbooks that you would recommend?  I'm looking for kids cookbooks with real food that I will also enjoy eating.