Hi Melanie,
So if I were you I would try sneaking some healthy ingredients into her food that are relatively tasteless but will add nutrition. Here’s what I use:
- Ground flax seed (ds gets this in all cereals, oatmeals, etc). This adds good fatty oils as well.
- Tofu (you can puree silken tofu into a lot of food without it being detected – like in her mac and cheese.
- Ground nuts (and seeds). Can be a very healthy fat if she can eat these in addition to the vitamins. You can use them to bread her chicken, sprinkle on potato, etc.
- Ground whole oats (here is an idea: grind up a bunch of the healthier oatmeal to a powder. Then add this to her Quaker Instant oatmeal). You can also use it to flour chicken nuggets and then bread them with ground nuts or seeds, etc.
- Wheat germ
Also we always have cooked pureed veggie cubes in hand in the freezer in case the opportunity arises to sneak them in somewhere.
To take her list here are some ideas:
Bread
- maybe you can flatten the bread and then roll it up with something sweet like a date jam or something, so it’s like a little roll-up or even a ball
- if you ever bake your own bread you can add some of the things listed above, or some shredded veggies
Cookies
- have you read through the decelptively delicious sticky in this forum? There are so brilliant ideas for cakes and cookies, I was just on there and grabbed a recipe deb posted for brownies baked with spinach and blueberries, neither of which you can taste
Pita bread
– does she like any filling in it? If so I can give you some ideas. And will she do whole wheat?
Pizza
– does she like it if you make it too? You can do tons with pizza sauce to add pureed veggies in there. The best one I’ve found is pureed pumpkin or butternut squash. It adds a great rich flavor but it really is hard to tell there’s something ‘different’ – only better. I can usually get away with a cube of zucchini or so in there too without it being detectable.
Spaghetti
– same with the sauce, will she use any?
Chicken
- already mentioned an idea above with making nuggets with healthier outsides. Another idea is to use ground chicken, add a little whole milk and a bunch of grated veggies plus some wheat germ, and make a meatloaf. (or little minimeatloaves).
Potato
- if she likes mashed potatoes maybe you can try steaming some cauliflower and then pureeing it and adding to the mash, it’s really nice and doesn’t taste much different. I usually add flax to ds’ and he doesn’t notice much
Oatmeal
- already said but maybe a better bet is to go back to the Quaker but then add stuff to it, what do you think?
Also can you get her to eat a multivitamin?
By the way I just wanted to add that given your list contains broccoli, Carrots, and Bananas, you are probably doing pretty well right there. Just give her lots of these and try to keep offering other things with low/no expectations and see how it goes. These are really healthy fruit/veggies though so she should be getting some good nutrients from these...
xxx
