My boys are young, but boy are they picky eaters. If I could have a re-do of their first months eating solids I’d know better now to have pushed healthier, varied whole foods more and treat them less to McD’s and sweets.
Even though they did eat vegies back then too – I should have stuck with a healthier, varied plan. Today I want to share three items I use to add health into the foods we eat.
Milled Flax Seed
Over the years I’ve been adding this to my homemade baked goods and only recently have I started adding this to my commercial boxed cake mixes. I think it offsets the sweetness some while making the cupcake more filling. I also add Milled Flax Seed to pancakes along with a generous dumping of cinnamon. You can also add some oats to the cupcakes and pancakes too.
Coconut Oil
I’ve replaced butter before with coconut oil, fried with, and baked with it.
When I was out of cupcake wrappers recently I coated my cupcake pan with coconut oil, I think I also used some in my mix. My cupcakes turned out wonderful! I recommend filling the pan or the cupcake papers 2/3 or more of the way full so you have bigger cupcakes too.
Nutritional Yeast
Sounds unappealing, right? Well, I LOVE this stuff! It’s so good. Right now I’m the only one in the family this crazy about it. It almost has a cheesy taste and it’s so healthy. It’s full of B vitamins.
I spray my air-popped popcorn with some Olive Oil and then shake some nutritional yeast on it. I’ve added it to macaroni and cheese too.
I also melt some coconut oil in a pan, coat some cauliflower florets with almond milk or regular milk then coat the cauliflower in a mix of nutritional yeast, flour and seasonings (salt, pepper, maybe some onion or garlic powder). Fry the coated cauliflower till golden brown. Delicious!
On a final note…
Hiding Pureed and Chopped Vegetables
Two things you could also do and I’ve done some or both is to hide pureed or chopped vegies into meatloaf or other foods. Becareful what you try though. Years ago I pureed beats and added it to our spaghetti sauce. That was possibly the LAST time my oldest “liked” spaghetti sauce. Even though he likes it on meatballs and pizza…
I can pin-point his refusal of spaghetti sauce back to or very close to the time I ruined it by adding beats.To tell you the truth… the sauce looked gross with the beats in it. It turned pinkish.
I add milled flax seed to my homemade bread and oatmeal. I haven’t tried the nutritional yeast yet – the cauliflower recipe sounds delicious, so I’ll give it a try.
Visiting from the BYB challenge