Getting kids to eat vegetables

A question I get often is:  "How do you get your kids to eat vegetables?"

To be honest, I've never had to GET them to do it.  They love vegetables and fruits.  And all food, really.  There isn't anything my kids won't eat.

I believe this starts early and it starts in a garden.  Kids love to touch and feel and know about everything, especially their food!  If they are a part of the growing, they will definitely be a part of the eating.

My kids raid the garden daily for vegetables.  I have chased them out of the swiss chard in order to have some left.  Kiddo2 was with me while I was weeding and he was talking to me with his mouth full.  I asked, "What are you eating?"  He said, "Cabbage!  I love cabbage!"  

The kicker is that we don't even have heads on our cabbage yet, just leaves.  So even cabbage leaves taste pretty good to a soon-to-be-three year old boy!

Start kids early in the garden.  This is Kiddo1 at barely a year old helping me plant peas.

Later that summer we harvested her first "fresh from the garden" carrot.  Her life has never been the same...

I'm not sure why, but carrots are her favorite vegetable.

Here she is at 16mo with a giant green pepper.

Kiddo2 got in on the action the next summer with radishes.  He still loves them!  We had some last week that were past their prime and pretty sharp and woody.  He chomped down on them and made a face.  I asked him how it was.  He replied, "A little bit spicey, Mama!"  But he ate the whole thing and then another one!

Here's one not on my list of favorites:  raw potatoes!

And of course, corn on the cob.  Around here the kiddos refer to it as "corn by the cob" (which is much better than fruit by the foot!).  Kiddo1 and Hubby prefer their corn raw, she actually cries if I cook it.

Kiddo2 eats it cooked, like his mother.

I don't have a picture of him, but Kiddo2's favorite vegetable is tomatoes.  He eats them like candy with the juice running down his chin.  

Just last night, Kiddo1 and I were weeding tomatoes in the garden.  She was begging for a carrot.  She knows what plants are carrots and if I don't dig her one, she will dig it herself.  I told her gently that her carrots were not ready to eat yet.  

She persisted.  I resisted.

She then asked if she could go get a carrot from the fridge.  I relented.

And so, in order to have patience to wait for her beloved carrots, an organic carrot from the grocery store will have to do.

As Kiddo1 is a fine judge of carrots, she is very particular about what carrots she will eat.  She refuses to eat baby peeled carrots.  She won't eat conventional long carrots.  But she will eat organic long carrots...just until HER carrots are ready!