Kids’ Salad
The hardest part of being a test family for a cookbook is that you can’t blog about it! Can you believe I’ve kept my mouth shut about Easy No-Stir Pea Risotto for 18 months? It’s just SO good, and SO easy. Getting To Yum is Karen Le Billon’s latest book, hot off the presses, and is a technique and recipe based follow-up to French Kids Eat Everything. Using Karen’s techniques, I decided during our testing phase to teach my kids to not only eat salad, but to love salad. I figured it was my highest mountain, so I may as well climb it with Karen on my team.
Did Karen’s techniques work? OH YES. Yes, they did. I now have a salad recipe so loved, I receive requests for it. From college-aged babysitters! When was the last time a college kid asked someone to make them a red cabbage and radish salad? I am so honored to be a guest blogger on Getting To Yum’s website this week, and you can read about how I used Karen’s technique of tweaking flavors in graduated steps. As well, our final salad recipe and its many variations are available on her website, and you can view it here. I was so excited to finally be able to share the news of this cookbook, and while I was telling my family about its first day in the bookstores, we had this conversation:
Sara: I don’t know WHY you told the world we love salad. We do not LOVE salad!
Kelly (mouth full of salad): Yeah Mommy! Salad? You keep saying we love it. We love lasagna. We love tomato soup. We love shrimp tacos. We don’t love salad!
Mommy (and I could hardly stop laughing): Um…ladies? Those empty little dishes in front of your lasagna plates? They are practically licked clean. What was in them moments ago?
Sara: That wasn’t SALAD! That was…that THING you make that we LOVE. With the almonds and…well…you know…what’s it called?
Kelly: SALAD! Is that SALAD?! Oh well then…yes. We do love salad.
The beginning of Nifty Niçoise Soup, Sara’s absolute favorite.
To celebrate all of these gorgeous things happening, Karen and her publisher, William Morrow (an imprint of Harper Collins Publishers) are giving away a copy of Getting To Yum to my readers! I can’t wait to send it to you! I’d send you my copy but it has been hugged to death (and the girls went through and put a post-it note next to each of their stories, and next to their favorite recipes. “Nifty Niçoise Soup” even got a love note.) To enter a random giveaway drawing, just leave a comment telling me what you’d like to teach your child to eat. I had a Mom stop me yesterday and say when she saw my daughters wolfing down red peppers, she wanted this book. Red peppers! Sure! What a great place to start! Getting to Yum has an entire chapter on peppers. The book includes graduated taste-training chapters for many of the main-stay fruits and vegetables you’ll find in any North American grocery store. Leave as many comments as you like, and each new comment is a separate entry into the drawing.
The random drawing will take place on Friday, May 23rd, at 8 pm, EDT.
A huge thank you to Karen Le Billon for inviting me along on this journey. I’ve worked this book, you’all. It’s full of kindness and fun. Teaching my children to eat has been the greatest gift I can give to their lifelong health. Yes, I’ve always cooked. Yes, I’ve always loved it. But now we love and appreciate it together. And really, isn’t that the treasure of the family dinner table? I am so excited to share this delicious journey with you!
32 responses to “Getting To Yum Giveaway!!! (Volume 2)”
Katie is a pretty good eater. Maddie not so much. But I’d love for them to be open to trying new things. Maybe soup. Or fish. Or lunch meat. A girl can dream:)
Kara T, I love you! You did not just say lunch meat! (1) That cracks me up. (2) My kids won’t eat it either. (3) Our generation struggles with that aversion being a good thing!
Miss you!
I would really like for T to go back to veggies. He ate it all…then stopped. Around age 3. I think it’s a texture thing. Now he’s negatively influencing P!!!
Texture is a HUGE component of learning to eat. It might be the biggest obstacle for kids. Texture is covered thoroughly in the book, because indeed, that is the gauntlet for many-o-Momma.
We are at a phase where we want the boys to try new ones, explore. They are great eaters, momma is just out of ideas!!!
I’m acutely aware of how tastes change, being of the picky eater variety. I have one child who isn’t afraid to try things but doesn’t like vegetables or pizza, One that’s adventurous with vegetables but not meat and One that is the best lettuce and dressing with a peanut butter sandwich on the side eater ever but goes in waves as to what else he’ll eat including sauces. I just want to make one meal that hubby and I like where we don’t have to negotiate with someone.
Karin, agreed! Kids tastes do change as they grow, and short-order cooking is for no Mom. Who has that kind of time? I think taking the entire family through the process really helped us. We did our techniques and tried the flavors as a family, which brought us to a nice place together.
My children are pretty adventurous eaters…but I wish they would go for the vegetables first!
Kirsten,
Absolutely. You should read Karen’s first book, “French Kids Eat Everything” too. She has an entire section dedicated to how to get kids to eat the veggies first (it’s called a starter course). Kelly complains now when she doesn’t get her “starter”.
Always game for a new cookbook! Thanks for the recommendation! If anything gets my kids and my husband to eat squash, it will be a miracle. I love squash! I’d love to eat it one time without three scrunched up noses looking at me! ????
I would love for my kiddo to eat fruit! He’s never been a fan and it’s a task just to get him to eat grapes!
I really want my kids to eat real food for snacks, not something salty and crunchy from a bag. I will keep an eye on the influencers and intervene when they start noticing. You picked a challenging one, but I want my kids to eat legumes and beans, and not just puréed into hummus.
Mindy, the book includes an entire chapter on snacks. Snacks were a game-changer for us too. Bethany, the fruit recipe and taste-training sections are just as robust as the veggies. I never knew there were kids that didn’t eat fruit, but I’ve learned through this process there are many! Tammi, there is an entire section dedicated just to squash. I had to train myself to eat it a few years back, and was grateful to teach myself to eat it as something other than fried!
I would love for my two daughters to enjoy more vegetables than canned green beans! I did manage to convert them to beet salad lovers thanks to Karen’s book French Kids Eat Everything, so I’ve been anxiously awaiting her newest book, Getting To Yum for more recipes! We need this book!
I’d love for my kids to eat more veggies. My toddler loves meats, but is a bit shy on the veggies 🙂
I have one great eater and one picky eater. The picky eaters will-not-eat food of the week seems to change, well weekly. However, I really want them both to enjoy more veggies of the green variety and more proteins. We had great success with the first book and I am dying to try some new recipes!
We also have one good eater and one picky eater. Crazy how we offer the sames foods and experiences to two kids and the results are completely different! Max will eat some grains. He refuses meat, many fruits, and most vegetables. He’s surviving on air. 😉
We have 3 girls that are all different with different likes. Would love for them to like salad or anything with flavor 🙂
I presently have a child in the womb, and I’d like to get this parenting with food adventure off to the right start. I figure the more I know now before I actually start feeding my child solids, the better. Does this count? 🙂
Andrea,
Absolutely!!! The book is infancy through adulthood. How much do I WISH I had this book when I had one in the womb? The stuff I fed that poor child. She went for an entire year when she would only eat crab, peas, and peanut butter. YUCK!
Christy,
Tonight my daughters (ages 6 and 8) devoured a chicken pizza made with pesto sauce, a very strongly flavored white cheese (I’m not even sure which cheese the deli used!), and tomatoes. There is hope. So, so much hope.
Grandson is so picky – he won’t try much unless it’s covered with ketchup and that doesn’t always work. Any ideas to improve his eating will be wonderful.
Ellen! Hey there! My niece suffers from the same “ketchup, ketchup, more ketchup” thing too. It has taken a lot of patience and gentle insistence on my part to move her to soups, veggies, and non-chicken nugget based proteins.
My kids were great eaters until they were two and a half. It has been a struggle ever since. I wish I knew some quality recipes that my kids and husband would eat.
My kids were great eaters until they were two and a half. It has been a struggle ever since. I wish I knew some quality recipes that my kids and husband would eat. I would love to read her new book.
I would like to teach my daughter to eat everything! My first goal is carrots – hoping she will try the vicious carrots. Loved Karen’s other book!
I wish my 2 year old would warm up to sour foods like berries, tomatoes and the like. So many fruits have a sour undertone that moving beyond apples and bananas seem like it will never happen…
I’d love to get this book, I have a very picky toddler!
Oh I forgot to mention, I’d like to get my toddler to eat kale!
I would love to win this cookbook. I have a very fussy eater in the family.
I would love to teach my grandson how to enjoy any vegetables, meat -anything that isn’t white!
I would love to expose my 9 year old grandson to a variety of foods. He only likes bread, pasta, and some dairy.