I have struggled for so long with trying to get my son to eat healthy. It’s so hard because you can’t literally force them to eat whatever you made for dinner, so you end up making a separate meal, like chicken nuggets or macaroni and cheese AGAIN. Neither of which are very nutritious. But I also don’t want my kid to go hungry. It’s a catch 22.

I was worried about my son being unhealthy and being a type 2 diabetic by the age of 12 or something, so I realized I needed to get creative with sneaking him his veggies. I looked for some ideas online and I was pretty impressed with what I found.

I had never owned a food processor in the past, mainly because I never really gave it much thought. It looked to me like most of the tricks I needed to pull would involve a food processor, or at least make the recipes significantly easier to make. I was in.

I researched around and asked friends and family what they recommended. The consensus was that I need to get a Cuisinart DFP-14BCWNY Food Processor. I ordered it from KitchenWorksInc. I was so excited to get started when it got here.

We started with smoothies. If he wanted one of these “meals” that I had to make extra for him, then he’d have to have a smoothie with it. He thought he was pulling one over on me because it would be predominantly fruits; mainly berries. I snuck in the greens but I didn’t go so crazy that he’d notice. Otherwise he wouldn’t want it and then what’s the point anyway?

We’d make ice pops or ice cream and it would be the same thing: predominantly fruit based, with a decent serving of greens snuck in. Luckily the ice cream would take on the color of the fruit, so it was pretty well disguised. Slipping a little bit of beet in there is a good trick too.

It sounds tricky, but it really worked! I got my son the nutrients he so desperately needed, and we balanced out that processed food diet quite a bit. Now he’s at an age where he is actually starting to like vegetables on their own, so that is amazing, but I’m really glad that I got through those few years as smoothly as I did.

Now, my son is interested in cooking so we use the food processor for different recipes that he wants to try out. It’s nice because it’s what helped me maintain his nutrition as a little one, and now it’s more of a bonding experience for us. It’s really nice how my food processor has been such a helpful item in my life.