How many of us moms have struggled to feed our kids veggies? With our kids as our biggest food critics, even the tiniest green-colored food will be found or spat out. It can be frustrating, especially when coupled with our feelings of insecurity over our average kitchen skills.
How can we make our kids eat better? And how can we find the time to make healthy dishes they actually like?
Benefits of Veggies for Kids’ Development
Don’t give up, mommy! Teaching our kids to eat vegetables at a young age is very beneficial. It helps with their development and improves their overall nutrition. It also improves their gut health. In addition to this, eating vegetables is good for their weight management. As a result, good health leads to great academic performance and better resistance to sickness.
Here are some ways you can foster a love for vegetables in your children from a young age:
1. Let them try a bit of everything without forcing them. A good rule is that if they haven’t tried it, they can’t say they don’t like it.
2. Next time you go grocery shopping, bring them along!
3. Be a good role model when it comes to healthy eating. It can really be tough to teach them to eat right and healthy if they don’t see you eating well.
4. Let them be your sous chef and get them involved in the cooking process. Bigger kids can try a bit of chopping or putting ingredients in the pot while younger kids can help with mixing or washing vegetables.
5. Sneak veggies into well-loved dishes to mix things up! Carrots inside your spaghetti sauce? Why not!
Too Busy to Cook
One busy mom found herself in a similar situation. Work from home mom Ria wanted to serve her family authentic Kare-Kare but wouldn’t even attempt it because she knew it would be too tedious to make. Her mother and aunts only made it the traditional way, slow cooked cuts of beef and using only ground peanuts, not peanut butter. And that was the only way she wanted to recreate one of her favorite dishes.
After failing at her first go — not to mention taking too long in the kitchen — it was way past dinner time. So Ria settled for enjoying Kare-Kare by dining out instead.
“I would just order it when our family ate out at a Filipino restaurant or eat it when we were at my in-laws. I figured I could just introduce my kids to one of my favorite dishes through those opportunities,” she said.
Ria continued to try teaching her kids healthy eating habits and when she chanced upon Mama Sita’s Kare-Kareng Gulay Mix, she decided to give it another go.
- ½ cup cooking oil
- 1 piece eggplant, sliced diagonally
- 1 tbsp cooking oil
- 2 cloves of garlic, crushed
- 1 piece red onion, sliced
- 12 pieces sitaw, cut into 2-inch lengths
- ¼ cup sliced banana heart (Optional)
- 1 cup water
- 4 pieces pechay, separate stems from leaves
- 1 pouch Mama Sita’s Kare-kareng Gulay Mix dissolved in ½ cup water
- Bagoong to taste (Optional)
Instructions
- In a pan, heat cooking oil and fry eggplant. Set aside.
- In a separate saucepan, heat cooking oil and sauté garlic and onion.
- Add sitaw and banana heart. Stir for 30 seconds.
- Add water then the pechay stems. Bring to a boil.
- Pour the dissolved Mama Sita’s Kare-kareng Gulay Mix. Stir. Boil and let it simmer for 2 minutes.
- Add the pechay leaves. Stir and continue simmering until the sauce thickens.
- Add the fried eggplant. Stir and simmer for 1 minute.
- Serve with rice and bagoong.
In just 10 minutes, Ria was able to serve her family Kare-Kareng gulay on a weeknight. “Cooking Kare-Kare has never been so easy! Even if it was a busy day and I hardly had time to cook in the kitchen, I was still able to prepare a healthy and yummy dish for my family,” Ria said.
You don’t need to be a culinary expert to create delicious meals for your kids. With a dash of love and care, and Mama Sita’s Kare-Kareng Gulay mix, you can make healthy mealtimes more enjoyable for kids.
Make Mama Sita’s Kare-Kareng Gulay Mix your new kitchen companion to make a healthy kid-approved family meal!