You Can Make Your Kids Eat Their Vegetables And Like It

This is a little extra work for mom, but worth the effort. As long as you are not planning meals for a child that is lactose intolerant or has other special needs, this might work a miracle for you. The kids will eat because the following dinner is just sooooo special. The adults will get a kick out of this one too.

Prehistoric dinner on a plate. Gather up the plastic dinosaur figures and use them to decorate a centerpiece on the table or if you have enough of them and your children are all old enough to play with them, have them facing each place setting.

You will need:

mashed potatoes made with milk and butter fresh from real potatos, use red potatoes, they taste better, this works best when still very warm

broccoli steamed just until tender and still very green , then carefully cut into individual little bite-size trees, keep these just warm enough not to turn color

your family's favorite yellow (orange) colored cheese, melted and kept hot for pouring, you might want to add a little milk to make it pour a little easier

meat cut up into small kid-size pieces and gravy, keep hot for serving

well cooked frozen leaf spinach (spinach often takes about
45 minutes or more to the melt in your mouth stage).
Drain the spinach well and butter it just a bit, keep it serving temperature

The smallest beets you can find (canned), gently heat these.

Three section picnic plates (the better ones that won't seep any liquid through the bottom)

Now here's where the fun comes in. You take appropriate portions of the mashed potatoes and shape them into volcanoes. Poke a hole down in the top so that the magma (i.e., the melted cheese) can sit in there. Place the volcanoes on a cookie sheet that has been lined with a non-stick foil. Melt enough butter to gently brush the sides of the volcanoes and place in a medium hot oven so that the outsides will crisp. 375 degrees works for me, check at 10 minutes to see if they are getting a little brown and crispy on the mountain sides of the volcano.

Once the potato volcanoes are done, you will need to assemble everyone's plate quickly. Insert the broccoli trees on a mountain side or two, and let some of the trees be fallen away from the "blast" so that a real serving of vegetable is there. In another segment of the plate, arrange the tarpit. Place the cut up meat and cover with gravy. Serve just a few of the small beets and explain that these are the dinosaur eggs.

The spinach can serve as the nest that the beets (dino eggs) are placed in.

Now pour or ladle the melted cheese over the volcano, filling the center and over the sides, get some of the cheese over the trees you poked into the mountain and the ones that were felled by the blast. Extend the cheese onto the nest (the spinach) but don't put it on the beets (dino eggs).

The kids can save the earth by eating all the volcano, the trees, the tarpits and the dino eggs and nest. Their favorite dessert awaits cleaned plates. Do watch over the kids as the potato volcanoes have come very hot from the oven so they don't burn their mouth on them.

Invite a friend or two of your children for this special dinner along with their mom and you just might find that the children are enjoying their vegetables.