I'll gladly pay you Thursday...

I love burgers! So do my kids, and they're willing to eat almost anything on them as long as they get to eat them!

I have to say, now that my kids are better eaters, I don't have to do this anymore, but one of my little tricks was to slip veggies into _everything_!
I kept several cans of veg-all in the cabinet for this reason alone. (Well, and because as babies, this would be their snack, ~no! seriously!~)

First thing to do, toss the corn! It's not much of a veggie, more a starch. If you can grind it to make flour, it's what we here call BAD carbs. Not that it is bad, but really, no one in this house needs it! I try to make our carbs veggies more than starch, it sticks less, and heavens know, we don't get half as much exercise as we should, so we don't need the extra energy.

RIGHT! BURGERS!

Take a heaping tablespoon of vegall per burger, _then_ puree it. then add it to the chop meat before shaping, and seasoning the burgers. Sometimes I even add chopped onion to the mix, but a lot of kids notice that.

For toppings, shred the lettuce like fast food joints do, and then you can hide the dark green leafies in that! They'll never know........ (:
On top of that, I always tell them "It's exactly like a "Whopper"! Mayo, lettuce, tomato, catsup, onions, pickles, and cheese.

Try to grill burgers as often as possible, if you have a pan with ridges, use that to drain the fat away from the burgers, after all, it can't be healthy to cook them sitting in pools of their own fat!

Just some quick condiment help...
Read the ingredients on the catsup bottle, choose the one with the least sodium. They're all pretty close to the same, but sometimes you get lucky. And one of the few things I will pay extra for, is Hellmans canola oil mayo. The oil really does make the difference! The flavor is the same, but the calorie, and fat content is much lower!

Happy grilling all, and have a happy Memorial Day!
(Why happy, you ask?) Because I'm very happy I get the freedoms I do, Thank You to our Soldiers, for sacrificing all, for me and my kids.

Salad.

Not too many kids are usually up for this... As summer approaches, and the oven becomes your arch nemesis, you could almost cry at the menu, or the cost of eating out!

Ham, chicken, boiled egg... whatever your kid will eat, can be added to a salad. Most kids won't eat much more leafy stuff than iceberg lettuce, but, if you take a few leaves of basil, roll them up length-wise, and make skinny cuts cross-wise, you get a very tasty confetti.

You can do the same thing to baby spinach (or regular spinach) leaves... you can do it to as many different kinds of lettuces as you want to mix in, add some julienned carrots, thin sliced (seeded) cucumbers, sweet peppers, all kinds of stuff! Will they eat raw broccoli? Try it out.. kids will usually eat it if they don't recognize it as something they think they wont eat. you can put peas, snow peas, raw green beans.... the list is almost endless!

Then add some diced protein... egg, ham chicken, even bologna or pepperoni! Some shredded cheese, and dressing... YUM!
Just remember, if you measure out the recommended serving of dressing, you'll find that it usually is quite enough. Do we really need to waste money by letting it sit in a puddle in the bottom of the bowl?

Next up, tricking them into eating healthier burgers!