When brilliant parenting ideas don't work...

When you have picky eaters you try all kinds of sneaky things to make them try new food. When I say picky, we are fortunate enough to have two children who love raw fruits and vegetables - so it could be worse - but they are not too keen on trying new things or anything cooked for that matter. My mom bought us a kids' cook book, full of fun ideas and appealing photos. I let the children choose a recipe and they were very excited about cooking their own supper.

They chose a recipe for fish/mashed potato croquettes. They cooked and flaked the fish, made the mash, formed the patties into fun shapes (dinosaur, heart, fish and a cake to be exact). I breaded and fried them and well, that was as fun as it got. After swearing up and down that they would eat every last bite, they barely nibbled the crispy edge and declared that altough it was nice they really didn't want to eat it. In other words, we think it's gross but we enjoyed cooking.

So reverse psychology doesn't always work out but at least we had a blast in the kitchen and hopefully the love of cooking will stick.