Please share your best healthy recipes for convincing junk food eaters!

Do you have any restrictions -- no meat, no dairy, no gluten, etc.? It sounds like your playgroupers have no restrictions, but how about you?

We'll help you brainstorm, never fear!

I have a great recipe for "healthy"(ish) no-bake cookies. Let me dig it up.

Also, how about something like just roasted chicken for lunch? Roast the chicken, and put some potatoes (small ones whole, or chunks of larger ones) under the chicken while it's roasting. The starch from the potatoes will actually turn the pan drippings into a "gravy" without having to add flour, starch, butter, etc. The gravy will probably convince some of the kids to eat the chicken, and their moms, too, but you'll know it's still healthy. You can roast veggies with it, too -- roast squash and carrots have a mildly sweet flavor, which might help entice those who are hooked on sugar to eat them. Plus, it's an easy meal for you to make while you are trying to prepare for playgroup.

As VK said, perhaps give us some further guidelines or ideas about what you think of as healthy and would like to prepare and serve.

Thanks for all the great ideas!

Let me see if I can answer your questions....

The kids are 18-28 months....

I try not to eat trans fat, white flour, too many starches, high fructose corn syrup, the usual...and I don't let dd have chocolate yet..holding out until 2. I buy mostly organic and try not to use canned soups, etc.

I've done fruit salads everytime so far and everyone eats it up but then looks around at the end of the meal for an ooey, gooey dessert. I tried serving strawberry/banana "ice cream" from Cathe's book, but the kids wouldn't touch it!?!

I love your ideas! I am going to use them all...but I am going to wait for it to get a little cooler to roast chicken b/c our a/c isn't that great and it's gets HOT during the day worse if I use the oven.

I have thought about doing the pizza bar thing, but haven't figured out how to do individual pizza crusts that have no trans fats...any ideas?

Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!!

One more thing, LOL. Have you ever made ziploc bag ice cream. You could use organic stuff and make it a little healthier. I don't have the exact recipe, but I'll google it, it's really easy and the kids love it. I got this from in mamas kitchen . com

INGREDIENTS

1/2 cup half and half (milk may be used in a pinch)
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 tablespoon sugar
4 cups crushed Ice
4 tablespoons salt
2 quart size zipper-seal bags 1 gallon size zipper-seal freezer bag

METHOD

Mix the cream (or milk), vanilla and sugar together in one of the quart size bags. Seal tightly, allowing as little air to remain in the baggie as possible. Too much air left inside may force the baggie open during shaking.

Close and place this bag inside the other quart-size baggie, again leaving as little air inside as possible and sealing well. By double-bagging, you minimize the risk of salt and ice leaking into the ice cream and making an inedible mess.

Now put the two baggies inside the gallon size bag and fill the bag with ice, then generously sprinkle salt on top. Again let all the air escape and seal the bag. Wrap the bag in a towel or put gloves on (because the ice-salt mixture gets blasted cold) and shake and massage the bag, making sure the ice surrounds the cream mixture. Five to eight minutes is adequate time for the mixture to freeze into ice cream.

Use freezer baggies when possible because they are thicker and less likely to develop small holes, allowing leakage. You can get probably get by with using regular zipper-seal bags for the smaller quart sizes, because you are double-bagging.

Makes 1 serving.

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Make your own! I know there are some great pizza dough recipes on here if you search (I'm thinking Xenabyte's "Good Eats with Wheat" thread). You can make 'em with whole-wheat flour (or, if I were you, I would do half whole wheat, half white). It's super easy if you ahve a bread machine to do the kneading, but still easy otherwise.

For dessert, what about the avocado pudding? I make it with equal parts avocado and very ripe banana, a T or two of honey, and cocoa powder. That's it! Blend it up with a hand blender until it's nice and smooth. Don't tell them what it is until afterwards! or ever. Just call it "chocolate-banana pudding."

Let us know what you end up doing.

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: Yum, I'll be waiting for that one

Okay, here's the healthy-ish no-bake cookie recipe. You can add other things like hemp seeds, chia seeds, etc., if you happen to have those around, too. I typed the recipe as it was given to me, then added my own substitutions and such in parenthesis.

6 tablespoons whole milk (Non-homogenized, if you can get it.)
1/3 cup sugar (I use Rapadura or substitute xylitol.)
1 + Tbsp cocoa powder (Just depends on how much of a chocolate taste you want. A tablespoon will be plenty chocolatey.)
3 tsps vanilla
2/3 cup peanut butter (I've recently tried subbing homemade almond butter to good effect. Unsweetened nut butter is best, if you're looking to reduce sugar intake.)
3 tsps ground flax seed (I have used up to 1/4 cup of flax seed, and I've put it in whole, too.)
2 cups oatmeal

Combine milk, cocoa, and sugar in a pan over high heat. Heat until boiling. Remove from heat and stir in vanilla and peanut butter, stirring until peanut butter is melted. Add flax seeds and oatmeal and stir until well combined.

Drop by spoonfulls onto wax paper and refridgerate until firm. (Or, eat it right out of the pan, if you prefer. Not that we've ever done that around here or anything. ) Makes between 12 and 24 cookies, depending on size of each cookie. (Closer to 15 or so, when I make them.)

No one ever believes these are "healthy" when I make them. And everyone eats them right up!