Forst - How to Get Your Kids to Beg for Veggies: Quick & Easy Hidden Veggie Recipes the Whole Family Will Love (You Hide Them;)

How to Get Your Kids to Beg for Veggies

(You Hide Them;)

Leann Forst, MBA, CHHP

Copyright 2015 Leann Forst

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information, contact Leann Forst at www.groovybeets.com .

For more information please write:

Groovy Beets Natural Family Health

3425 W. Main St. STE 109-235

Frisco, Texas, 75034

Ebook Formatting/Conversion: Chris_Mac_Artworker

Photographs copyright Leann Forst

FIRST EDITION

ISBN: 978-1511728690 (Print version)

This book is intended to be informational and should not be considered a substitute for advice from a medical professional or nutritionist. Each persons physical, emotional, and spiritual condition is unique. Please consult your health coach or doctor for matters pertaining to your specific health and diet. The author and the publisher expressly disclaim responsibility for any adverse effects arising from the use or application of the information contained in this book.

To contact the author, visit:

www.groovybeets.com

D E D I C A T I O N

I dedicate this book to my ever supportive family.

To my husband, Dart, who has patiently been by my side throughout the process of my discovering what I really want to do when I grow up.

To my son, Caden, who is my pickiest eater and biggest inspiration for writing this book for moms of kids just like you.

To my daughter, Madison, who is always appreciative of everything I cook, whether its edible or not.

Contents

As a mother of two, I am constantly wondering if I am doing all the right things for my kids when it comes to their health. Im not sure if this is just a mom-thing or not but I think we all want our children to have a long, healthy life and most of us know that nutrition plays a role. The problem is sometimes, its life that gets in the way of making all the great choices we know we should make. Todays fast paced society is focused on a myriad of about a thousand different things each daywhich ironically sometimes results in less focus on the number 1 thing that is important to us our kids health.

When my son was 2, he was diagnosed with chronic asthma. He was sick every 3 weeks with an asthmatic condition that would continue for no less than 10 days. It was cyclical in the fact that if he hadnt been sick for 3 weeks, I knew an attack was coming. Doctor after doctor and medication after medication put me in a state of constant stress and anxiety to help my poor little boy who should be playing outside rather than suffering from this disease. The drive to help him and the determination to find a better alternative than constant medication led me to read health book after health book. After I had read over 100 books yes, I said 100 it all started coming together. He had a low immune system and the food we were eating was making him sicker.

Before this experience, I can say that I was completely ignorant of how food affected health. I thought it was all about calories in and calories outand thats it. We were eating low fat and sugar-free everything. I was clueless of the fact that my immune system was damaged evident by 4th stage endometriosis and multiple miscarriages which is why my son was likely born with a lower immune system himself. I didnt realize how my food choices impacted my unborn child. I didnt understand how antioxidants, nutrients and phytochemicals played a role to boost immunity and health. I wasnt a good cook and my family lived on packaged, easy to fix meals and snacks. Enter SAD: The Standard American Diet.

After learning about food and health, I decided to take action and serve more vegetables as a start. But the picky eater, that I created, was not on board with the new changes in my meal mission. I had to get creative which is when I picked up the book Deceptively Delicious and became inspired and motivated to sneak more nutrients into my kids food by pureing vegetables. Jessica Seinfeld is a genius and I will forever be grateful for her book that gave me ideas that steered me in a whole new direction of health for our family.

After changing our food choices, increasing our nutrient intake and decreasing the amount of S.A.D. food that we were consuming, my sons health recovered and so did mine. He is now asthma free and after 3 miscarriages, I carried a healthy pregnancy and had my beautiful little girl. Was it a God thing or a food thing? I think a little of both. But one thing is for sure, it was clear to me that food could either be our medicine or our poison.

That was 8 years ago.

During this time, I made a huge career shift. I had paid a lot of money for my MBA and was trying to put it to good use in a high stress, sales management position. But during that time, I became so fascinated with food cures, using food as medicine and nutrition that I ended up leaving my high paying job in telecommunications and eventually decided to become an Integrative Nutrition Health Coach. While studying over 100 different dietary theories at the Institute of Integrative Nutrition, I learned about food allergies, gut health, brain health, using food as function, healing foods, bio-individuality and more. The message was clear. The Standard American Diet was a root cause of many diseases that Americans are facing today and the only way to turn around our dismal disease rates is to start with eating real food.

This experience changed me, my health, and how I view the food that I buy and make for my family.

Im still a busy mom and business person looking for short cuts to getting fast, healthy food on the table. But now I make it a daily mantra to find quick and clever ways to add nutrients to my family meals and have come up with a few tricks of my own to make it faster, and easier to boost the healthfulness of each meal of the day.

My hope for you is that this book will inspire you as well as provide a few great ideas for boosting the nutrient value of your family meals using fast, real food recipesand a few secret ingredients. ;)

Im not a professional cookin fact, Im far from it. Nor do I particularly like to cook. Most of what I learned, I HAD to learn. Meaning, I had survived just fine on fast food, quick fix, out of the box food all the way up to my 30s when I got married. Even then, my husband and I were in high pressure sales jobs that required long hours so we always found ourselves eating out. It just seemed too daunting to try to plan meals for just the 2 of us but then came our first child.

And that changed everything.

As you read in the preface, my son was chronically sick and soon after learning about the food connection to health I had to get busy making REAL food for him and for us. With really little or no experience, it was hardand I faileda lot. So I made it a mission to figure out ways to get as many nutrients into the easiest recipes I could find. When I discovered Jessica Seinfelds book Deceptively Delicious it opened a whole new door for me and my sons health. Since then, I have found even more ways to sneak veggies into our meals undetected.

This book is all about EASY. If you are a busy mom that wants to discover new ways to get your kids to eat vegetables but you dont have the time to chop, pure, freeze and thaw. Then this book is for you because Ive simplified the process of hiding veggies to ONE STEP.

The secret is that for all of the recipes included in this book Ive used vegetables that already come in ready-to-use format such as jarred baby foods, organic canned pumpkin, 100% avocado guacamole (technically avocado is a fruit), organic vegetable powders and organic nutritional powders.