Cooking with your child

This is by no means a guaranteed way of getting your child to experiment with what they'll put in their mouths but having fun with making food is a great way of getting the dialogue going.

To start with, rather than getting into battle mode and cooking things that are good for them, try something silly.  Maybe green eggs and ham - it doesn't matter if they don't eat it, it gives you a chance to talk about the food - how could we make the eggs green?  Experiment - what happens if we tip some green food colour in before we fry them?  Is there a way of making green eggs without scrambling them?  If we scramble them, what vegetable purees could we add that taste ok and make them go green?

There are two absolutely brilliant books available which base all their recipes on the foods mentioned in Roald Dahl's books - the first is called Revolting Recipes and the second Even More Revolting Recipes.  They aren't about anything nutritious at all - they are purely about having fun with food.  I think that's a really fabulous first step.

Some years ago, on a rainy weekend, I used to let the kids each choose a recipe they wanted to try from these books, then I'd go to the supermarket and grab all the ingredients and let each of them have their own time with me making their chosen recipe whilst the others watched t.v. or played games.  We all then dug in to what could be described as a somewhat eccentric and unhealthy tea with all sorts of "eeeyew"s and "yuck"s.

We took photos of the food and made it into a folder, the kids wrote out the recipes of the successes to go in their folders and began their own recipe books.  I only have my own daughter's one left now and she continues to add to it.  For her 18th, amongst plenty of other more expensive must haves I'm sure, I think I shall have it printed into a book for her.