I used to wonder if I was alone in finding my children difficult to feed.
What is it about hamburgers and chicken nuggets that exert such fascination on the young? It certainly wasn't a lack of alternative.
With five of us in the house I've often found myself cooking four different things for each meal in the effort to find something which I could claim was good for the children and which they were also willing to eat.
My major problem was fruits an vegetables.
When my sons best friend came to visit I thought I'd found the answer.
Since he is vegetarian, his favorite meal turned out to be cheese and tomato pizza, followed by chocolate ice cream.
Fortunately this gave me an idea.
Smoothies have been around for a long time, but the name has this unfortunate healthy connotation which can make them less attractive to kids, so I didn't mention smoothies, I bought a Vita mix blender and made what I called 'ice cream drinks'.
Starting with home made ice cream (made with far less sugar than the commercial kind and real whole fruit), I blended it with whole milk and was surprised to score an immediate success.
Yes, we started with chocolate, but our next attempt was strawberry and this was a big hit.
As time passed, I added chopped fruit to the mix, both when making the ice cream and when making the drinks.
Strawberries were added to strawberry ice cream, mixed berries to vanilla and soon we moved to other fruit combinations.
Strawberry ice cream with strawberries and bananas added was well received by my panel of critics.
Since our home-made ice cream didn't contain too much sugar it wasn't too difficult to 'forget' to buy ice cream once week so we just had to try to make our drink without.
Over time I increased the fruit, reduced the milk and began to experiment with yogurt to bring back a creamy flavor, I also discovered that more bananas could also have this effect.
The result is that my children still don't eat fruits and vegetables, but they do drink milk shakes and smoothies which seem to them to be quite a different thing.
They are eating raw fruits, and getting all the benefits of the vitamins, minerals, amino acids and fiber these contain, without really realizing, in fact as far as they are concerned they're getting a treat.
And this is my latest challenge.
On a recent visit a friend of my daughters refused a smoothie because her Mom said she couldn't have it.
Of course I respect her mother's wishes, but when I inquired it seemed the basis for her decision was that if the kids felt it was a treat then whatever it was, it was probably bad for them.
Now if I tell all, my children will know me for the fraud I am, sneaking healthy food into their diets by the back door.
So I've been guilty of giving my children raw nutritious food, full of vitamins, minerals, amino acids, and fiber which will help them grow strong and stay healthy.
As far as I'm concerned if I had to go over to the dark side and get assistance from the evil Darth Ice Cream, then that's just too bad.
If you have the same problem as I do, I recommend you buy a Vita mix blender and a bucket of ice cream, and go from there.