Lucky Kids Recipes

I try to feed my kids healthy food on a daily basis, but sometimes getting children to eat vegetables can be a challenge.

Jenny Rosenstrach, coauthor of Time for Dinner: Strategies, Inspirations and Recipes for Family Meals Every Night of the Week (Chronicle Books, 2010) and creator of one of our favorite food logs, DinnerALoveStory.com, gives up recipes for whipping up the perfect--nutritious, easy and, most importantly, adorable--spring lunch. It's way too easy for me to shovel down the straggler crusts of my kids' PB&J or grilled cheese sandwiches and call it lunch...only to fight a losing battle with a bag of tortilla chips an hour later.

Jenny Rosenstrach, coauthor of Time for Dinner: Strategies, Inspriations and Recipes for Family Meals Every Night of the Week (Chronicle Books, 2010) and creator of one of our favorite food logs, DinnerALoveStory.com, gives up recipes for whipping up the perfect--nutritious, easy and, most importantly, adorable--spring lunch. I think I came up with what may be an untoppable menu for lunch at the beach, if I do say so myself. Shrimp rolls, potato chips, and lemonade. I made a tray of these at my sister's beach house last year and think I'm going to have to make a ritual out of it. If I'm invited back.

Jenny Rosenstrach, coauthor of Time for Dinner: Strategies , Inspirations and Recipes for Family Meals Every Night of the Week (Chronicle Books, 2010) and creator of one of our favorite food logs, DinnerALoveStory.com, gives up recipes for whipping up the perfect--nutritious, easy and, most importantly, adorable--spring lunch. You wouldn't think that a gooey, melty grilled cheese would be too hard a sell on a kid, right? You also wouldn't think that a grilled cheese is nutritious enough to warrant Kasparov-ian strategizing from that kid's parents. But the Phoebe-wants-this-Abby-wants-that routine can wear on me (have I mentioned that each daughter requires her own brand of salsa when served with chips?) especially during something as supposedly simple as a weekend lunch. Why does Abby have to have a peanut butter sandwich and Phoebe have to have a grilled cheese? Why can't both of them have a grilled cheese? It's lunch! Why can't I just make the same thing for both of them? Why? Why? Why?

Jenny Rosenstrach, coauthor of Time for Dinner: Strategies , Inspirations and Recipes for Family Meals Every Night of the Week (Chronicle Books, 2010) and creator of one of our favorite food logs, DinnerALoveStory.com, gives up recipes for whipping up the perfect--nutritious, easy and, most importantly, adorable--spring lunch. Just want to clear one thing up: My family does not all sit down to the same dish every single night. We do most nights. But like every house that is inhabited by humans born in the 21st century, there is the constant chorus of requests (an awfully nice way to put it) from the royal diners: "I want spaghetti not meatballs," " I want meatballs not spaghetti," "I want ketchup with my hamburger," "I won't eat my fish without Soyaki" I don't have to go on. I know you know.

Jenny Rosenstrach, coauthor of Time for Dinner: Strategies, Inspirations and Recipes for Family Meals Every Night of the Week (Chronicle Books, 2010) and creator of one of our favorite food logs, DinnerALoveStory.com, gives up recipes for whipping up the perfect--nutritious, easy and, most importantly, adorable--spring lunch.

Jenny Rosenstrach, coauthor of Time for Dinner: Strategies, Inspirations and Recipes for Family Meals Every Night of the Week (Chronicle Books, 2010) and creator of one of our favorite food logs, DinnerALoveStory.com, gives up recipes for whipping up the perfect--nutritious, easy and, most importantly, adorable--spring lunch. If peanut butter = surefire consumption, and noodles = surefire consumption, therefore peanut butter + noodles = mom twice as sure about surefire consumption. At least that's the theory behind my go-to dish.