Help please ,limited food range

[alibobraw]

Hi Everyone , My oldest son,11, likes a wide variety of fruits and vegetables and is keen to be at least high raw - hooray ! My younger son,5 years old likes rice cakes , corn crackers, oat cakes,bread , fish fingers , tuna sandwiches,potatoes, carrots ,cashews, brazils, apples, grapes, bananas, scrambled egg and the occasional bite of sweetcorn and crisps(potato chips). Since he recently stopped nursing , his poo is often the consistency of cow pat -that can't be right. I would love for him to be at least high raw too , my partner and I are 100 % , he varies probably from 20 to 50% raw as he eats alot of fruit . I wonder if his taste buds have been corrupted , he used to eat a wider varietyas a baby and toddler (pears , peppers,peas, houmous, cucumber are some of the things he has eliminated from his diet ),he is extremely reluctant to try new things- he seems to be put off by the way things look , any experiences or ideas anyone has that they think might be of use to me would be greatly appreciated , much love Alison x :)

[Rawkinlocs]

Hi Alibobraw,

Hmmm, okay so you want your 5-year old to eat more raw and less of the other things he likes, but he's gotten a bit picky over the last few years about how things look?

Well, my suggestion...well first, do you have a dehydrator? If not, there's a really economical solution at Walmart or Walmart.com, like $39 (or is it $49), but it's the American Harvest Snackmaster by Nesco WITH temperature control.

But what I was going to say was, perhaps making some of his favorites, but in the raw version., for example, he likes crackers, so you can make him some flax crackers maybe adding some pizza/Italian seasonings to make "pizza crackers" ; he likes corn crackers so make some corn chip/crackers in the dehydrator for him; he likes tuna, make him some mock tuna and serve it with the crackers or even on whole wheat bread for starters to get him used to the mock tuna; he likes crisps/chips, you can make sweet potato chips using a mandolin or spiral slicer and they're really yummy or zucchini chips. Now with zucchini chips, IF you slice them using the spiral slicer or mandolin, they come out really thin BUT, putting them on the teflex or fruit roll tray rather than the mesh tray will make sure they don't wither down to nothing AND they turn out really light and crispy! I made some yesterday and my daughter loved them. They were lightly tossed in olive oil and sprinkled with a little sea salt and chili powder for taste.

You can also make him cookies, grawnola, sweet flat breads and more. Just remember the presentation as you said he's particular about how things look. Try to make them look as closely as you can to his familiar favorites.

Hope this helps!

[alibobraw]

Hi Rawkinlocs , thanks for your ideas, I think you are right, having a dehydrator would really help for exactly the reasons you mention i.e. all things crispy. I live in England and the only dehydrators with temperature control that seem to be available over here are the Equip and the Excalibur. I think I'll go and investigate the walmart site, maybe they would deliver here -it certainly sounds alot more affordable,
B.W. Alison :)