Reviews

Get Your Kids To Eat Anything | Book Review & Free Recipe

August 24, 2019
Image of a family cookbook entitled Get Your Kids To Eat Anything. Cover photo shows the author, Emily, wearing a yellow apron and chopping a variety of vegetables.

[AD – Gifted] Disclaimer: I was sent a free review copy of ‘Get Your Kids To Eat Anything’.

Earlier this year I was delighted to hear that Emily, who shares the most amazing recipes over on A Mummy Too, had written a book to help families explore food together. We’ve been very lucky with Little Man in that he genuinely likes a decent range of foods, but we still struggle to get him to try new things. So when the opportunity to receive an advanced review copy came up, I jumped at the chance. And Little Man seemed equally as excited when it arrived, as this video clearly shows!

Since then we have enjoyed trying out a range of different recipes, and I have been wanting to write a review of the book for months. Unfortunately, as is the way with chronic illness, I have been experiencing a massive flare of symptoms since Easter and have been unable to do more than share the occasional photo of our makes on social media.

So the lovely Becky from Eat Simply offered to share her thoughts on the book with you, so that we could share just how amazing this book is. So, without further ado I’m going to hand over to Becky.


Get Your kids To eat Anything

I am so excited to introduce you to this revolutionary cookbook.

Get Your Kids To Eat Anything is a cookbook from award winning food blogger Emily Leary, released earlier this year. It was very quickly an Amazon bestseller and it truly is a beautiful cookbook, absolutely full of colourful, easy to create and delicious recipes. But it is also so much more than that.

This debut cookbook is primarily a 5 phase programme designed to encourage, introduce, and get kids excited by a range of food, especially those kids who may have been ‘fussy’ in the past. The book contains fantastic advice like making the unusual part of your everyday and making food exciting! It has had awesome reviews and so much positive feedback from parents simply amazed at how more willing their kids are to try new foods now.

The recipes all include ingredients that can be easily accessed at your local store too which is really helpful (such a pain when you cannot find the ingredients you need!)

The Benefits of Get Your Kids To Eat Anything

There are so many pluses to this lovely book.

Encouraging children to eat anything is a great concept. Who has time to be making multiple meals! It is brilliant to help prepare them for travelling and eating out and trying new and unusual dishes. It is a great way to help them get a more balanced diet too.

Emily had very kindly given permission to share a lovely recipe form the book that would make a great packed lunch treat.

Savoury Lunchbox Muffins

Image shows a lunchbox full of savoury muffins with peas, sweetcorn, and green beans baked into the muffins.

Here’s what you will need:

2 medium free-range eggs
150ml (5fl oz) whole milk
100ml (3½fl oz) olive oil

120g (4¼oz) Cheddar cheese, grated
2 teaspoons garlic granules

1 teaspoon dried sage or finely chopped sage leaves from your herb garden
1 teaspoon ground cumin
250g (9oz) frozen chopped vegetable mix
250g (9oz) self-raising flour
oil spray (if not using muffin cases)
salt and pepper

  1. Preheat the oven to 200C (400F), 180C fan, Gas Mark 6. Beat the eggs in a large bowl. Add
    the milk and olive oil and beat again. Next, stir in the cheese, garlic granules, sage, cumin
    and vegetables.
  2. Fold in the flour and some salt and pepper – the mixture will become stodgy, but don’t
    worry!
  3. Line a 12-hole non-stick muffin tray with muffin cases (or lightly spray each muffin hole with
    oil). Spoon the batter evenly into the muffin cases, making sure each one is level. Bake for
    20–25 minutes, until golden on top.
  4. Cool for a few minutes in the tray, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.
  5. Store the muffins in an airtight container in the refrigerator.

Just delicious!

You can purchase Get Your Kids To Eat Anything on Amazon and at all good bookshops.


I’d like to give my thanks to Becky for taking the time to share her thoughts with you here on the blog, and to Emily for allowing me to share one of her recipes from the book with you. I genuinely love this book so much, it is already covered in food splatters from our explorations (or rather Tim’s explorations, as I have been unable to get into the kitchen to help cook). I cannot recommend it enough for families looking to expand their diet in ways that are accessible to even the most limited cooks!  Below are some of our favourite explorations so far…

 

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[Gifted] Friday night is pizza night in our house. O normally opts for a pepperoni pizza, so today we’re trying something different – rainbow pizza! It’s all part of stage 1 of @amummytoo’s new cook book “Get Your Kids To Eat Anything” – put the unfamiliar into the familiar! We’ve added mushrooms, broccoli, olives, tomatoes, and green pepper to the pepperoni today 😊 I know, without a doubt, that O will be hesitant to try parts of this (he does not like mushrooms, for instance). But that’s okay, he still has the option and gets to see the pizza can be versatile. One of his favourite lunches is what we call a “rainbow lunch”, which includes lots of raw veg in different colours. So he got a bit confused by the name rainbow pizza and thought we’d be adding cucumber to the pizza 😂 so we’re putting those bits he knows on the side of his plate too, to help make the unfamiliar feel a bit less daunting. We’ve cheated and bought pre-made pizza bases and sauce, because we have to work within our limits health-wise. But I really enjoyed chopping a few bits of veg to put on top 😊 Tell me, what toppings would you put on your pizza? #GetYourKidsToEatAnything

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[Gifted] These tasty little chocolate cookies are getting me through today! I’m struggling to eat because of the severe nausea, but these only have 4 ingredients (oats, bananas, maple syrup, and cacao) and Tim immediately thought of them when trying to figure out what to feed me. They are so quick and simple to make, and I feel less guilty about eating these than nibbling on other chocolate- based treats. The recipe is by the wonderfully talented @amummytoo and can be found in her book ‘Get Your Kids To Eat Anything’. I was lucky enough to be gifted a review copy, and I’ve shared a few updates about how we’re loving the book here on social media. But ill health has prevented me from putting together a full blog post so far (hoping to get one up before the Summer holidays!) In the meantime, know that this book is not just changing the way O chooses food but also helping me too. How many Spoonies need a quick, budget-friendly, and healthier version of their favourite snack for the bad days? 🙋‍♀️ So today I am surviving the awful nausea with chocolate cookies and Roswell (reliving my teen years when life was so much simpler in many ways, but much harder in others 😂). Tell me, what gets you through the bad days? #spoonielife #getyourkidstoeatanything #comfortfood

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[Gifted] Starting our day with an apple pie smoothie, thanks to this recipe from @amummytoo’s book ‘Get Your Kids To Eat Anything’. It’s the best way to start the day 😊 and super quick and easy to make too. You all know that Tim and I are really struggling healthwise at the moment, so food has to be both healthy and easy to prepare. One of the biggest compliments I can make about this book is that it hasn’t ended up like so many cookbooks do, sitting on my bookshelf gathering dust. No, this book has lived in my kitchen, gathering food stains 😂 (we’re rather messy cooks in this house!) I promise I *will* write up a full blog post at some point (Ill-health, you guys, these past few months have absolutely floored me!) But in the meantime I need you to know how good this book is. I’m the least adventurous cook ever, and food has rarely been anything more than functional for me. And yet I find myself going through the book and choosing new recipes to try with huge amounts of enthusiasm. It’s just filled to the brim with practical ideas for making food fun to explore. We’ve had some big hits with O, such as the lentil shepherd’s pie and lentil bolognese, as well as a few busts like the curried fish fingers. But he has been willing to try every new recipe, at least once. And the book has so many tips for adapting each recipe to suit your family, that it has inspired us to be more creative too. For instance, Tim is currently planning on adapting this smoothie into a chia pudding – yum! The best bit is this sense of adventure and creativity that the book gradually builds in families. In recent weeks we’ve noticed quite a change in O, as he’s started asking to try new things without us even suggesting it. For instance, he now wants lettuce from the garden in his burger, and often walks into the kitchen having picked some rhubarb out the garden 😂 And when we read about coconuts a few weeks back he asked if he could try one. Grandma and Grandad bought one, and he helped break into it, trying the milk (which he didn’t like) and the meat (which he thought was “okay”). Seriously, if you haven’t already bought this book you need to check it out (link in bio)

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