Meet Jennifer James

Jennifer James is the creator of the Mom Bloggers Club, now a global community of over 17,000 registered members, is editor of Mom Blog magazine, a news site the covers the mom blogging industry, and recently founded Mom Bloggers for Social Good, an organization that helps moms do good with the social media and blogging platforms they’ve created. Jennifer lives in North Carolina with her husband and two daughters, a tween and teen, who absolutely love their veggies.

Jennifer’s Tips:

1. I started early. From the time my daughters could eat solid foods I let them eat raw vegetables. Sometimes it would be thinly sliced carrots or mushrooms. I can still remember my daughters’ little fingers picking up small pieces of celery and chomping them up with their tiny teeth and chubby cheeks. So cute!

2. I let my daughters get involved. At dinnertime I always bring my daughters into the kitchen and let them make salad for the family. I let them take ownership of the salad making. They choose the type of lettuce we are going to make our salad with as well as all of the vegetables that will go on top. Sometimes it’s plain iceberg lettuce salad with tomatoes or a more fancy arugula salad with fresh mushrooms, broccoli, and red peppers. It’s whatever strikes their fancy. Our daughters are also the decision makers for the salad dressing we’ll eat each night with our salad. Allowing them to own salad time makes them love vegetables even more.

3. We shop for unusual vegetables at the grocery store. One of the things my daughters love to do is finding unusual vegetables at the grocery store. It’s fun for them to discover a new vegetable, typically from another country, and then when we get home hurry to find out how to prepare it. This is so fun for them. Plus, it’s my secret way of making sure when they’re older they don’t find themselves wondering what a certain vegetable is on a dinner menu.

One of the things my daughters love about vegetables is knowing they can eat as much of it as they like and they’re not going to harm their health. They can eat a big bag of carrots and I’m perfectly fine with it. Or completely munch through a brand-new container of mushrooms (and they have) and it’s okay.