How to get more veg into dd???

[Longdistance]

Dd1 is 2y9mo, and is a real fussy eater. Very limited in what she eats. We have always given her varied diet from 6mo, when we started blw. When she got to about 13mo, she got her first tooth, and ever since then has been picky.
I would like her to eat more veg, but she flatly refuses to even try a bit, let alone even look at it.
I have recently been making carrot muffins, and sometimes sneek sweetcorn into them.
I would love similar ideas. It's not as simple as making a a pasta sauce, ad sneaking veg in, as she hates pasta, and the sauces.
It's such hard work, and I believe she does this as a control thing.
Any recipes would be much appreciated x

Serve her small amounts of what you serve the rest of the family (including pasta and sauces) and persevere. Eat together at the table, all enjoying the same food, all acting normally and ignore her completely if she doesn't eat something on her plate. Just clear it away & say nothing but don't offer alternatives. If she sees everyone eating things and the same foods keep appearing all the time she will eventually eat it. In the meantime, assuming she eats some fruit and other high-fibre foods, she won't miss out on either vitamins or roughage

She can only exert control if you respond.

We put the vegetables on the table for everyone to help themselves to and mostly made sure that there was at least one option dd liked. I did get fed up with all the 'hide it in sauces' advice as dd would scream if there was a speck of sauce of any kind on her plate. I think for her it was a texture issue, and like your dd trying was a huge and mostly unsuccessful fight. All I can say is that at 11 she is a really good eater, even quite adventurous at times, so hang on in there, try and reduce the stress (for you!) by not pushing it too much and know that this will pass (given enough time) and as Cogito says compensate with other food sources.

You can get a fair amount of vegetables into cake though - beetroot in chocolate cake, and I've heard that courgette works well too.

Feed her vitamin drops every day, and ignore as others said.

What you really want her to eat, you can probably hide in pastry and bake like little sausage rolls.

Lots of veg can be put into cakes - I have put courgettes, carrots, butternut and other squash, beetroot and a whole variety of veg (yet to try cabbage!)

DS (5) is/was similar to this - doesn't do gravy either and the world was at an end if there was even a trace of onion in a pasta sauce - but normalising is a good bit of advice IMO and he does now try and eat more things so it does get better.

Finger foods worked well with him and vegetable soups worked to a point...

soups or liquidise them up for pasta sauces, my dc used to love having what was basically purified ratatouille poured over tuna and pasta, you can add whatever veg you like

I blend up (very smooth) loads of veg into a soup, root veg like carrots, swede, a little onion, loads of parsnips for sweetness and DS drinks it like water! Other than peas and broccoli, it's the only veg he'll eat. He gets 3 or 4 big bowls a week. When he goes off soup I don't know what I'll do!

Ooo, brilliant responses from everyone.
Cogito, we do eat the same as each other, at the same time, at the dinner table, with no tv or distractions. It's serious stuff this eating in the Ld house ;)
We do give her as much as possible to eat the rest of the time.
Beetroot in chocolate cake sounds yum. Think I'll give it a go :)
May give veggie sausages a go, as she's a sausage fiend.

I put pureed vegetables into pancake mixture which is often a success.

I also make mini-burgers which are about 50% vegetable. Works even better when I can be bothered to cut the burgers out into a non-round shape of some kind using cookie cutters.

Soup and 'sneaking it in' don't actually make any difference to how willing they are to eat veg, and it doesn't matter that much anyway - you're better off not stressing about it. Just keep offering and not being annoyed when/if it doesn't get eaten. Cogito is right - if there's fibre and fruit going in then the veg doesn't matter much.

Some really good tips here.
DD's diet is restricted by her fussiness alone, so I try and work around.
Good tip about putting veg into the burger, as I make my own mini burgers for the girls, and freeze them.
Soup is a no no, she won't touch it.
I told you she was hard work

Keep putting whatever you are having on her plate - lots of what she likes and a minute amount veg she has refused so far. Keep doing it - for years if need be, eventually she might surprise you. Don't talk to her about it and ignore if she makes a fuss. Ds was very fussy and will now try most things at 11 but it really has taken ages.

I used to do a "cotttage pie" and cram carrots, peas and sweetcorn into it.

Also, I found starving them letting them wait for a meal time helped as they would be interested in the food because they were hungry wanted it.

Making the food look like a sample dish worked too. The lovely playgroup they both went to would have healthy snack time and make a game out of trying different things and coming up with words to describe it.

I later used this with say a couple of mini hot dogs, carrot sticks, cucumber sticks and cheese all cut to even-ish lengths and arranged in a pattern on the plate. "Soldiers" was a good one, - I would do a sargent major voice and say "come on men, stick together we are being invaded, - oh no! we're a man down (when DS picked up a carrot stick) stick together I said, or we'll all get eaten!" It would have them roaring with laughter and as they ate the "soldiers" I would get more alarmed.

I know I sound like a loon but it worked...

And "three colour mash" was a good one, - a dish of mashed potato with peas, diced carrots and sweetcorn arranged in three segments with grated cheese on top, they would make a game of which colour they would go for next.

Oh yes, pushing meal times back a bit was a trick my lovely SIL taught me - worked a treat!

Also BIG PLATE works well with ds.

He thinks he's only eating a teeny weeny pile of veg as it's on a HUGE dinner plate now...

I had this problem with dd1 now 7 She was a great fruit eater but not so much with the veg. I remember asking the Health Visitor/practice nurse and they told me to make sure she ate veg as well, fruit wasn't enough, I got really stressed (she also thinks soup is the vilest thing eveeeeer).

However when I had dd3 last year I was talking to HV about food in general and happened to mention that fruit was all well and good but I was concerned about veg and she told me that as long as fruit was going in, not to panic

Dd2 will eat anything, always has done, sometimes we have to take the plate off her before the pattern disappears

DD (2.6) is also a very fussy eater and a nightmare with veg.

My "bolognese" sauce is now probably more than 50% veg. I made some last week and added 1 pack of mince along with - 3 cans of chopped tomatoes, grated carrots, grated courgettes and finely diced onions, red peppers and mushrooms and even some finely diced butternut squash! She loves it and it must be at least a couple of her 5-a-day! The dice gets a little less fine every time I make it and the added beg means that a single pack of mince does 3 or 4 meals which is good cost-wise too.

We also do normalising so tonight for example, I put a tiny amount of carrots, broccoli and potato on her plate knowing full well she wouldn't eat them but being prepared to be surprised. DH, Ds and I all had the same and ate it but she did look interested once or twice during the meal. She didn't eat it but she didn't get anything else. She's eaten other stuff today, she won't starve.

dd wouldn't have eaten bolognese, soup, shepherds pie, mashed potatoes, pasta sauces, purees and if there was something on her plate she wasn't familiar with she would scream until it was taken away. It wasn't particularly vegetables though, she wasn't very keen on most meat either and would not eat fish at all. Oh and although she loved helping to cook she still woudln't eat anything that she made which didn't meet her rules.

Food had to be very plain and easily recognisable. It was horrible because I really enjoy my food, especially comfort food like soup, stew, pies etc. So essentially we stopped eating food we liked and went for stuff that could be served separately, took out the stress for all of us. But it passed!