Florida grapefruit want your healthy eating tips and grapefruit recipes. There's £300 up for grabs (plus £100 for your child's school/nursery)

[Carriemumsnet]

Florida grapefruit want to know your top tips on getting your children to eat their five a day and indeed managing to eat five a day yourself. This could be in the form of a great recipe a top tip, even a song or nursery rhyme your child has learnt at school or nursery - anything that helps encourage folks to eat more fruit and veg. (If you're adding a recipe add it to MN recipes and just post the link here - as we have above).

Florida grapefruit will be choosing their favourite contributions and one lucky winner will win £300 along with £100 for their child's school.

Quick plug for the humble grapefruit - half a grapefruit provides 100% of the recommended daily intake of vitamin C, and a whole grapefruit represents not one but two of your five-a-day fruit and veg intake.

Plug over - thanks and good luck

MNHQ

[champagnesupernova]

Grapefruit & mint salad
Grapefruit and prawn salad

[mathanxiety]

Mustrunmore, the red ones are probably Texas grapefruit.

[LadyGaggia]

My top tip is to tell your kids that something is just for mummy and then they'll eat all yours.
I was having half a grapefruit each morning and they were interested in it as they had never seen me eat one for breakfast.
I told them that the grapefruit were mine and they plagued me until I let them have half each.

[babster]

I sometimes give mine a bowl of chopped fruit (usually apple, banana, strawberries and grapes) when they're watching a film and they tuck in mindlessly, oops, enthusiastically!

[mathanxiety]

One DD of mine loves to dip a sliced apple in cinnamon sugar, same with bananas.

[DrivenToDistraction]

MIL serves pink grapefruit with vanilla yogurt as a desert. It sounds revolting but it is seriously delicious and doesn't curdle

Mind you, I don;t ever remembering seeing vanilla yogurt when I still lived in the UK.

[wilbur]

They're probably not after my grapefruit martini recipe...

[fanjolina]

I always have a big bowl of fruit salad made up in the fridge. Whenever the children are hungry they get given a bowl or two of that rather than any other snack. Helps them to have their 5 a day and is really easy to do - particularly if you use some tinned fruit to give you a base of juice. Tinned pink grapefruit works well

[titferbrains]

my dd prefers fruit and tomatoes over most other food so not a problem. But I do try to tell her what everything is when I put it in front of her so she learns to think about what things taste like.

Roasted peppers are a big favourite here - whenever I do a "brown" meal eg fish fingers and smiley faces, I roast a few strips of pepper on the side knowing they'll get hoovered and I won't feel too bad about all the brown-ness.

Spinach in pretty much everything - can cook with rice, mix with pesto, add to tomato sauce - and only takes a sec in the microwave from frozen.

I think trying not to get too stuck in a rut with fruit is a good thing, I tend to buy all the same things sometimes and then suddenly remember that plums are nice... and dd thinks that she's discovered a whole universe when I present her with a change from bananas!

[pixierara]

Grapefruit Granola with honey and greek yogurt....

Easy peasy and really nice, I get the kids to chop and make so they are more interested in getting stuck in!!!!!

Cut a grapefruit into segments and mix with anoy other fruit and a handful of granola...instead of milk use low fat greek yogurt and drizzle honey on top to sweeten...

Yum!

[Sazisi]

I give my kids humous with carrot batons when they are 'starving' and dinner's not yet ready.

If I'm giving them a lazy dinner like pizza/fishfingers, I serve them the vegetables 5 minutes before eveything else so they get a nice head start on the veggies.

Fruit salad served on skewers goes down well at parties (but make sure the little darlings don't stab each other with them!)

[nonblonde]

i think a good tip would be to start as early as possible in your childs life with fruit and veg and it will just come natural, also when you want them to eat it let them help with the preparation of the fruit and veg they think its good when they cook and prepare there own.

[nickschick]

I freeze small segments of juicy citrus fruits in flavoured spring water ....sort of an ice lolly in a dish sorbet.

Curiously I find having just a few pieces of fruit available rather than the whole shebang ensures my dc greedyguts will eat more - for fear of one of his sibs getting that last few juicy grapes .

[hobbgoblin]

I have a cane in the punishment cupboard.

[nickschick]

Hobbs ....doesnt everyone? or have you got one of those unbreakable types from the shop where you can buy spiteful babies

[posieparker]

In the summer the dcs make smoothie ice lollies. So blend any fruits and freeze in ice lolly moulds.

They also make smoothies in the winter.

We also have after school plate of chopped fruit and often put fruit in Jellies(that the children make). The only food the dcs are allowed between meals is fruit or raw vegetables. They even love raw broccoli!

dcs help to peel and chop veg too.

Grapefruit is gorgeous with either chopped pineapple or Rachel's Organic Greek honey yoghurt.

[aristocat]

i like grapefruit but DCs not very keen.
however they love most fruit and vegetables

they love helping chop onions,courgettes,mushrooms,peppers etc and this all helps with eating them.

raw carrot is the biggest fave here and DD eats big chunks of peeled cucumber.

[GoldenSnitch]

Setting chunks of fruit in jelly can help reluctant little ones to eat some extra fruit.

Eat as much fruit as you can while pregnant and breastfeeding. It is thought it changes the taste of the amniotic fluid and milk slightly so when children come to eat the fruit themselves, its already a familiar taste. I did this with DS (3) and he ate almost his own body weight in melon yesterday

Mix familiar/favourite fruit in with new/less liked fruit in a salad. The flavours will mix and bits of the new/less liked fruit will get eaten along with the favourite fruit. Unfamiliar will soon become familiar and might even become a new favourite.

[Mandelle]

For the summer - sqeeze grapefruits (or buy freshly squeezed juice if you haven't the time or inclination!) Put into lolly or ice pop molds or an ice cube tray and give to kids when frozen for a healthy, thirst quenching sweet "treat"

[wombatsam]

I give the children a piece of fruit with their breakfast, no matter what else they're having. Then I've got one of the five done straight away. Add the juice in and two have been done.
I'm not so good myself, but do enjoy grapefruit and it's only half a point in Weight Watchers which is fab :-)

[michellew1]

We made food art on a plate using fruit and veg as much gets eaten along the way as used for the picture - sorry if double post but first didnt seem to register

[michellew1]

Just an aside on the grapefruit theme - my midwife suggested ice cold grapefruit juice sipped through the day as it makes cigarettes taste awful - got to be ice cold though = saves putting more chemicals in while trying to stop

[whomovedmychocolate]

I make jugs of diluted fruit juice with cut up fruit/cucumber floating in it and call it 'petit Pimms' and serve it at children's parties. The kids love eating the fruit out of it.

Of course you have to make sure you don't mix up the adult and child versions

[poodledoodle]

I make cauliflower mash for the kids using mostly cauliflower mashed with a little bit of potato. It looks exactly the same as normal mashed potato so the kids are happy to eat it!

As far as a grapefruit recipe goes, I find it a great addition to any salad. Nice and simple!