I'm helping out with watching my nephews this week and I'm tired of the huge expense my brother spends on taking the boys out every night. Their mother also is tired of hearing about how often Mark takes them out to eat. My nephews like simple meals like mac and cheese, hot dogs, hamburgers, chicken nuggets, and tacos. I want to broaden their interest in food. Josh (my eldest nephew, age 10) likes chicken fried rice (which is about as broad as his taste can stretch right now) and Nick (age 9) loves noodles, but if I mention at any time some sort of exotic (to them) dish, they make those "icky" faces and won't try it. How can I get them interested in new tasty home cooked meals?
I want to come up with ways to:
1. Spend less money by not taking the boys out to dinner.
2. Get them more accostumed to eating home cooked meals.
3. Help them get interested in other types of meals that are not too weird sounding to turn them off from trying out something new.
4. Cook meals that are simple and fast that won't require me to spend too much time at the stove.
5. I also want to cook with less fat and don't want to fry much. The boys need to start to learn how to eat healthy. Plus my brother and I could stand to lose some weight, too!
Please reply with all your ideas. I'm not big on cooking, but since I haven't done it in a long while, I want to explore. I just got out of living in a studio apartment where I couldn't do much cooking because I didn't have a stove. Now that I'm at my brother's, we actually have a kitchen to play with. I discussed things with my nephew's mother, but she just told me "I'm sure they'll like whatever you cook for them" -- she wasn't all that helpful right now since she's busy with their two year old sister!
