kid friendly food

Both my girls are fairly good eaters. Bella still a baby and eats what we put in front of her (for the most part). Addie was the same way at her age and I use to be so proud my daughter was eating avocado and black beans and other healthy meals. Addie is still pretty good about eating a wide variety of food and is known to eat international cuisines over American fare. For example, she loves Vietnamese but isn't really into hamburgers. She has gotten pickier as time goes on though. She's started claiming she doesn't like something in her meal based on it's color. She picks out all sorts of colorful things she would normally eat up. It's very frustrating. We bribe her with dessert and sometimes it works other times it doesn't. We usually feed both girls the same meal that is made for the adults. We mash or cut up the food for Bella. I am anti-making a separate meal for the kids. On Fridays Justin and I usually go out to dinner after the girls are in bed so we make something special just for them. A huge advantage to having Cora around the house is that there is always time for one of us to make a healthy homemade meal. My kids like boxed macaroni and cheese like all other kids but I like to make it from scratch so I can control what goes in the cheese sauce. The bright orange powdered cheese packet in the boxed stuff kind of creeps me out. I usually make a flour and milk rue and then add cream cheese, cheddar cheese, and pureed squash (like the original recipe in the ever popular Deceptively Delicious). A sprinkle of paprika adds just enough kick. I make this recipe for lunch all the time and once in awhile for special kid dinners. Anyhow, I made it for the girls tonight and added finely chopped broccoli to the sauce. (sorry no photo, it didn't look photo worthy after we ate half of it) Bella devoured it and Addie picked the green bits out! Humph! In the end she ate enough dinner to earn a dessert (Fridays are like holidays in my book and holidays require dessert).
Creativity ensued as I concocted a semi-healthy dessert with leftover Easter chocolates, peanut butter, and frozen bananas. You can imagine what the result was. Addie loved dipping the bananas in the chocolate/peanut butter dip. The only issue was when the frozen banana slices started to defrost and get mushy. Not cool. Next time we might dip the frozen banana whole