If you cheese it, they will come.....

I am convinced that if I coated it in cheddar, my kids would eat just about anything. Dog food? Yuck! Dog food with melted cheddar on top. Yum!! It all started as a means to get them to eat things like broccoli or brown rice and now has become an obsession, especially with Drew. He routinely eats tortillas and cheese as a snack, toast with cheese on top for breakfast, loves cheese pizza, has to have cheese on his broccoli or rice and so on. As a self respecting mid Western girl, I am a cheese lover myself but their cheese consumption goes beyond even my limits.

One family favorite is a homemade macaroni and cheese that has an unhealthy amount of Gruyere and cheddar in it. Just looking at this meal makes you gain 10 pounds. There is literally like $20 worth of cheese in that dish and when we eat it, I am pretty sure that if I look at everyone and squint my eyes a bit I can almost see our arteries clogging as we eat.

In an effort to keep anyone in the family from being a contestant on The Biggest Loser, last night I made a slimmed down version of mac and cheese. It had whole grain pasta, cauliflower for added fiber and was very, very light on the cheese.

I declined to mention that there was anything different about this dinner; however, when we sat down to eat, the jig was up. Ethan immediately said, "I thought you said this was mac n' cheese. Where is the cheese?" I pointed out the very hard to detect, slight orangey tint to the macaroni and said, "see, there is the cheddar".

Yeah. No one was buying it. So much for healthier eating at the Covington house.