vegetables

Prosaic subject, right? But as the mother of young children, vegetables are brought to my attention a lot. Unfortunately, not that often on my dinner table.

To begin with, my children have what I think are fairly typical kid appetites. Their idea of a vegetable is corn on the cob or French fries with ketchup. Sadly, their father's idea of a vegetable doesn't include too many other items. So when planning dinner, veggie options tend to be limited. Green beans, broccoli, or corn pretty much does it. Now, I'm not trying to set myself up as the lover of all things vegetable—I'm a meat and potatoes and lots and lots of bread kind of girl. But my tastes do run a bit wider. And I would love to be able to broaden the range of veggies that show up on the table ... but I'm not sure I have the energy to argue my entire family into eating them. Sauerkraut, for example. Yummy stuff, but probably wouldn't go over well with kids or husband. Ditto beets. Red cabbage. White cabbage, for that matter. My better half even picks the peppers out of the stir-fry! In many ways, this tends to be a battle that gets lost in the larger dinner-time issues, or one that's easy to put off until the kids are older, and presumably more reasonable about these things. But I do occasionally get wearied of hedging the truth when asked about my kids' veggie habits by my pediatrician ... and I am very tired of broccoli.

How (short of promising more time in the bedroom, which after all can't be used as a bribe for everything—I don't have that kind of time!) do you get a grown man to try new vegetables?