One of the characteristics we are trying to instill in our children is a sense of adventure.  This can even be done among the mundane, like the daily task of putting food on the table for meal time.  The best thing we ever did to stretch us beyond the ordinary was joining a CSA.  Every week we had an assortment of yummy veggies, some which we did not even recognize let alone know what to do with.  So we armed ourselves with cookbooks, and asked a lot of questions ( "what is this", "what do I do with this").  It became a fun adventure to see what we were going to get and what we were going to do with it.  After several years we became quite familiar with greens of all kinds, and several veggies I never even heard of became our favorites. 

I would like to encourage those of you who swear, "my kids wont eat vegetables" to make an adventure out it.  Have a family outing to the Farmers Market, or come out to our place.  Pick one new vegetable to try.  Ask questions.  Get a new cookbook.  Some of my favorites are..."Simply in Season", "One United Harvest", and the internet.  Prepare the veggies together.  My kids are great prep chefs!  We have fun in the kitchen and wow, we do make a mess.  But messes can be cleaned, and the memories are part of what makes the meal so good.  Sit down at the table together, and admire what you picked out together and cooked together.  Taste it, talk about it, talk about what you are going to do next time.

Dont worry, as with all adventures there may be some pitfalls.  For our family, the spicier greens like mustard are "not our favorite", and I still cant get even my husband to eat beets without telling me it tastes like sweet dirt.  Just keep trying.  One of my sons swears he doesnt like greens, yet there are a million ways to cook them...so after several trial and errors he has found he like swiss chard cooked with butter.

Enjoy!