by Kevin Yarr, CBCNews.ca

"What's for dinner?" asked my seven-year-old daughter.

Curried eggs were for dinner, a dish she had tried before and, as we try to get her to say, "she had not cared for it." A straight answer was not in order.

"Eggs," I said.

"Yuck," she said, perhaps sensing my equivocation. She does not have a problem with eggs for breakfast, but eggs for dinner make her suspicious.

I sighed and carried on peeling potatoes. A few minutes later she was at my side.

"How can I help?"

I was about to chop the potatoes, and putting a chef's knife in her hand didn't seem like a good idea. It seemed most of what I was going to do before serving supper involved sharp implements or flesh-burning heat. But earlier in the week I had read that having fussy eaters help cook tended to make them less fussy.

"You could peel the carrots."

I directed her to where they were stored in the fridge, and she began to scrape laboriously at them. As she did that I made quick work of an onion and dropped it the skillet. I explained how I was boiling the eggs, and would chop them up when they were done.

Let me tell you what my daughter thinks of rice. At the beginning of the school year she did a getting-to-know-you poster as a project. It included information about her family, what she likes, what she doesn't like. Of all the horrible things in the world she might have chosen for the dislike box, she put in rice.

Yet when I got out the rice and measuring cup to dump it into the pot, she jumped in.

"I can do that."

And she measured it out, and then the water, and I turned on the heat. Soon, under my close supervision, she was stirring things around in the skillet.

A few minutes later she sat down to a dinner of curried eggs and rice and ate the whole thing.

How do you get your kids to eat healthy food?