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I panicked when my son, Jett, stopped eating baby food. He's only two, but his food vocabulary is fantastic. He likes my baked tilapia and string beans with chopped garlic. But he really likes pizza. Sometimes every inanimate object to him is pizza.

To keep my son healthy, I throw secret veggies into his favorite dishes.

As a parent, I know how difficult it can be to encourage your kids to eat well.

As parents are usually working, they haven't time to teach children about cooking, and it's a wilderness. They should be given healthy recipes - some standbys so that when they leave home, they don't live on junk.

My son, Arzhel, is two, and he eats vegetables twice a day. We have a vegetable garden on our farm in the Southwest, and he gets two baskets, one over each arm, and says, 'Garden, Papa!' and then he eats what he picks.

My kids are normal. If they could eat burgers and fries and ice cream every day, they would. And so would I. But that doesn't sustain us.

As a chef and as a father, I am very upset by what's on the menu at most schools: chicken nuggets and tater tots and ketchup and pizza.

I think you owe it to your kids to teach them how to cook - you know, self-survival.

In my family, we let our boys have a say in what veggie side they want for dinner that night. We list off a handful of options and get them excited about helping to plan the dinner menu. They're much more inclined to finish their plates when they've helped decide what goes on them.

I can cook; but not well. I figure I have six years until my children discover what their friends' mothers make for dinner.