Table 3.

Sample interview quotes, organized by theme.

Theme 1: Mothers invited their children to use the app
“With the app, we started to see more vegetables and more ways to use them. . . . I could never get [my kids] to eat zucchini. I never cooked it because they were not going to like it. So, I gave them VeggieBook, and I said, ‘Let’s go through the recipes for zucchini and find one you think is good, and we’ll cook it. You try it, and if you like it, great. If you don’t, you don’t have to eat it.’ Surprise! When they tried it they go, ‘Wow!’ They had no idea what zucchini tasted like. . . . Now, the kids are more involved and more interested in mealtime and eating healthier.”—Beatriz, forties, three children “Because [my daughter] is never home, she was like, ‘Mommy, let’s try this recipe, but you do it.’ But she learned a lot participating in this way, watching it happen. My middle daughter would ask me to cook recipes, too. So, I started asking [my daughters and son] daily, ‘What do you want to eat?’ Then, we’d find recipes together on the app.”—Ileana, forties, three children “[My daughter] didn’t know much about smartphones. Then, she started using the phone [with the app]. She was like, ‘Oh, you can do this, and you can go there, you can go here. . .’ I go, ‘Well, I don’t know much about this technology, but you can show me.’ . . . She started using the app and started helping me cook.”—Jimena, forties, five children “The kids became more interested in cooking because, with the app, they were invited to have more of a say in the cooking and choose what they wanted to eat, so they started helping me more than before. . . . I had the problem that my kids didn’t always like veggies, but they liked many of the VeggieBook recipes. . . . I really liked that I could involve my kids more in the effort to eat more vegetables, eat well, and exercise. I liked that VeggieBook made this information accessible to them, and that they enjoyed it.”—Sandra, thirties, four children “I would come to the food pantry, and I would get a veggie, zucchini, for example. Then, I would go home, and [my daughter] and I would go through the app and select our zucchini recipes. Then we would make a shopping list for the ingredients we needed.”—Margarita, thirties, three children
Theme 2: Mothers involved their daughters and sons in the kitchen
“[My daughters] have to be involved because they have to know how to cook. I had no way to get them into the kitchen before. VeggieBook was a good way to get them started. . . . One [daughter] is more confident now [with cooking]. She feels very big. She’s special. When she prepares something she’s happy about, she tells everyone.”—Jimena, 40s, five children “I asked [my son] if he wanted to try new recipes and showed him the pictures so he could see how good it looked. He said, ‘Yes.’ . . . Now I can get the whole family involved in chopping food and setting the table.”—Paula, forties, one child “When I would say, ‘[son], let’s look at the app,’ he wanted to do everything. He wanted to choose all the recipes, go through all the information, and tell me which ones we need to cook. He took full control. . . . I like the new practices we adopted in our home for mealtime—everyone needs to help out and needs to be at the table to eat when the food is ready. . . . I realized it is important to have the participation of everyone because food is something everyone should participate in.”—Soledad, forties, three children “My oldest daughter was the most involved with VeggieBook. The recipes inspired her and gave her confidence to really start cooking on her own. . . . With the app and with all the veggies we started using, she said to me, ‘Mommy cooking is about inventing.’”—Beatriz, forties, three children “Sometimes we [the family] cook together. We all prepare the meal and each person cooks their own dish. . . . My son helps me prepare dinner, and he’ll look at the VeggieBook recipes to give me ideas.”—Ileana, forties, three children “The kids liked cooking and showing their VeggieBook dishes to their Dad. When one started doing it, the others wanted to do it, too, and receive that praise.”—Sandra, 30s, four children “Thanks to VeggieBook, my whole family started cooking. My husband and daughters are now in charge of the family meals on the weekends. . . . Before VeggieBook, the only thing [my son] knew how to make were sandwiches. Now, he is very involved with cooking and has discovered a passion for it. During the program, he watched the movie Ratatouille, which helped him see that cooking can be a [professional] skill. . . . He even shares recipes with his friends. . . . He has matured thanks to being part of the program, and now he takes food very seriously.”—Nieve, 40s, three children
Theme 3: Mothers (cautiously) stepped outside their culinary comfort zones
“Before VeggieBook I didn’t have a way to get recipes. I would look on the internet and find recipes with some kind of vegetable or something that I didn’t know what it was. So I go, ‘Well, what can I do? I don’t know how to do this.’ . . . The recipes I took from VeggieBook, I’ve been using them over and over. Actually, I’m changing some of the recipes so I can have new recipes.”—Jimena, forties, five children “One gets accustomed to only cooking the things they know, the things your mom taught you. Why? Because you say to yourself, ‘What if my family doesn’t like it? What if it doesn’t come out well?’ . . . Mexican squash we ate with pork, but never alone because that’s what I learned from my mother. . . . One day I said to [my husband], ‘We’re going to have the squash with chicken.’ We use other squashes in this dish now, too—the squashes I know from the food pantry, the green ones, and the other ones. Really I had no idea there were other kinds of squashes other than the Mexican variety!”—Ileana, forties, three children “Because I’m from Mexico, at the market we had many different kinds of veggies. But here I don’t find all the same things. . . . Before VeggieBook I would only buy Mexican squash. Now I buy more zucchini. . . . Before I only knew how to sauté zucchini. Now, I know how to do many different recipes with it. Or sweet potatoes. In my country, the only way we eat them is sweet. We really liked the recipe for sweet potato fries, and the one that uses pineapple. I had never done sweet potato like that before. We do these recipes all the time now. Before, I never bought these veggies. Now, I do.”—Margarita, thirties, three children “VeggieBook gave me more variety in how to use veggies, like carrots or even sweet potatoes. Much more than what I knew how to make. . . . I really liked the stews in VeggieBook. I liked that they called for carrots in chunks. I did stews but I always blended the carrots first. The recipes called for the carrots cut into pieces and I said to myself, ‘Why can’t I do the carrots this way?’ So I did, and I really liked it!”—Soledad, forties, three children “I never use recipes. If I do, I’ll do it, learn it, and not need it again. To be reading them and looking for them, we don’t do that. But with the app, I learned how to do the jalapeño carrots, which is something I’ve always wanted to learn how to do. I loved it. [My son] loved it, too! There were many recipes in there that we got for broccoli, carrots, and other vegetables. . . . I had no idea you could do so much with onions.”—Beatriz, forties, three children “The recipes are different than we usually know. Like cabbage. I didn’t stir-fry before VeggieBook. Stir-frying is a great way to get new flavors with vegetables. And sweet potatoes– I just knew how to boil these before. Now, we’re trying sweet potato chips.”—Paula, forties, one child