This conversation is sponsored by Horizon. The opinions and text are all mine.

No matter how many different styles of parenting and views there are, there seems to be one subject that almost all parents rally together on… getting vegetables off their children’s plate!

It really seems like some days my girls will eat their serving of vegetables without so much as a grumble and others, even though it’s the very same veggie, there’s just nothing I can physically do to get them to even try a bite!

I do realize that some children like certain vegetables more than others and for my girls, it’s broccoli. They love to point out the fact that “Disgust doesn’t like broccoli” [Inside Out movie reference in case you haven’t seen it], but I always remind them that even though she doesn’t like broccoli, they do. It usually works and they get sidetracked by a conversation about the movie and eat their broccoli without thinking about it.

But sometimes, it just doesn’t happen and we have lots of leftover broccoli from dinner.

That was the case a couple of nights ago. I’ve been working really hard at using leftovers in recipes to eliminate wasting food and I couldn’t help but think of pairing our leftover broccoli with our favorite Horizon Pasta Shells & White Cheddar Cheese.

Of course, Mac ‘n Cheese with broccoli isn’t an entirely original concept, but I did want to recreate it in a way that would be delicious AND nutritious for the entire family.

I decided to kick the flavor up a few more notches by adding sun-dried tomatoes. Now, I’ll admit that I’m not really great at coming up with original recipes. When I find a recipe online, I follow it to a “T” because I am not good at imagining if certain foods will “go” together… so when I grabbed a jar of sun-dried tomatoes specifically for this dish, I still wasn’t entirely convinced that it would work.

It did! Oh my goodness, it did. This Macaroni and Cheese Broccoli Bake rocked my world – so much in fact that we definitely had no leftovers of it!