The vegetable dilemma

My kids are constant snackers. They would eat all day, every day, if I would let them. They do like a fair number of healthy snacks, like cheese sticks and yogurt. But they never seem to be full. So I am trying to find ways to fill them up in the hopes that they won't be so hungry all the time. Vegetables, in particular, are supposed to be bulky and fill you up.

Challenge 1: I am not a creative cook. I cannot make little pizzas on Ritz crackers with kiwis and strawberries. That just takes waaaaayyyy too much patience.

Challenge 2: I am an extremely picky eater, which means I have bred three extremely picky eaters in my likeness. I haven't exposed my kids to things I don't like, and that's a pretty lengthy list. So it totally amazes me that one of my girls likes to eat salad (if you know me, you've heard my explanation about trying to find a way to like lettuce). My son pretends to like carrot sticks, but what he really likes is licking off the ranch dressing and then dipping it in again. Our diet is very limited because of my poor example.

Challenge 3: We are having a hard time identifying what exactly constitutes a vegetable. I was always under the impression that if it has seeds, then it's fruit. So tomatoes, cucumbers, bell peppers are not vegetables. One of my friends recently told me that corn isn't a vegetable either, it's a grain. I don't know if that's true, but it makes sense. I asked each of my girls to name their favorite vegetable so I could buy it at the store. I figured that if one of them was eating a vegetable at every meal, that was a start. KB promptly named her favorite as green beans. KA couldn't come up with one, but she did remind me that green beans have seeds.

I give up.