Food Ninja

Lately I've had to become a food ninja in order to get a well balanced diet into both boys. E-man of course prefers cheese and carbs (a boy after my own heart) and Little Buddy would be content to eat chips and fruit all day if allowed. 
Just this week E-man did a project at school where they taped pictures of their favorite foods on a big poster paper. The foods on his? Cheese, wedding cake (he hasn't been to a wedding but he does love cake), chocolate bars, cookies and a banana. One measly piece of fruit in the buffet of junk. I found it both amusing and disappointing. Kids with autism are usually picky eaters. It has a lot to do with sensory issues that they deal with, the texture, smell and look of food that they experience can be much different that what all us neurotypicals experience.
We were slacking for awhile on improving their diets and it felt like we were cycling through the same 3-4 meals. 
One day we went out to eat and found out the boys will eat chicken strips. I know, what kid doesn't like a chicken strip? Well E-man didn't for a long time and preferred chicken of the nugget variety. So this was pretty exciting.
Another time I bought one of those pre-cooked chickens at Costco and both the boys ate the legs, even better! At least it was healthier than fried chicken bits. So I started baking drumsticks and most of the time they actually eat them. When E-man was around 1 year old he liked sausages and we were sad when he started to refuse those too. Recently we gave them another go, italian turkey sausages were a hit! Ground turkey we had to work a little harder on, we basically bribed him with tortilla chips. 
As you can see veggies are not included so far in the list of new stuff they are eating. Usually when any kind of green food is on their plate, it gets thrown (Little buddy) or ignored (E-man). I learned a way to trick them into eating green veggies from a very smart teacher at their school. Basically you cut tiny bits of broccoli and put it in pasta, that way they get used to seeing green in their food. Then slowly make the broccoli pieces bigger. It's very simple, I wish I had known of it sooner! It totally worked too, E-man at first was skeptical but was hungry enough to try it (another tactic of the food ninja, starve them for a few hours so that they are just grateful to be eating). Little buddy didn't even hesitate and had two servings. Success! 
I was actually a picky eater but my Mom just kept serving me what everybody else was eating. I hated zucchini, tomatoes and one particular dish she called ghoulash (which has no resemblance to actual ghoulash). After awhile I got curious about the foods I had previously shunned. Now I like most things and would never be called a picky eater.
I'm hoping by using tactics that I learn from all different areas of my life I can get the boys to eat a healthy diet. If any of you have sneaky tricks for your picky eaters, I'd love to hear them.
Bon appetit!