Life with Picky Eaters

These two had fun feeding the birds at Ma-Mas' house...how can I make feeding themselves more fun?

For someone that likes to cook, I get frustrated by my daily cooking duties.  Why?  Because even though I have a family of four, I typically only cook for two.  I heat things up or open and add a spoon for the other two. I have an ever expanding repertoire of tried and true recipes David and I enjoy, though nearly no recipes that work for Cooper and Penny.

I never saw the picky eating thing coming.. Both children as babies at solid food very well...even mashed peas, which made my stomach turn to prepare or even smell them. I thought I did a thorough job of introducing a variety of foods fairly regularly.  Around the age of two, however, Cooper quit eating everything except for about five foods.  I chalked this up to toddler-dom, especially when Penny came right behind him, rejecting everything.  Though Cooper is slowly accepting new foods now that he is nearly three and a half, I still have trouble feeding these kids!  What was a favorite last month isn't touched today!

Currently, what Cooper eats, or rather, has finally added back in over the last year and a half:

Grilled Cheese Sandwich (always)
Tortillas(always)
Crackers with Cheese (sometimes)
Chicken (nuggets or grilled and cut up, and most of the time)
Steak (but this doesn't really count, b/c I am NOT preparing it that often!)
Wagon Wheel Pasta with butter and Parmesan cheese (sometimes)
French Fries (always)
Most Fruits (most of the time)
Yogurt (most of the time)
Pretzels/Crackers/Chips/Popcorn (always)
Nutri-grain Bars (most of the time)
Sugary Junk, when I allow it

That doesn't sound bad, except I can't get him to eat ANYTHING green, except for grapes, and NOTHING from above can be left over from the day before.  How he knows, I have no idea, but if I try to make a big batch of pasta, say, and give it to him two days in a row, he laps it up the first day but rejects it the second day.

Wait, it gets better:

What Penny eats, sometimes:

Chicken (nuggets or grilled)
Tortillas
Wagon Wheel Pasta (very rarely)
French Fries
Most Fruits
Yogurt
Pretzels/Crackers/Chips/Popcorn
Coleslaw (occasionally)
Broccoli (occasionally)

Nothing on Penny's list, except bananas and french fries, are a guarantee that she will eat it.  I guess the positives are one, OCCASIONALLY she eats something green, and two she doesn't really like sweets except a sucker which she gets to help get ME through the grocery store.  (Notice "sugary junk" is not on her list.)

I used to sneak zucchini into banana bread...but then they quit eating banana bread, for example.  I've hit a wall and am at a loss for what else to try.  Not that it would do much good.  I think both of them WOULD eat more things if they would just condescend themselves to TRY them.

Anyone else out there with a picky eater?  What are some "outside the box" foods that work for you?