Jack Spratt

I made bread this morning, and it was piping hot at lunch time. The kids were very excited to eat the bread, but most of them asked me to cut off their crust. I was beginning to think I should have just cut the crust off the entire loaf to save the hassle of cutting it off each piece of bread! Even Sunny succumbed to peer pressure and asked for the crust to be cut so she could be like her friend, "Joy." (Joy is the preschool girl I tend.) Some of them do like the crust by itself, though, so I was giving them their crust along with their bread.

I noticed that Buster was eating his apples and leaving his bread untouched. He hadn't asked for crust removal, but I whisked his plate away to give it a try. I handed it back and got busy with other things. I looked back, and his crust was gone. I gave him some of the other abandoned crusts, and his face lit up. His soft bread is sitting on his plate.

I'm glad I have someone to help me eat all these crusts!

Successful Fiasco

Dinner was a successful fiasco tonight. How is that possible? Well, I would like to share with you our culinary experience.

It started relatively early in the day when I asked myself the dreaded question, "What should I make for dinner?" This was followed by typical questions, such as, "What do I want for dinner? What do I have in the house? If I make that, what would the kids eat?" I settled on a yummy Indian Lentil soup. Ben and I love it, and it is low calorie. (Granola is not a low-calorie breakfast, so I was looking to compensate.) So that's what I planned on. What should I feed the kids, though? Most of them won't eat the soup. I decided to try my hand at naan, which for those of you poor ignorant souls who haven't eaten Indian food, it is Indian bread. I found a recipe that while not exactly traditional, it caught the spirit of the thing and was bland enough that I knew my kids would like it. So it was all settled. Now, this particular soup comes from one of my favorite cookbooks, America's Test Kitchen's The Best 30-Minute Recipe. I have altered it for the Crock-pot sometimes, but I had to choose between making the naan and starting the soup. I started the naan, and the baby woke up. He was unusually grumpy and insisted on my holding him.

I figured I could at least assemble the ingredients and have one of the girls sort the lentils while I held him. I went to the cupboard. No lentils. I went to the basement. No lentils. No coconut milk, either. Oops. Meanwhile, the naan was rising, so I felt like I should stick with an Indian theme. I looked in the same book and found a recipe for Pork Vindaloo. Yum! I figured that in a pinch, a pork roast would do for a pork tenderloin. I did what I could with a baby on my hip until Ben came home.

Now, I love my 30-minute cookbook, but the recipes almost always take more than 30 minutes the first time I prepare them. Even when I'm experienced, a lot of them take 45 minutes. The beauty of it is, though, that you can make something in 30-45 minutes that normally takes hours, like lasagna. The soup took closer to an hour to prepare, at which point I realized in a panic that I had ignored the naan. I made the naan and rice as quick as I could, and we all sat down to dinner about 6:30.

I was fully prepared to hear my children complain vociferously about this weird soup I made. We dished some up for everyone, and I was totally surprised to hear: "This is great! I love this! Make this again! Can we have this every night?" Especially from my pickiest eater, Sunny. I was floored. And thrilled. And it was very yummy. It was as yummy as the pork vindaloo I have eaten at restaurants. The bread was too bland for me by itself, but dipped in the vindaloo it was a chunk of heaven! Butter and honey on it was also excellent.

The planning and preparation were a total fiasco. The final product and reception were a smashing success. We'll be having leftovers for dinner tomorrow, and they're all excited about it. I will never understand their taste buds! Sunny balks at spaghetti sauce but she'll eat pork vindaloo? Crazy.

Picky Eating

In this house, there are several picky eaters. I don't understand the whole picky eating thing. Sure, as a kid, I didn't like oatmeal or onions and I preferred my spaghetti sauce on the side so it didn't chap my chin. Vegetables weren't my favorite, but they were non-negotiable. We got to take turns picking the vegetable of the day. My mom was a notorious picky eater herself, regaling us with stories of sitting in the dining room for hours in front of mushroom soup. She worked with us pretty well. Aside from my tastes above, I was generally not a picky eater. To this day, new food is an adventure to me. I'll try just about anything.

My friend says that at her house, they just don't allow picky eaters, and all her kids eat everything. So have I enabled pickiness by trying to be nice? I don't know. At any rate, I never, ever wanted to create a battleground in the dining room. Power struggles over food know no bounds. In high school, my best friend was incredibly skinny. I ate dinner at his house a lot, and his mother was always pestering him to eat more. I'm sure it was subconscious at that point, but he didn't eat much. If we went out, he would sometimes eat 3 hamburgers. His mother's way of expressing concern was actually counterproductive.

So here I am, mother of 4 table-food eating children. We have never asked that our kids eat all of something they don't like. Our rules have been that they need to try everything before they could have seconds of anything. If you don't like anything, you can always have a piece of bread. Kandy was the type of toddler to whom I could say: "If you eat 3 more peas, you can have..." It worked like a charm. Missy had to get a little older before that kind of bargaining worked. Sunny, on the other hand, is of the personality type that nothing she doesn't want to do is worth the reward, and anything she really wants to do is worth the punishment. You know the type, I'm sure. So telling her to eat one more pea before she can have more rice just doesn't work. She'll get down from the table. Even her incredible sweet tooth would rather forgo dessert than succumb to tasting a bite of chicken. Despite our relatively simple (and nutritionally lax) rules, dinner had become a battleground.

About a month ago, we decided that she really isn't eating enough. In concern for her caloric needs, we agreed that we would completely drop the rules with her for a while to see what would happen. We have still been serving a little bit of everything to Sunny and gently reminding her that it is there with no specific orders or requests to eat it. If she wants seconds on rice, noodles, or bread, she can have them. Dinner time has become less stressful for all of us. And guess what? Last night we had sweet and sour meatballs. I cut her meatball in little pieces, and she actually ate one bite without being asked!!! It is a tiny victory, but it is a start in the right direction. There is hope that maybe if we do completely remove the battle, she will start to try everything. And part of it is age. Kandy is far less picky at nearly-nine than she was as a preschooler. By removing the battle and drama, perhaps she will more quickly outgrow it.