For those of you keeping tabs, last Thursday I pondered how many exposures to a new food it would take before my Monkey would eat it.  The answer for polenta is one – uno – un – ein – 1.  Incredible!  Believe me, I did not expect that she would take to this food at all.

Here’s the scene: all of us seated at the table, and on the table is our typical family style fare of dishes.  On Monkey’s plate are a few cut up raw veggies – carrots, cucumbers and tomatoes.  We have some grilled sausages on one plate, some polenta in a glass baking pan, and some tomato compote (which was supposed to be a sauce but c’est la vie).  Her dad cuts a spoonful of stiff polenta and places it on Monk’s plate with a simple request to try it.  She starts to cry, whine and wipe it off of her plate and then tries to hand it to me.  I take a bite and say “yum, thank you.”  I then give her a fraction of the previous piece and ask her once again to try it.  I also explain that is basically ground up corn.

Dramatic pause.

She tries it.

She immediately asks for more.

We have leftovers the next day and she still likes it.

We even have leftovers for our meal on Sunday and she eats it again.

Now, you may be thinking, big deal – she already likes corn.  I disagree – this is a new texture, a new look, and it really doesn’t taste like corn to me.  I’m definitely encouraged by this event.  Don’t get me wrong, she still wanted an apple (a big one – whole) or some prosciutto for the rest of her meal but there is progress here.

Today I just didn’t even feel like trying.  We’ve been reading this great book all week – it’s called Dog Day by Sarah Hayes-and in it, a young boy and girl are eating sandwiches for lunch.  I thought this would be a great tie in for us since Monk hardly ever eats bread.  I’ve tried all week: PB&J, ham and cheese, grilled cheese, tuna fish, cucumber and hummus and tomato.  Nothing is getting through, or more appropriately hardly anything seems to be making it into her mouth.  We saw our friend Jen today for a playdate, and she asked if we had any good ideas for lunch.  There was an edge of hopefulness in her voice.  Alas, I can only offer a good recipe for the adults in the house:

The Best Grilled Cheese Recipe

Start with hearty whole grain bread.  Spread some non-dairy butter like Earth Balance on one side of each piece of bread.   Place one piece of bread directly down into a frying pan; I prefer cast iron or an easy to clean stainless steel frying pan.  Grate some cheese (a creamy gruyere works perfectly, but I’ve never turned my nose up at anything on hand in the fridge) and then also grate a little carrot directly onto the piece of bread in the pan.  Place the other piece of bread, buttered side up, on top of the sandwich and then turn on your burner to a medium-low setting.  Fry both sides until bread is toasty and cheese is melting.

Monk will tolerate this sandwich although mainly she rips off the bread and eats the melted cheese.  Then she asks for some kind of fruit.  Mango?

I have some good friends who swear by the sneaky chef / deceptively delicious books.  We tried it and it didn’t work at our house.  Here’s why, I think:

a.     Some children don’t like surprises (and neither do some adults!)

b.     How will they learn to like / or appreciate a food, if it is hidden?

c.     A lot of kids, including Monkey, don’t like mixed flavors

As if to confirm that we’re on the right track for Monkey, today at lunch she snubbed the mini carrots from the bag today at lunch, but then heartily snacked on a fresh from the garden “BIG Carrot” for dinner (our only carrot from the garden this season, by the way.)

My dad thought it would be a good idea to take us all out to lunch at the local pub on Sunday. I was of course fretting over what to feed my little one – I completely overlooked the biker convention and beer rally. EVERYTHING on the menu was fried. I finally picked out a grilled cheese for the two of us and ordered a green salad on the side. The salad arrived first so I gave all of the “fixins” as we used to say in Texas to my daughter: croutons, cucumbers, tomatoes, olives, shredded red cabbage pieces, and grated carrot. When the sandwich arrived, she decided to add the carrot to the sandwich. Brilliant (naturally!) I tasted it, and it was pretty good.