From an early age, Monkey has enjoyed eating eggs in all forms – scrambled, over-easy, deviled, you name it.  But nothing satisfies her more these days than giving a good-smack to a hard-boiled egg, listening to the crack and peeling off the battered outer shell.  And now that her fine motor skills are improving, it’s not quite such a mess for me either.

My toddler is not quite so picky about the inside of the egg, but I do hate to see an olive-green edge around the yolk.  Thus began the hunt for a perfect hard-boiled egg.  What I learned through experimentation is that the key is two-fold: a)  the egg needs to be thoroughly submerged in the water, at least by an inch and then b) the egg does not need to be boiled for very long at all.

Try this recipe:

Hard-Boiled Eggs

• Place half-dozen eggs in a deep sauce or saute pan and cover with water by at least an inch.  Bring water to a boil using high heat.  Once the water is boiling, remove the pan from the stove, cover it, and let it rest for about 10 minutes.
• After sitting, immerse the eggs in a ice cold water bath for about 5 minutes or return eggs to the carton and put back in the fridge.

At this point, I usually make a mental note to come back later and mark the hard-boiled eggs with a big black H so that I don’t mistake them for uncooked eggs.  Incidentally, these eggs are perfect for use in an egg salad or a deviled eggs recipe – both ideas that have on occasion worked with my picky eater (but not universally).

We made these super easy gelatin treats for Halloween, but they would work just as well for a fall-themed event.  You can easily buy pre-made gelatin already in a cup formation (which I did to save time, but also to get a variety of colors) and use any leftover Halloween candy for the body parts of the spider or monster that your child is creating.  I also invested in a small tube of black frosting that Monkey could easily grab and use to create the eyeballs, etc.  I know it seems like a lot of sugar all at once, but I was there to regulate her intake, and it turned out that she didn’t care for the gelatin one bit.  She mainly enjoyed making her “jiggly critter.”  We were inspired to make this dessert by one of my mom’s magazines (she’s been in town visiting), but I can’t find it on their site. Here’s a picture of the page that we used to guide us:

One of the pleasures of living in wine country is the easy access to all things grape and wine related.  Harvest has ended early this year, but we made it to a winery in time to see the production process in full swing.  Although Monkey is too young to drink wine, she has certainly seen her parents drink enough of it to recognize the special glasses when they appear on the table and request a sip on occasion.  Showing her the grape sorting and crushing and fermenting process was a great deal of fun, and at this stage of the game it’s all still grape juice – perfect for sampling.   If you’re lucky enough to bring home some juice from a visit to a winery, try this recipe for sorbet:

Grape Juice Sorbet

3 cups of grape juice

1 cup sugar , divided into quarter cups

Dissolve the sugar into the grape juice, a quarter of a cup at a time, adding only enough sugar until it tastes good to you.  Place the mixture in the refrigerator until it is very cool, at least 4 hours.  Freeze in an ice cream maker, according to the manufacturers instructions.  Store in freezer in popsicle molds or freezer-proof container.

Tomato season is drawing to an end, so we didn’t want to waste an opportunity to have some fun with tomatoes from our garden.  Monkey was delighted to create this smiley face, with some help from me.  We also made other faces before slicing them up and eating them in a salad.

We’ve been reading the fantastic book Zen Ties by John J. Muth a lot recently.  Since it’s fall, it’s a happy coincidence that this book features apples.  I decided to have a little apple tea party with Monkey by having her help me make an apple galette, and serving apple tea.  We shared a wonderful afternoon, first admiring and selecting apples in the store and then preparing this freeform pie.  We purchased the tea, which was too spicy for us.  The pie turned out beautifully.  Here’s the recipe:

Apple Pie

Crust Ingredients:

• 1 cup whole wheat pastry flour
• 1 cup whole wheat flour
• 1 tablespoon granulated sugar
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup shortening
• 1 teaspoon apple cider vinegar
• 1/2 cup very cold water (+ more if needed)

Apple Filling Ingredients

• 2 mediums-sized baking apples such as Granny Smith, peeled, cored and sliced very thin
• 2 tablespoons light brown sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
• 6 teaspoons apricot preserves
• Vegetable oil spray

Instructions

1. Combine the flours, sugar and salt with a whisk in a large mixing bowl.  Add in the shortening in small chunks, cutting them into the flour mixture with each addition until the dough reaches a crumbly stage.
2. Mix the vinegar with the cold water together and then, using a fork, add it to the flour mixture in a couple of batches.  If needed add up more cold water until the dough holds sticks together uniformly.
3. Knead the dough on a floured surface a couple of times, then shape it into a ball and flatten into a disc as if making pizza dough.  Refrigerate for 30 minutes.
4. Preheat the oven to 425.
5. Mix together the brown sugar and cinnamon.
6. Lightly grease a baking sheet.
7. Roll out the dough on a lightly floured surface.  You may roll out the dough into one large galette.  The dough should be not be any thicker than 1/4″.
8. Place the dough on the baking sheet, and spread the apricot preserves on the crust.  Then arrange the apple slices in overlapping circles, working from the outside in, leaving a 3/4″ border around the edge.  Sprinkle the apples with the sugar and cinnamon mixture.
9. Fold the extra dough around the edges up and around the apples, overlapping the dough to create a rustic event.
10. Bake for 25 to 30 minutes until the edges of the crust are golden.

Make sure you let the galette cool down before eating.  Serve with your choice of ice cream.

Part of the whole “dial down the picky eater-ness” philosophy is to connect kids with where their food is made.  On a road trip this summer, we were delighted to spend some time at the Rogue Creamery in Central Point, OR.  It’s not a huge shop – but it has all the essentials.  There is a large glass window into the cheese-making area, a sampling area along with some cheese paraphernalia, and a couple of deli counters with bricks and logs and wheels of some very divine cheese.

Monkey especially liked sampling.  To her credit, for a 2 year old, she did watch the video about the cheese-making process and seemed to get that it would be an excruciating wait before the milk that was being hauled in at that moment would be available in a cheese form.  She was also mildly disappointed that there wasn’t any goat cheese – her favorite.  Nevertheless, the kind people behind the counter gave her tastes of some exceptional cheeses like the Rogue River Blue and the Oregonzola (how many toddlers like blue cheeses?).  I think they converted her by the time we left.

P.S.  If you go, there is a chocolate store next door called Lillie Belle Farms that serves up heaven in little chocolate squares.  Save time to visit both places.

Okay, talk about eating your words.  With all of the confidence in the world, I prepared a very delicious-sounding soba noodle and spinach recipe from the NYT columnist Mark Bittman last night for dinner.  I talked it up big time, too.  My daughter was so excited to try the noodles with all of the good things she likes - edamame, spinach, lime juice, soy sauce – what was there not to like?  Apparently, everything.  Noodles didn’t exactly come flying back into my face, but I think they might have if it hadn’t meant a time out.  I’m not sure that this qualifies her as a picky eater but it sure doesn’t make things a heck of a lot easier.  So, in hopes of redeeming dinner, I made a quick little miso soup — ha, ha.  Remember me?  The LAZY mom-chef.  She asked for, and I gave her, a few slices of prosciutto, some goat cheese, cucumber slices and baby tomatoes along with milk.

But, for you diehards, here is the miso soup recipe I should have made last night (one that Monkey loves):

Ingredients

• 3 cups dashi soup stock, prepared according to directions
• 1 block tofu cut into 1/4″ cubes
• 4 tbsps high quality miso
• 1/4 cup chopped green onion
• 2 tbsps seaweed leaves

Preparation

Prepare and measure ingredients first.  Put dashi stock in a large  pan and bring to a boil, and then turn down to a simmer.  Add miso to stock, and dissolve.  Add in tofu cubes and seaweed leaves.  Heat for 2-3 minutes and then serve into bowls.  Garnish with the chopped green onion.

*Makes 4 servings

We’ve been really experimenting with the garden – table connection, and having a lot of fun with it.  Not too long ago, Monkey had a couple of friends over and we set them up with some seedlings, water and soil.  Each girl planted some plants that we had on hand waiting to go in the ground anyway.  We used cardoon, pole beans and strawberry plants, but you could use anything appropriate for your zone (talk with someone at your local nursery).  It has been wonderful to watch the plants grow and the girls come by to check on them and snack right off of the plant.  (Once again, I’m able to maintain my hands off, raw food, vegan philosophy on the table without hitting anyone over the head with it.)  The best part is that the girls treat these fresh off the vine fruits and veggies as treats!

As I’ve already confided, I believe in keeping things simple.  There’s no way that I would skimp on the chance to engage my toddler in something fun that involves food!  We invested in a paella pan and got busy making this delicious and relatively simple Spanish dish.  The best part of Paella is that there is usually something for everyone in the dish – rice, seafood, sausage, chicken.  Although I’ve recently turned vegan, I did spend some formative years in Lousiana, where I grew to appreciate jambalaya, a paella cousin.  Thus, I enlisted my foodie husband to make the dish – a pleasure for him – and then we called over some friends, who brought the Spanish wine to accompany our meal.  The kids thoroughly enjoyed picking through the dish and eating their favorite parts with their fingers.  It was also reassuring to see the toddlers try something with different spices.  We just set it out in front of them without any kind of hoopla, and they were willing.

I just came across this article on the Woman’s Day website on ways to encourage your children to have a more healthy diet.  While I think that the headline is misleading – these are all common sense ideas, not really ‘secrets’ – there is good, reliable information in the article.  We have profiled or experimented with a lot of the ideas here at The Toddler Who Ate Everything.  The tips are short and to the point.  On the other hand, about half the tips are geared to parents who have kids addicted to sweets and fast food / junk food.

There was one that was a surprise to me.  The 4th tip is to “Keep Trying” and the article suggests that it takes 10 exposures to a new food before a child may like it.  I have always read and heard about a higher number, say in the 14-20 range.  I have to wonder if that is over consecutive days or over any period of time.  This will be completely unscientific, but we’re introducing polenta tonight and I’ll begin counting how many exposures to polenta it will take before she a) tries it and b) likes it (if ever).  I know that when I have to ask my daughter to do something, it seems like I’m in the 1,000s exposure range before it sinks in.

In fact, I will try out many of their suggestions over the next few weeks and see what works and what doesn’t.  After all, Monk couldn’t eat any less could she?

The mistake I keep making with Monk is thinking that she thinks the way that I do.  At the county fair recently, she was so excited to have ice cream.  (I try really hard to make treats – something occasional to celebrate a special day.)  The ice cream cones we found came with wafer cones with a huge amount of ice cream on top.  It was blistering hot that day and the ice cream began immediately running down her face, hands, arms, shirt and shorts.  I did my best to help her out – smiley face.  After a few bites, Monk bit of the bottom of the ice cream cone and just wanted to proceed with the cone.  It was race between her and I – she eating the bottom and me trying to eat the ice cream from the top.  Even my husband was enlisted to help me try to keep up with her.  In the end, she won!

We had a really great playdate with some moms and their boys this morning.  It was fun to watch all the kids bumble together and then drift apart to play on the slides and swings and rocking horses.  It also gave us moms a chance to talk about what’s working in the kitchen.  Our kids are getting into ruts!  Apparently its quite common for kid to hit age 2 and become finicky eaters.  Some people have theorized that evolutionarily (is that a word?) this makes sense: its mother nature’s way to safeguard kids from getting too adventurous.  Still, we modern eaters like a little variety.

I’m trying to get Monk to help me more during meal preparation.  We received 2 lbs. of heirloom yellow tomatoes in our CSA box on Friday, and I decided to use them to make the Roasted-Tomato Soup with Parmesan Crackers recipe from the very excellent August issue of Gourmet.  It was a hit!  Monk could help pour olive oil over the tomatoes and watch them in the oven and of course stirring liquids in the pot is always fun.  The only substitution we made was to use some red torpedo onions from garden for the yellow onion in the recipe.  The highlight was the parmesan crackers – I think they were gone within an hour of making them.

Mind you, I’m not saying that she ate a bowlful of soup.  She ate two bites.  Two giant bites for Monk-kind.

In case you missed it, in today’s NYT there is a Q&A with the author of a new book called Hungry Monkey about kids and food.  I love this guy’s attitude!  We don’t do sneaky foods, either.  It works for some parents I know, but all in all, I’d rather just keep trying to acclimate Monk (my Monk!) to real food and how real people eat.  The author’s daughter is older – 8 yo – so he’s not fumbling through this finicky / picky eater stage any more – he has lived to tell the tale.  You can be sure that I’ll be reading the book and posting my thoughts.

On our trip, we drove home via the Oregon Coast and we’re delighted to find Monk gobbling up the local seafood.  In fact, at a restaurant in Newport, OR called Local Ocean Seafood she could not be contained.  She devoured the ahi tuna skewers along with the salmon of the day and insisted on having her photo taken in front of the fresh fish case.

Incidentally, we also visited the Oregon Coast Aquarium in Newport and it was perfect for her age group.  She loved the underwater fish tanks and getting to pet sharks!

One of my theories about kids and food is that the more they are connected with the source of the food, they are more likely to eat it. In the case of processed food, its almost impossible for a kid to understand the various parts and powders and additives. But with fruit and vegetables, the challenge is limiting how much they eat off the vine or out of the dirt (at least in my case.) On a recent trip to the wine country area of Oregon, we went blueberry picking and I think it would have been wiser for the owners to have weighed the kids as they entered and then exited.  Monk’s bucket simply did not reflect all she had picked and eaten.  But she loved it and now she’s tuned in to how and where blueberries grow (and how good they taste fresh off the bush).

Since we’ve been talking about tea and playhouses in the last month, I wanted to post a pic of what real ingenuity (and time on your hands thanks to retirement) can do. This is a playhouse built by my father-in-law for his five grand daugthers. It is fantastic. An adult can almost stand completely in it, there are shelves and a play stove inside – along with all kinds of kitchen accoutrements – and outside there is a picnic table, windsock, windows, doorbell, and wind chimes. He used only scrap material he had around his place or that he found at garage sales.
As I’ve always maintained, sometimes getting kids to eat is all about the place. Location, location, location! Monkey spent hours playing and eating in this playhouse.

This little tea party was put together by my father-in-law, and believe me it was a huge hit with Monk.  She couldn’t get enough of pouring, and then drinking, the water.  We were all drafted, I mean invited, to attend the tea party.  Eventually we moved into snacks which included Pepperidge Farm Goldfish instead of the traditional toast and jam. It didn’t matter to monk: she’s had toast and jam before, but now goldfish are her newfound love.

Monk loves to put her shoes on her self.  Who am I kidding?  These days, everything is “No Mommy.  I want to do it myself!”  In order to help her determine left from right, because inevitably the shoe would end up the wrong foot, we invested in these little doo-hickeys (at some places they are called jibbitz, or any other name) and since then there has been no confusion.  The stars go on the right foot!

We’re like everyone else searching for ways to get through our meals peacefully. Not too long ago, my local newspaper ran a column from Dr. T. Berry Brazelton about mealtimes and how to make them more harmonious. I appreciated the advice so much that I cut out the article and posted it on the fridge. Occasionally, I have even been know to read the entire piece out loud at the dinner table in order to remind everyone of our “house rules”. I can’t find a link to the exact column online, but I did find a longer article featuring pretty much the same information on the MSNBC site here:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3948328/ns/today_books-family_and_health/ (For some reason the linking feature is not working today! My apologies.)

I’ve not read the book that is being promoted in the link, but I do have Touchpoints by Brazelton, as recommended by a child psychologist friend of mine, and I do like it. If you’re short for time, just scroll down to the part about feeding an active child and you’ll get the gist of his advice.