Yesterday at the grocery store, Monk saw me picking up a bottle of limeade. I’m determined to recreate Peet’s Jasmine Tea Lime Cooler at home (I’m addicted) and this was going to be my first attempt. As I reach for the bottle, Monk – who all of the sudden is talking very loudly these days – say, “Maragrita Mix!” I turned a little red. What to do? We do have a brand of mix at home in the fridge that looks strikingly similar, and truth be told, approx. 85% of all limeade sales are for making margaritas (just kidding – made that one up.) I kind of chuckled, said a little under my breath, “What’s that?” and headed to the checkout stand.
Jasmine Tea Lime Cooler Recipe 1. Brew 1/4 cup loose jasmine tea in 12 oz. hot water; steep for 5 minutes. *Note – one comment suggests that this is too long. I suspect it has to do with the quality of jasmine tea you have. I agree – 5 minutes may be too long for high quality jasmine tea. Follow the instructions on your tea package. 2. Drain tea concentrate and stir 1/4 cup + 2 Tbsp sugar 3. Add 12 oz. limeade 4. Stir and pour into cups with ice
To give credit where credit is due, I based my recipe off of this fantastic site: http://www.instructables.com/id/Peets-Hibiscus-Breeze-Yall/
Like all kids, my little one has her own unique sense of humor. For some time now, she has insisted that she provide me with some “fanny and groke” to eat right before I leave her room at bedtime. When pressed to answer what exactly fanny and groke may be I receive a kind of monkey gibberish which resembles something like people pellets (she believes that all animals eat animal appropriate pellets for their meals, e.g. cats eat cat pellets, dogs eat dog pellets, etc.) It’s a mystery to me, but I appreciate that I’m being fed.
If we’re going out to eat with Monk, we’re going to Rosso (http://rossopizzeria.com/). We love it because it is affordable, kid-friendly and fun. You’ve got to wrestle our little one for the prosciutto, if you want some, because she gobbles it up. She also loves the little kid-sized piece of dough that is brought to the table for her to pat down and then is cooked in the brick oven. In fact, half the fun is watching the little mini-pizza be cooked near the flames. For some reason she just ate the sauce last night: she used the cooked dough to shovel the sauce in to her mouth at an alarming rate. (Lucky us! We ran into a friend with their 2 year old and their 2 month old – new babies everywhere.)
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.
Another great tip from a friend: frozen foods! No, I don’t mean the kind that come in a tray and that you put in the microwave for a few minutes. I mean literally pulling fresh berries and veggies out of the freezer. Believe me, I was surprised too, to watch my little monkey eat and prefer frozen blueberries straight. She does the same thing with peas, and she has tried broccoli and edamame the same way (little success with the edamame.) Its approaching 100 degrees F here today, so I don’t blame her. Its so easy and so fast. Here she preferred to have simply frozen blueberries for breakfast, even over the buckwheat pancakes that she had requested.
Huge playdate today at Brush Creek park, and as always, a large part of the time is devoted to eating. Shown is just a portion of the terrific spread – all kinds of summer fruits, plus cheese and puffy snacky cracker things. Naturally my daughter had a front row seat. Its funny how some kids eat more when they see other kids eating. Eating is as contagious as yawning for them. One of my mom friends calls them social eaters. There were lots of new babies today, too. I guess on some days it comes down to modeling. What is my approach to eating and socializing? I think I’m usually so busy talking that I’m not paying attention to my eating. My daughter on the other hand eats when she’s eating, plays when she is playing, and so on. I’ve never seen such focus. A lot of the kids demonstrated the same intensity while playing: most of them enjoyed playing with the faucet while the moms chatted and looked on.
Our mall has a new ice cream store, and Grammy decided to treat us before she left to go back to home. Need I say more?
A couple of friends have commented and said, “It looks like things are going well with how your daughter is eating.” When I started blogging I anticipated the opposite so it occurs to me that I’m just not sharing enough about my frustrations. How about a list of our eating and dining troubles:
*She drinks at least 4 bottles / 8 oz. sippy cups of cow’s milk per day (I would prefer at least some soy, rice or almond milk mixed in there, but nothing doing)*She’s a grazer: she’d prefer to eat all day rather than sitting down at a dinner table*She’s very interested in all of the terrific junk food her grandparents have been offering her (Ruffles potato chips, Doritos, cookies, Haagen Dazs ice cream, and so on)*She likes to ask for scrambled eggs or hard boiled eggs so that she can crack them: but then she doesn’t eat them*Every “meal” is comprised primarily of milk and fruit*She doesn’t like foods mixed together – foods must be separated at all times*She prefers big pieces beyond her ability to manage them – nothing cut up is allowed*She prefers things whole
In the grand scheme of things, I realize that these are minor grievances. Some mom friends of mine have children who don’t eat at all! My hope is that through airing our concerns, we can also generate some ideas to get those kids munching. More discoveries to come.
For Father’s Day, we went to Cattleman’s restaurant in Petaluma. We went early – @ 4:30 – still we all managed to stuff ourselves, including my little one. Mainly she took over the communal all-you-can-eat salad bowl and commandeered all of the cherry tomatoes and croutons. At least I think she was full. She definitely loved stirring things around: I’ve known I needed to let her be more active in the action. I’ve since gone and purchased two mini-whisks for less than a buck each and a set of mini collanders.
I broke down and gave “monk” (new nickname, short for monkey) an egg to crack, since my friend Megin lets her son crack their eggs. Next step was to hand over the whisk. Oh, if only you knew what this means to a ‘type A’ type! Most of the egg stayed in the bowl. I fried it up and she preceded to ignore the whole thing. She just wanted to scramble an egg.
Monkey’s first lollypop – oh, heaven. It was her second haircut, and the salon offered a “snack” when she was done on the chair. There were so many choices and Mia spent about 1 second before deciding that this was the most delectable piece of candy she’d ever seen. Needless to say, her face, chin, cheeks, hands and fingers ended up very sticky. On the other hand, she didn’t finish it. It was soon forgotten for the delights of playing with Max, my parents’ dog.
As a side note, the salon does offer non-food items as treats. But the stylist said snack, and what kid, denied candy since her birth at her house, would choose plastic beads over a Tootsie-roll pop?
While vacationing recently, I sat with my mom’s neighbor, Carol. She is a wonderful woman: I admire her for her wit, non-stop brilliance and kindness. Carol has been married for 50 years and is also the mother of 8. She now has several great grandchildren. I love to hear stories about what all of the members of that family are up to: piano recitals, foreign travel, graduations. In short, Carol’s large family reminds me of what families are about.
I mentioned this blog to Carol and she told me what she had learned in her days as a mom. If a portion size for an adult is the size of your fist, than a kid’s portion is about one-quarter of that portion. And a toddler? Well, that, of course depends on the toddler. My daughter keeps up with me sometimes. Carols says that in her day it would have been about 5 peas, a couple of pieces of chicken, and a little bit of applesauce.
When I get frustrated because I think my toddler’s not eating enough solid food (as opposed to the vast quantities of cow’s milk she takes in), I remember Carol’s portion size guidelines and I feel better.
My friend Megin has a darling son. He is just a delight – surfboarder blond hair, mischievousness by the truckload, and a verbosity that is striking in someone under 2. All of that, though, and the doctors focus on his weight.
He has been labeled “underweight”. I have to wonder according to which scale? In my well-thumbed copy of Super Baby Food, there is a growth chart from the ’70s. On that chart, my little friend is still considered small, but not too small. On today’s charts – well, he’s not on them. After doing a little research, I found that these charts are continually updated and that there is no doubt that babies are getting bigger. That does not mean healthier, to me. Just bigger.
The term “underweight” has been applied to approximately one-third of the kids in my social circle. Is it because most of these moms breast-fed their kids for a year or more? Is it because there is some weird growth vortex in our neighborhood? I don’t know the answer but I know that my poor friends are pushed to the brink pushing foods on their toddlers. Batteries of tests are run, parents are investigated for malnutrition charges, new diets are instituted (is it Celiac disease? some kind of food allergy?) When no scientific answer can be found, an exhausted parent is told, “S/he’s just small.”
My daughter woke up all sweaty from her nap the other day. I was alarmed at first, but turns out that she is just like my husband: she is one of those kids that is always warm, always full of energy. She drank 16 oz. of water after that nap from this cool bag of water that my mom had around. (Check out this site to see the very cool container: http://www.parkcityicewatercompany.com/)
Then, I gave her dinner – mainly watermelon and tomatoes and gouda – and I thought that’s that. We’ll run over to my Aunt’s house, and come back in time for bed. My cousin’s husband had put out a fabulous spread and my little one just gobbled it all up: smoked pork ribs, smoked chicken, more watermelon, deviled eggs minus the filling – you name it. The result was one beautiful belly, which incidentally, was all gone after a couple of very wet diapers.
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.
Even after the goat cheese breakfast, I didn’t clue in to how unnecessarily complicated I was making some of our meals. Then, as if to drive the point home for me, my daughter ate the better part of a tomato on a car ride home from the grocery store. I had made an emergency run to the store right before lunch and apparently she was not willing to wait. I had to stave her off in the store until I could buy it! When we got home, and I found the remants, I tried to spruce up the remaining tomato with a little olive oil, mozzarella, and basil. She was no longer interested. Reminded me of a little phrase my mom told me that they used at her work, “Keep It Simple, Stupid.”
In my foodie family, we are perhaps prone to overdoing things a bit when it comes to meals. A friend recently rolled her eyes when she saw my menu for the week posted on the fridge (hey – it helps save money and reduces waste!) It was a bit of a jolt, then, the other morning when my 2 year-old spied the remains of a goat cheese log in the fridge and steadfastly insisted on having it for breakfast. Forget the elaborate steel-cut oatmeal with cut up fruit and nuts! And on the plus side, the goat cheese didn’t go to waste.
My little 5 year-old niece polished off a bucket of clams the other day while on vacation in Seattle. Her parents and sister combined ate about 5 clams out of the bucket, but my adorable, beanpole-thin niece claimed the rest for her own. And why not?
Meanwhile, many of my friends and I wonder whether our toddlers are eating too much, or not enough, or whether they are eating the right foods. My daughter is often considered a “good eater” by other moms, but I find that amusing since we have our own struggles. She eats, alright …. her own weight in fruit everyday it seems. And maybe that’s okay. My pediatrician doesn’t seem worried, but then I’m the mom and I need something to worry about.
It occurred to me that the toddler age group is often overlooked when it comes to dietary pyramids and teaching kids about food. A great deal is written about quick meals, sneaky foods, and picky eaters. But I’d like to devote this site to the opposite philosophy of children and food. How as parents and caregivers can we try to encourge toddlers to explore new foods, to participate in the growing of food and the preparation of meals, and finally in the enjoyment of dining with family and friends? “The Toddler Who Ate Everything” is a forum for exchanging ideas about what makes a “good eater”, resetting expectations about children and eating in today’s hectic world, and sharing recipes and tips for lovingly dining with our young loved ones.
Welcome!-Crystal and Jen
