Don’t miss the Frank Bruni article entitled “Parenting and Food – Eat Your Peas. Or Don’t. Whatever” from this weekend’s NYT. He covers how worrying too much about what a kid (especially young adults and teens) can actually be counter-productive. I love the comments section most of all. So many people and their concerns – everything is covered. In the end, it seems common sense needs to prevail. Teach healthy eating early on, and then later on, your children will make healthy choices.
We’re always trying to find something that works for everyone in the family in some way. I don’t want to have to make two meals! When I came across this delicious-sounding and no cooking involved recipe for Tomato Bruschetta with Tuna and Cannellini Salad in the August edition of Sunset magazine, I immediately put it on my calendar for Wednesday’s dinner. My husband and I did enjoy it – with a few adjustments. The recipe calls for 3 Tbsp of fresh lemon juice, which was a bit too much. It retains that fresh lemon flavor with just 2 Tbsp. We also added a bit of balsamic vinegar condiment to adjust the flavors. Finally, we ate the salad on top of tomatoes and some very fine semolina bread.
Monk ate the tomatoes and the bread but couldn’t be persuaded to try the salad. She immediately asked for prosciutto. At least only one meal was prepared. I call this recipe a keeper, although we’ll wait a while before trotting it out again.
After a few months of paying attention to Monkey’s eating habits, it’s time to summarize what I’ve learned so far:
Further to these key points, Monkey has some other important rules. If food is to be cooked, it still must be simple and easily deconstructed. Unfilled pasta is better than filled pasta, croutons are better than untoasted bread, crunchy is good and all things cheesy are wonderful. Getting to pat down the pizza dough can’t be beat, but eating the pizza is not as important. Cured meats, if meat is to be eaten, are acceptable. Give Monkey the bag – the whole bag – please do not dole out specific portions.
No sitting in chairs at the table FOREVER – Monkey would like to get up and paint or ride a bike or go into the kitchen for something. In fact, the ideal setting for eating is outside. If we are eating outside with friends, however, Monkey would prefer not to share her grapes. Smoothies sound good, and so do cupcakes, and bean dip (thanks to E’s mom for suggesting) - but monkeys don’t really like to eat them all that often. Making all of these dishes is great: measuring out flour and fruit, sampling all the way, using the blender or the food processor, just generally being of help in the kitchen is alright.
And always, always, always provide cow’s milk at every meal (much to Monkey’s mother’s horror). And fruit at every meal. And fruit for snacks.
Coming Up
In addition to investigating the suggestions from the Woman’s Day article on how to get kids to eat better (see August 20th post), here’s what else is planned at The Toddler Who Ate Everything:
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.
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?
Just a few photos from a recent birthday party celebrating the summer birthdays of the three boys in the last photo. The great part of this party, in addition to the very nice park (near a bathroom!), was that it was a bunch of kids and parents eating and playing.
I watched Monk try foods that I had seen her previously shy away from – I suspect because the other kids were eating them. Other moms have also made this discovery. We have a bunch of social eaters! Perhaps this goes back to that evolutionary theory about kids shying away from food at this age (see posts from August 7th and August 5th), but once they see others trying and enjoying food, they’ll be a little bit more adventurous. Of course, it doesn’t hurt when the new foods are things like cheese puffs and the appetite has been whetted by cupcakes.
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!
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.)
The more research I do on this subject, the more I am learning that Monk is *not* a particularly picky eater. She is just between 2 and 3 years old. I love hearing the stories of picky eaters, though, both from current picky eaters and parents of picky eaters.
It can almost be a contest. ”He’ll only eat chicken nuggets and hot dogs three times a day, seven days a week!” ”She won’t touch vegetables – ever!” ”He’s eaten the same thing every day for the last 5 months!” Its exasperating for a parent. My mom is a saint because I, myself, did not eat salads until I was 18 and forced myself to eat them (completely bowed to social pressure, and I’m grateful. Same thing for sushi.) I still can’t stand a raw tomato.
At last, we’re getting some answers from science. If you haven’t already, check out this wonderful interactive site called The Science of Picky Eaters, from the producers of NOVA (on most PBS stations). And there is a great Q&A session on one of the pages. Turns out, some kids may not be smelling what you are smelling and with younger kids, it made sense for them to avoid new, potentially dangerous foods.
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!
My friend in Oregon has two kids – a 6 yo girl and a 3.5 yo boy. She’s been through it. I asked her how she dealt with the frustration of the “terrible twos” since I’ve find myself to not quite be myself at the end of the day. Here are her very helpful thoughts:
For the kid(s):
Quite honestly, there was one more I think but I’ve found these 4 to be the most helpful so far. My sweet little two year old is returning.
For the parent(s):
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.
