Monday, March 24, 2008

The Prince of Carbs

Sigh. I know that it is typical of toddlerhood to be incredibly picky about what you eat, but c'mon Daniel! At the moment you seem to be thriving on bananas and whole wheat ritz.

Seriously. This kid ate more variety as a baby. I could put most kinds of baby food in front of him (or shovel it in...) and he would at least try it - and ate most of it. The one exception was the spinach, which earned me the first all-over-body-shudder from the little guy. (I couldn't really blame him!)

I made the online acquaintance of Amy at Ice Cream is not for Breakfast recently, and have found some solidarity in reading some other Moms' struggles with this issue. I have even gotten a cookbook that talks of ways to hide the "good stuff" in food that your kids will actually eat. I've tried a pizza bagel that contained carrot, sweet potato and white beans in the sauce that actually went over fairly well. I do believe that this should be in conjunction with trying to get them to eat "non-hidden" good stuff too, but I do like the idea of taking some of the battle out of kids meals.

Now I just need to conquer my personal battle of being a "non-chef" in the kitchen. I love good food, but have a tendency to look for the four-ingredients-or-less, toss-in-a-pot, no-fuss sorts of dishes to make. Any good recommendations?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

A slow cooker is a good thing to have for no-fuss meals so long as you can plan ahead. You need to make sure you have everything a day ahead of time if it's a day you're out of the house. (I do the prep after Grommet's gone to bed, then toss it all in before I go to work the next morning and either put it on low or use the timer function so it's ready when I get home.) If you're home you can throw stuff in in the morning of the same day.

The key is, if it's a fussy recipe that requires extra steps (e.g. searing or browning meat), don't bother with it. The point of a slow cooker is to throw a bunch of stuff in, turn it on, and forget it. You can turn out a multi-step meal a lot faster without a slow cooker, if you're going the fussy route anyway.

AmyV said...

OMG, there was a period of about six months, at least, where Rafael ate carbs, carbs and ONLY carbs. (I know this might be TMI, but we're all mom's here -- can you say constipation, boys and girls?) he finally reintroduced some other non-fiber foods into his diet and he's finally going back to a more varied diet (and the colon is working better again, too!)... phew.