Kids Dish

So, somewhere along the way, I forgot to feed my girl vegetables. It just worked out that way… she has toast for breakfast, sometimes with vegemite or hummus, but for a while there it was just butter. She has a ham and cheese sandwich for lunch. Snacks are fruit, puffed rice with milk, sultanas (ok and the occasional doughnut, I hang my head in shame that she actually recognises the Donut King logo).

Dinner used to be whatever we had, but she got picky about that a few months ago, and usually turns up her nose at “mixed together’ foods, and then I suddenly realised that I’d given up altogether. I hadn’t meant to, but my focus had become so much on trying to get her to eat anything in the evening (so she would sleep through the night, or at least not wake for a breastfeed every two hours) that I had stopped pushing the greens.

The panic surrounding this realisation is a large part of the reason why I signed up to write a blog with a focus on cooking for kids, by the way…

So a little while ago, I set out on the War of the Peas. In recent weeks, I’d started arranging pretty places of individual, distinct bits of food (ham, tuna, grated carrot, grated cheese, avocado chunks, sliced grapes or tomatos), neatly laid out, and had some success with this, though she neatly avoided all of the vegetable stuffs in such platters (avocado is evidently not a vegetable by Raeli’s standards, but tomato is - go figure).

So I knew she was more likely to eat foods on their own than “hidden in sauces� as so many books suggest. My girl doesn’t like her food complicated. And she used to love frozen peas before I forgot to give her vegetables. So I gave her a little plate of peas. Nothing. She refused to eat them.

The next night, I tried another old favourite - udon noodles mixed with peas. There was some success here, though she displayed more interest in the noodles than the peas.

The next night, I was making pasta with tuna and vegies for us - so I reserved some of the bow-tie pasta and cooked diced frozen vegies (another old favourite, though not as popular as peas). She ate them. Yay! Well, she ate about a third of a bowl, and then came up and asked for some tuna from my plate. I got her some tuna, but she didn’t touch it. Sigh. Tuna was another food that she used to eat happily, but had turned her nose up in recent times, asking instead for toast or ‘ricenmilk’.

A little later in the evening, R followed me to the kitchen, asking for toast. I had a brainwave. “Hungry, honey? What about some cheese?� Mm. Cheese.

She agreed happily, and I put a small handful of grated cheese on top of her dinner bowl. Haha! Victory! She not only ate the cheese, but another good third of the bowlful of pasta and vegies.

Hmm. Three days to get back on track. Maybe I was overpanicking a little. But I guess the important lesson here is that I should keep trying with the food I want to feed my girl, rather than the food I think she wants.

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