It’s Not Burned, It’s Carmelized (Or, Adventures in Cooking for Children)

Like many women I know, I was a spectacular mother before I had children.

My children would be perfectly behaved at all times.

My children would be the smartest kids around from day one.

And my children would eat a healthy, balanced and varied diet. My children would love their veggies.

Okay, all you mothers out there, stop laughing. You thought it, too. I know you did.

I was anal about C’s diet once he started eating solids. I made most of his baby food. I figured that if wouldn’t want to eat the gray strained peas out of the jar, I wouldn’t expect him to eat it either. This really was not a hard thing to do. As my husband and I were cooking meals for ourselves, we’d steam and puree and freeze some of whatever basic ingredient we were using. Truly green peas, peaches without additives and stabilizers, and so on. As such, C ate some interesting and tasty and colorful foods in his first year of solids. (The book Mommy Made and Daddy, Too was our reference.)

Oh, I was smug. So smug.

But then, pretty much all of a sudden, he stopped eating the varied offerings, and narrowed his palate. I remember talking with a friend about it. She had read something about the developing taste buds of toddlers; that at a certain stage, veggies really do taste pretty awful to them (I’ve never been able to find said study or other documentation of that, unfortunately). Still, we were down to more macaroni and cheese than I care to admit, and a few other carbohydrate-based staples. Occasionally, I could sneak vegetable matter in (pureed peas mixed in to scrambled eggs), but mostly not. Thankfully, C always liked fruit. I could always get some kind of fruit into him – though he preferred the expensive stuff (mangoes).

(When C was 19 months old, we dressed him up as a bee for Halloween and took him to a few houses. He was really into the candy that he was given, although he had no idea what it was. At home, he put the candy in his dump truck and carted it around the house. He never quite understood why the load was lighter every morning. That pretty orange package was gone…then the brown one that felt like it had beans in it…)

After M was born, I had the chance to try again. Again I made the baby food, offered variety. M liked tofu. After a driving vacation to a cousin’s wedding, during which 9 month old M ate very poorly, the kid downed ¾ pound of tofu straight from the container in one sitting.

Again, toddler-hood hit, and the palate narrowed. And again, I could sneak vegetable matter in occasionally, but mostly not. And again, I was really thankful he would at least eat fruit.

I realized when M was about two that we were making two complete meals every night: one for the kids and one for the grown-ups. I was getting tired of that routine pretty quickly. Granted, the kids were still small and with my husband’s long hours it wasn’t always realistic on a nutritional need, mood and routine level to have the kids wait until Daddy was home to eat a meal. But two complete meals was one too many.

Slowly, I started cooking just one dinner a day. I chose carefully. I chose menus that had interest for both kids and adults, and were fairly well-balanced. Some were more kid focused and some were more adult focused. I scoured cookbooks for interesting meals (one, One Bite Won’t Kill You, gave us some good jumping off points) and surveyed friends. I committed to one dinner per night, and, after C was sick, to family dinner the majority of evenings each week (this sometimes required a lite snack about 5:30 to get the kids through to when Daddy would get home).

There were battles at the dinner table. There was whining and crying on the kid front. There were nights I wanted to give in. There were times it was logistically hard to make a meal (when S was tiny, for example-nursing and chopping ingredients don’t mix) I reminded the kids that 1) there was no “Mom’s Diner” sign and a menu at the table, 2) I didn’t choose meals to torture them; I chose meals with ingredients they like, and that I think they will like (and will not serve them anything I won’t eat myself), and 3) we are a family and we eat together. They had to have at least one bite of each “undesired” item, and each meal had to be followed by fruit. Also, dessert was not a given. They learned to ask, on weekends only, “Mom, will you be offering dessert this evening?”

Somewhere along the way, C started to eat salads. Then C and M started to ask to help make the salad dressing. Then C asked to go for Indian food for his last birthday. I didn't make a big deal out of this outwardly. On the inside I was jumping for joy.

This is not to say that everything is perfect and my kids eat that perfectly varied diet I dreamed of. They still prefer the macaroni and cheese and other kid fare. They would eat Nutella morning, noon and night if I would let them. S, still very much a toddler, is the most challenging in this. She picks at just about everything, but she’s clearly getting something. If I didn’t see her growing out of clothes and climbing the growth charts, I’d be worried.

When I make my weekly shopping list, as I am doing today, I enlist their help. I have written our standard meals on index cards. I ask each of the boys to go through and pick one meal, my husband picks two, and I pick three. That way everyone gets at least one thing they want, and I can balance the meat and carb heavy meals with my choices (I can also help balance the food bill as I review the local circulars for the sale items and apply those to my choices). There are still complaints, but they have gone down a bit. I can also say, when one asks why we are having something for dinner, "Talk to your brother. He chose it."

There are times I lament my kids’ limited diet and wish they ate more things, but then we’ll have one of their friends over who has an even more limited diet, and I feel blessed that they eat what they do. They are healthy and thriving – and most importantly, we have food on the table.

Mostly what I have learned from this is that it all balances out in the end. Really. I could have saved myself some grief if I had taken that to heart much sooner - but I think it's a lesson every mother has to learn for herself.

Someday (I hope) my kids will like the grilled asparagus I adore, but until then, more for me.