Dinner Thursday Night: I made a Winter Mushroom Stew from my "Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone" cookbook with roasted tri-colored potatoes (red, gold, and purple). It was beautiful and delicious, but my dad was in town and I was too distracted by the good conversation to take a picture. I promise to make this one again and get a picture, and maybe even post a recipe!
Dinner Friday Night: My dad graciously agreed to watch the kids (yay, free babysitting!) and Jeremy and I went out to Panera where we got you pick two vegetarian combos. Later in the evening we went to Starbucks for coffees. I'm so happy there isn't any meat in coffee.
Dinner Saturday Night: More chili! Same kind. It's so good. This time over baked potatoes. I also made this lentil soup on Saturday for lunch and added barley for added whole grain, texture and protein. (I really need to get more consistent about the pictures, sorry!)
Dinner Last Night: Homemade pizza with Quick Beer-Pizza Crust (minus the Pizza Dough Flavor, didn't need it) and topped with red onions, green peppers, white mushrooms and black olives. We used Ragu Homestyle sauce (not bad, actually) and mozzarella and provolone cheese. It was a major success! Do you see Moses' little pepperoni piece? :)
I wanted to talk more about the kids and what's been going on with them. I'm not sure if we struggle lately with getting our kids to eat dinner because of the new diet changes we've made, or if it's just them being kids. We've gone back and forth on different "eating strategies" trying to get them to eat (mainly Moses, but I can see Ada starting to grasp the art of manipulating dinner time, too). One of our biggest frustrations is fighting with our children to get them to eat. It's not enjoyable for anyone involved and as I mentioned in my previous post, it can carry on through bed time. I realize some of that is merely a part of having toddlers, and I have had to come to terms with that, but I'm not willing to accept that it's necessary to relive that same scene night after night.
As of late our strategy has been to give Moses what we eat, tell him he has to have three bites and then he could have something else. Sometimes he really likes what we were having. But most times I felt like we were just giving him bread or bananas or pb&j's to fill him up so we could move on with our evening. Ada is in a category all her own and I mostly give her whatever she will eat, but surprisingly she's really embraced these new foods we've been having. She loves beans, that helps a ton. Anyway, in hopes of finding a magic answer, I started to do some online searching, some reading (what do you have there? it's a book.), thinking back on what has worked in the past, and even a little soul searching. What is my gut telling me I should do? "They" all say (those doctors - including my pediatrician - and books and credible sites) that you should put vegetables (or whatever other healthy food you want them to eat) on their plate and let them try it and don't make a huge fuss over it. Another useful nugget I found was to give a ridiculously small portion of a food you know your child will be adverse to - as little as one pea worth. I could get into what parents say, but we all know we all have 800 differing ideas about what really should be done. So After all this reading and thinking and searching and living with these two rugrats, I think I've finally got something good going. Because we've had such a wide variety of fruits and veggies in our cupboards I've been on a mission to get them eaten before they go bad. For lunches I've been making what we call a "snack plate" at our house.
The kids love eating this way! Plates with compartments and a little bit of everything in each one. So then I started getting more crazy ideas. If snack plates are good enough for lunch why can't they be ok for dinner? Then came my second great idea, these kids need some Bento boxes (inspired by this lunch rox's planet lunch box)! Well I searched for some and didn't find quite what I had in mind, the best ones were lunch boxes and we're not quite there yet (not to mention the planet lunch box is $59.95! Insanity!) and then I stumbled upon this!
(Moses really wanted to be in the picture!) It's an army mess tray, or a "soldier plate" as Moses calls it. I put a little something in each compartment trying to get as many of the colors of the rainbow as I can, including some of what I made for dinner, and lots of fruits and veggies. The focus is no longer on the food they do or don't like. I was always hesitant to give Moses or Ada fruit with dinner thinking they would fill up, but that hasn't been the case entirely. We still have to guide Moses to some of the foods he needs to try, and I have to turn Ada's tray around mid-meal so that she can reach the other side, but overall it's been a great change. I get up from the table much less because anything that is an option for them for dinner is already on their plates. We hear way less complaining (from Moses) and Ada's eating! I'm hoping the excitement will last... we shall see.
1 comment:
I really love the tray idea. The last month we've been having the hardest time getting E. to eat, and even the usual favorite fallbacks have been a failure. I get soooo mad about it (which doesn't help anything), and it feels like an unnecessary battle of wills. I have found nothing that works well so far (we have also tried lots of strategies), but I would love to try this!
Post a Comment