Recipes for Picky Eaters No. 4

Burrito Night

This one is simple. It's all about the process. Put out a lot of different ingredients and let the kids decide what goes in. A little piece of tinfoil around the bottom makes for easy holding (and keeps the bottom together). This is by far the most common dinner in our house. We shake it up with different kinds of leftover meat, chicken, cheese, veggies, sour cream, etc. But, for my kids, we pull out a batch with no taco seasoning. Then we season a batch for the adults. Always a winner.

Recipes for Picky Eaters No. 3

Spaghetti Carbonara

This is another meal my mom used to make. One of my all-time favorites and a nice change from regular pasta. It's basically breakfast pasta.

The key is to warm the bowl in a 200-degree oven. Cook the pasta, save some hot water when you drain it (add it back in to pasta if it begins to look dry). Transfer pasta into warm bowl. Beat two eggs and then add them to the hot pasta. (The heat from pasta and bowl cooks egg). Add crumbled, cooked bacon, grated parm and salt.


Voila! A meal even picky eaters will love. (Unlike all my other recipes, there is no butter in this meal, but it's still a guaranteed artery clogger.)

Recipes for Picky Eaters No. 2

OK, this one is super duper simple. French Toast. I love it for several reasons — it's a great use for stale bread. Often you can sneak in a healthy grain bread and the kids won't even notice. And, it was — for a long time — the only way could get my kids to eat eggs. Proportionally, it's all just guess work for me. I crack a few eggs, and toss in some milk. The proper ratio of the two ingredients seems somewhat key to their success, but it all has to be carefully divided by the amount of bread (and the absorbency of said bread). Just make sure you beat the mixture well and cook it on a medium temperature and it's almost fail proof. Butter, syrup — a guaranteed success. Another idea — make extra, freeze the leftover and warm them up in oven on a morning when you have less time.

Recipes for Picky Eaters No. 1

I'm going to start a regular series on this blog called, "The Domestically Challenged Mom: Recipes For Your Picky Eaters." (Basically Jessica Seinfeld without the time or talent.)

All around me, I see kids the same ages as my kids eating all kinds of healthy, interesting foods — deli sandwiches with mayo and lettuce, vegetables of all varieties, dishes with several ingredients mixed in together — gasp. Not my kids. They are strictly no-food-touching-any-other-kind-of-food purists. Between 18 months and 3 years, Sawyer's entire diet consisted of dairy and white-colored carbohydrates. He just this year added apples and oranges to his fruit repertoire and I about fell over when he asked for broccoli. He's finally trying exotic new things — like meat and chicken.

Arden's no less picky, but she's likes the opposite things. I can actually get her to eat an entire bowl of broccoli (as long as there's a vat of melted butter nearby) but she won't eat a single piece of chicken. Ask me tomorrow and they will have both flip-flopped their preferences. I can't keep up.

So, I have come up with a few interesting meals to improve the variety in their lives, which I will share from time to time here. I'd like to dedicate this to my mom who taught me everything I know about melted butter and who invented many of these Domestically Challenged recipes for me — the original picky eater.

RECIPE NO. 1: CHICKEN ON A STICK


The first lesson for any chef trying to please a picky eater — it's all about the packaging. The big wigs in the food industry figured that out a long time ago. I mean, look at the Sarah Lee Sandwich Bread with the Toy Story wrapping. My kids are convinced that the bread was hand-kneaded by Woody himself. Pleeease can we get the Toy Story bread? Who cares that it's a full dollar more than the generic brand. And, just try to get them through the soup aisle without cans covered with Cars and Princesses magically ending up in the basket — who cares what's inside — they don't even like soup.

So, Armstrong family legend also has it that one of my early favorite foods on Guam was Chicken Yakatori — aka chicken on a stick. A perfect example of how it's all about the packaging. My kids won't eat plain cubed up chicken, but put it on a stick and watch out. It's oh-so-fun.

I make up my own sauce, which involves melting a big scoop of creamy peanut butter in a sauce pan and adding drizzles of soy sauce and drops sesame oil until it tastes good. My kids think its chocolate sauce. The grocery store also carries Thai peanut sauce in a jar, but it tends to be too spicy for my kids.

I soak the sticks in water, coat the raw cubed chicken with the sauce and then skewer it. (Cut off sharp tip for little kids.) I bake it on a tin-foil lined cookie sheet at 350-400 degrees until it's done (white and flaky).

For the side dishes this time, I made plain jasmine rice and edaname — something green that the kids actually seem to like in small doses as long as it's doused in soy sauce.

Don't forget an extra bowl of sauce for dipping!

Butter me up

My mom is very proud of the way she got us kids to eat vegetables as children. She would melt a ramekin of butter and we'd go fishing. This worked for asparagus, broccoli, green beans and artichokes. We ate other vegetables too – like cooked carrots and corn – only because they were slathered in a thick layer of buttery, salty goodness. Sawyer discovered his love of melted butter eating crabs. But it wasn't until we read THIS BOOK that he took the first interest in a green vegetable.

We did all the right things when he was a baby, introducing the vegetables first and offering him all sorts of variety. He ate the heck out of strained peas and pureed green beans and even mowed down on some bok choy here and there. I was so proud of my mothering skills, I couldn't help but reach around and pat my own back . . . until he turned about 18 months and began snubbing his nose at any food that wasn't white. Sawyer's entire diet fell to starch, dairy and the occasional banana. I was thrilled when he decided he liked apples. For more than a year I was limited to three dinners (you know the ones) and spent several meals banging my head on the chopping block wondering how I'd created this narrow-palleted monster. I'd watch my friends' kids eat avocado and onion and green peppers with no problem, and I felt like a total failure. I never wanted to be a chicken-finger mom.

This summer I started to notice some subtle changes, starting with the crab. He began tasting new things! He didn't like them all, but he started becoming more adventuresome. He ate corn on the cob, and loved it. And watermellon. What kid doesn't like watermellon, right? And tomato soup, Even chicken soup won a "mmmmmmm!" The other day in the store, after reading the book, he insisted I buy broccoli, which he dipped in a ramekin of butter. While I would have bet 10 bucks he wouldn't eat it, darned if he AND Arden didn't down the whole bunch, pretending they were monsters eating trees. Tonight I even got him to eat spinach pasta (dinosaurs eating grass) and I am so excited I can't even decide how to further expand his repertoire next.

I need to remember that Scott was in his late 30s before he decided he liked oysters, olives and tomatoes and about a dozen other things he refused to eat before he met my family. I even learned that I enjoy a little bit of mayonnaise on my tomato sandwich just this year. It only goes to show, there's always time for an old dog to eat.

1:30

That is how long this video is - 1 minute 30 seconds. Even with the big build-up by Scott, this video is in the running for the DULLEST baby video EVER. Aren't you just dying to watch it now?



Funny, looking back (that was about two months ago, it was the best eating Arden has ever done. Now we have to open her mouth with a crow bar to get the baby food in and it still comes back out like that, or she sticks her fingers in after it. Really I just like this video cause I think my baby is friggin beautiful.

Happy 8 Months Arden!!

No taste

If there is one hard and fast rule at the Armstrong household it's: Check the Expiration Date. I hate to sell my parents out on this - they are brilliant, hard working people dominated by their Type A personalities in most dominions of life. But that leaves little time to grocery shop, no less sift through the cupboards and the refrigerator looking for products whose date has passed. Spend enough time at the Casa de Armstrong and you eventually learn your lesson the hard way. The first time I brought my husband home to meet my parents, it was the unopened bottle of Bailey's that was so congealed it wouldn't pour. Then there was the blue cheese dressing, two years past it's expiration date, that he innocently poured on his salad. Last weekend, it was the organic saltine crackers I fed my son. My parents are deeply fascinated by Sawyer's recently-acquired self-feeding skills. At the 100 Day Birthday Party for our goddaughter Olivia, Sawyer sampled almost the entire Korean menu. He clawed at my arm (note to self: cut fingernails) trying to pull the hand that was cutting his next bite closer to his mouth. Faster. Among the things he devoured were Japchae, a clear noodle dish, Bindaetteok, a green onion pancake, Dotorimuk, an acorn jelly and Nokdumuk, a similar mould made of mung beans. I barely ate myself, trying to keep him stocked with bite sized chunks. If I turned away, he'd just grab the food off my plate. Everyone at the table chuckled at the vigor with which he inhaled this newfound cuisine, and I was so pleased with myself for raising a son with such diverse taste in food. Back at home the next morning, my mom, who had missed the Korean fete, was interested in an encore performance. We filled Sawyer's tray with bite sized pieces of mango, papaya and watermelon. It was like feeding an animal in a zoo. It's entertaining to watch his primordial attempts at using thumb and forefinger to move food into his mouth. And then to see his reaction as new flavors hit his palate. My parents started digging through the cupboard and fridge looking for more things to feed him. Can we give him a cracker? My mom asked. Sure. I said. A saltine would be good. She found some round organic saltines. I checked out the box. No expiration date listed. Must be safe. They had a slightly strange odor, but they are ORGANIC, I thought. He bit into the first one and immediately opened his mouth and let the crumbs fall back out unchewed. I should have taken this as a sign, but, he persisted and ate the first cracker. Then my dad suggested adding some cheese to it. We found one of those garlic herb spreads in the fridge, spread it on cracker number two and handed it over. Sawyer licked all the cheese off and then ate the cracker. By the time he started working on cracker number three, I was beginning to think that this looked like a pretty good snack. I spread some cheese on a cracker for myself and took a big bite. I chewed a few times before a wave a nausea washed over me. It tasted like rancid oil. This is awful, I told my dad. I spit what I could back into a napkin. What? he asked. It can't be. This is good cheese. He too fixed himself a cracker and took a bite. There is simply no way to capture my dad's reaction for you unless you know him. Suffice it to say I almost wet myself from laughing. He made a beeline for the water dispenser on the fridge. Several subsequent Ohs and Yucks and it finally crossed my mind that I should take away the cracker that Sawyer was happily mowing. (I woke my mother from a nap to make her taste the cracker, barely able to control my hysterics as she bit into it. Again - priceless reaction.) Three hours later I was still burping rancid oil and unable to shake the taste after only one bite. Sawyer, on the other hand, flew into hysterics when I snatched away his THIRD. The whole experience made me second guess my aforementioned pride in Sawyer's sense of taste.