Some women while away their pregnancies worrying about things like jogging strollers and day care applications. Not here. What I want to know is what the little person is going to eat, and how to diversify beyond chicken fingers.
Looks like there are several schools of thought from which to choose. There’s the laissez-faire approach, which concedes that kids will eat what they eat, aka mac and cheese. There’s the sneaky parent approach, which involves baking vitamins into chocolate chip cookies. And then, once in a while, you find those kids who seem to eat everything. Like my friend Denise’s children. During our last visit I witnessed her first grader snacking on veal sweetbreads, a food most adults won’t touch. Denise’s husband happens to be a chef. What’s the approach there?
Could there just possibly be a correlation between children who love to eat and parents who love to eat, too? That’s my hunch, and I’ve set about trying to learn more. Luckily, there are dozens of books on the topic. But most of them don’t quite do it for me. There’s the cute Petite Appetit cookbook, which doesn’t get much beyond boiling water. There’s Ruth Yaron’s Super Baby Food, a strident guide to maximizing child nutrition, never mind actual enjoyment.
Enter local food writer Matthew Amster-Burton‘s new book, Hungry Monkey, an eating adventure that involves the author’s now five-year-old daughter Iris. Amster-Burton claims that Iris has been eating pad thai and sushi since age 1. It’s a story I want to believe in, a story that has the power to put all of those raging mommy debates about cloth diapers and nursing bras into context for me.
There are many things I look forward to about parenthood, and one is sitting around a table with my family and sharing good meals together. What I especially like about Hungry Monkey is that most of the recipes are ones I’d like to cook and eat myself, which makes them recipes a family can eat together. Sure, not every ingredient is seasonal or local. Sure, it’s not Jerry Traunfeld’s Herbfarm Kitchen. All the same, Hungry Monkey gets at the idea that food isn’t just fuel. This author appreciates eating as a form of culture, and that’s a good reminder right now.
What are your tips for eating with kids?
Eat Local Northwest 
5 comments
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July 3, 2009 at 1:58 pm
craftydabbler
My daughter, now almost 6 years old, ate everything until about 9 months ago. Now she only wants pb&j or buttered noodles. She does get those things occasionally but I keep giving her other things. I don’t know where the change came from. Good luck.
July 3, 2009 at 2:28 pm
Katrina
I have a friend who has always loved eating at good restaurants and since his daughter was very young he’s brought her along. For years she only ate noodles with butter or a bit of cheese but now at nine years old she reads the menus and orders for herself. Still with a bit of help here and there but knows what she does and does not want. She’s one of my favorite dining companions. As I think about it her parents always offered her tastes but never forced her to eat anything. Given your love of good real food I can’t help but believe your child will also love it.
July 5, 2009 at 11:05 am
molly
audrey,
we started feeding Will what we were eating for dinner right when he started solids (~6mo)… ok, maybe we did rice cereal and bland pureed veggies at first… but after a few weeks, it was clear that this was BOR–ING, for us AND him… so we opened up the cabinets and started trying every food we could expose him to.
he loves curry dishes, phad thai, roasted veggies from the market, fairly pungent cheeses, eggplant and bluebird grain farms farro, etc. We let him try pretty much every kind of food on our plates, and let him like what he will.
i have to admit, he really DOES love mac and cheese… but so do i.
i’m so excited to see the newest p-patch farmer this fall….
July 8, 2009 at 11:34 am
stephen
I’m not sure there are any tricks. Sophia, 6, will try just about anything and prefers curries and pesto. Hannah, 5, would rather have peanut butter and jelly and a handful of pretzels.
They’ll eat what you put in front of them … at least when they get hungry enough š
-Stephen
July 13, 2009 at 6:38 am
poppyandsally
When my daughter was a baby and then a toddler, she would sit on the counter for a few minutes at a time (in her little seat of course) and be right in the middle of the cooking scene. When she was 4 or 5 she started concocting her own brews out of anything I allowed her to mix with at the kitchen sink and then she’d want me to taste it. When she was 9 she wanted an omelet pan for Xmas.
My theory is to get the kids cooking, participating in the growing, harvesting, chopping, stirring of food-making. The eating follows.
Sally