Food Which Has Been Prepared For My Offspring Which They Have Refused To Eat This Week

[pegkerr]

1. homemade beef stew

2. Shepherd's Pie (sorry, naomikritzer; yes, they are ingrates)

3. Squash, stuffed with a cottage cheese/parmesan cheese/apple mixture

4. Crescent rolls, topped with cheese/tomato/bell pepper mixture

Comments

[megd.livejournal.com]

Mail it my way.

I'd kill for homecooked food.

One more week.

[wilfulcait.livejournal.com]

If they refuse to eat what's on the table, what happens?

I think it all sounds yummy. Do you have a recipe you'd be willing to share for the shepard's pie?

[wilfulcait.livejournal.com]

BTW, I'm asking this not because I want to critique your parenting but because I'm looking for alternatives to what I do (which is say "you know where the peanut butter is.")

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

You'll have to ask naomikritzer, because she made it for us.

[naomikritzer]

Recipe is here; substitute 1/2 c. tomato juice + 1/2 c. red wine for the beef stock if you like, and use hamburger for the "beef mince."

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

If they refuse to eat what's on the table, what happens?

They get to make bread with peanut butter.

We go through TONS of peanut butter.

[wilfulcait.livejournal.com]

Ah. Obviously we both went to the "I'm not running a restaurant" school of dealing with picky eaters.

[jonquil.livejournal.com]

Go team you.

[volkhvoi.livejournal.com]

I used to work in the kitchen of a private school. We used the "if you don't like what is being served, there is bread and peanut butter (and jam and honey)" solution, too. How much peanut butter and bread we went through in a given meal was a pretty reliable measure of whether it was worth serving again in the future.


Can I eat at your place, too? It all sounds yummy.

[trinker.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't have been thrilled by bell peppers, but everything else there looks delicious!

[juliansinger.livejournal.com]

Mmmmmm, shepherd's pie. (Though admittedly, when I was a kid, I ate the beef and the mashed potatoes and left the corn alone.)

Mmmmmmm, squuuaaaash. (How does the hot cottage cheese work?)

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

I like it a lot. The recipe is in the original Moosewood cookbook.

[juliansinger.livejournal.com]

...Which, thanks to our annual church fair, I now have! *beams*

[serenya-loreden.livejournal.com]

They are getting old enough to learn a few simple meals (or at least at a minimum Fiona should be, 12 right?). My mother bought me a cookbook that had basic family meals, but was written for young teens when I was about 12/13, and I cooked dinner a couple nights a week. It was in part necessity, as she was working 2 nights a week, and then in school, and my father traveled some. Still, cooking the meals on occasion helps one appreciate the effort involved, and the annoyance when a well-cooked meal is rejected out of hand.

[serenya-loreden.livejournal.com]

Not that that will entirely stop the peanut butter sandwiches mind you :p

[aerden.livejournal.com]

Oooh! I'll help you eat the squash dish and the shepherd's pie! (g)

Chantal

[aome.livejournal.com]

I'm not a big squash fan (aside from zucchini in modest doses), but the rest sounds fabulous. I thought shepherd's pie was pretty kid-friendly - hamburger, mashed potatoes ... what's not to like?

We haven't yet gotten to the "You know where the PB is" stage. Right now, it's "You don't have to eat it, but this is what dinner is. Take it or leave it." Even when the response is "leave it" (which Two did tonight), no one has died yet. But your response is perfectly adequate - at least then they get protein and don't whine at you that they're hungry. And they do the work.

Come to our house tomorrow - crock pot potato/ham/spinach soup with grated swiss.

[callunav.livejournal.com]

At a wild guess, what's not to like *might* be that all the food is together. At least younger kids tend to be pretty conservative, in my experience, about wanting the different elements of food kept distinct from each other. I remember vehemently lobbying to have, for instance, my rice kept separate from the sauce-laden dish that was meant to be served over it. I ate both, but I didn't want them touching each other. And I think I might have felt the same about something like shepherd's pie, though I don't really know.

Which isn't, by the way, Peg, a criticism of the dish or your serving of it. At all. It's only that I like to poke at possible reasons, even for EXTREMELY ANNOYING BEHAVIOR. Ahem. Now that I'm cooking more often, myself, I can start to imagine cooking for a family on a regular basis, and I don't think I'd be pleased at *all* to have efforts rejected, no matter how well I could speculate about the underlying causes.

[serenya-loreden.livejournal.com]

That's quite likely -- I too recall a long insistence on food being kept completely separate. I got over it eventually ;o

[porcinea.livejournal.com]

My sister's never gotten over it. She still hates for her food to touch. And will carefully separate it before eating.

[callunav.livejournal.com]

Well, you know, I still keep my rice separate from the food that's supposed to be served on it, quite often, especially if I'm eating Chinese food. I eat lots of other foods together, but not that.

What would we be without our foibles? The important bit is that as we grow up, we no longer expect someone else to go to extra effort to enable them.

[faithhopetricks.livejournal.com]

I remember very carefully segregating all my food onto different portions of the plate when I was a kid. It drove my father nuts. I was also a terribly picky eater (you remember that old George Carline about "'He's a fussy eater, a fussy eater' -- that's a euphemism for BIG PAIN IN THE ASS"? That was me. I have improved since then. Some).

Plenty old enough

[1crowdedhour.livejournal.com]

I'm glad I'm not the only one who was making family meals at that age.

Not that my cooking skills were/are anything to write home about.

Re: Plenty old enough

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Definitely not the only one. My mom would leave instructions for me to make (for example) pot roast after school, and if I said I didn't like/want pot roast, she would say, "Too bad. That's what we're having." This was not the best way to get me interested in cooking at that age, but it was a pretty effective way to have dinner ready when she came home from work.

[von-krag.livejournal.com]

These dishes sound great. IMO however you make Shepherd's Pie it's one of the best comfort foods. Umm, I had learned to cook by 12, tought my son the basics at that age and I know my grandkids all started learning about that time. I think it works and will work on your two. I've also posted two simple recipes at my site, one for soup and the other for ez pasta & cheese.

[bethynyc.livejournal.com]

I'm coming to your house for dinner. That all sounds great!

[jbru.livejournal.com]

That all sounds delightful. I probably couldn't stomach the squash, as something about the texture of squash causes me to gag every time I try it, but it sounds like it would smell wonderful enough for me to give it another go.

One of these years, your daughters will come to you and ask for recipes for all those wonderful foods you tried to make them eat when they were younger.

[naomikritzer]

I thought about your picky daughters tonight, as I made a variant on the Sicilian Seafood Stew from Moosewood Restaurant Cooks at Home. It calls for shrimp and scallops, but for a cheaper version I used this "Seafood Medley" you can buy that's a mixture of shrimp, squid, clams, and mussels. Plus I threw in some corn and edamame. It turned out pretty well and would be easy to double, but I bet if I made a batch of that for your family you would get to eat it allllllllll by yourself. ;-) (And don't worry about your ingrate daughters offending me. They're both delightful even if they don't like Shepherd's Pie. Did Delia tell you she ran into me this morning? I was touring Seward.)

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

Yes, Delia did mention that, as a matter of fact! They really did enjoy going to the craft fair, and you made a very good impression.

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

And I can assure you that the Shepherd's Pie did not go to waste. It made some very delicious lunches for me later in the week.

[bordergold.livejournal.com]

Hahah I wish you were my mom. I would eat ALL of the shepherd's pie. And beef stew. And rolls.

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

OK, the squash I can understand. Not one male in this family will eat squash, and the daughters are iffy about it. (I love it, and so did my mother.)

The shepherd's pie--I've never made it, because I was pretty sure that B wouldn't eat it (back then--now that he is a world traveler, he eats things I won't, but he still expects a narrow range when he comes over here!) and J would be iffy, and E doesn't like ground beef.

The crescent rolls probably wouldn't go over big here, either. Stuff on top of anything bready never did ("pasta" not being considered "bready," however).

But beef stew! BEEF STEW! What's not to like about beef stew? It has always been one thing that I knew everyone in the family would eat, reliably, and even express appreciation for. (Although I have to call it "beef soup" even if I thicken it a bit, because J won't eat gravy. Yes, gravy. He had this childhood accident involving hot gravy ...)

[nmsunbear.livejournal.com]

After watching my mother struggle with my brother's picky eating*, my dad's lackadaisical response to her effort at feeding us ("that was okay"), and then, later, my stepfamily's hysterical "you will eat it and like it" gagginng-on-a-pea hysteria, I have the utmost respect for people who feed their families and don't completely lose their interest in trying new and interesting foods. Go you!


*CallunaV recently reminded me of something I had forgotten: My family went through a drastic upshift in income after my father finished grad school. My mother made a list of what my picky brother would eat, and realized that his pickiness had a lot to do with the fact that the more expensive foods we could then afford weren't what he was used to. He wanted hot dogs, mac & cheese, and the beloved "slop" (baked beans cooked with hamburger and served over cornbread), not steak. Just a basically irrelevant footnote, but I was so chraned when Calluna gave this story back to me that I love to tell it whenever i get the chance.

[sraun]

Silly children - that all sounds wonderful!

[naomikritzer]

Out of curiosity, what were your eating habits like when you were a child?

I would happily eat shrimp, clam chowder, and deep-fried liver, but turned up my noise at tuna noodle casserole, and macaroni and cheese. I didn't much care for cheese as a kid, and didn't like anything where it was a central ingredient. I finally acquired a taste for cheese when I was in college.

It was macaroni and cheese (my mother made a really good baked kind -- I actually liked the fake Kraft stuff, which I sometimes got for lunch) that precipitated the applesauce-on-the-head incident. Have I told you that story? I can't remember.

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

If you have ever told me the applesauce on the head story, I've forgotten it, so tell it to me again.

I think I was a pretty open-minded eater as a child (although I didn't like beans or broccoli). I had two instances where I had abrupt shifts in my tastes.

The first occurred at age twenty-one, when I was studying in England. I remember distinctly thinking, "Hmm, I wonder what I should make for dinner. I know. I'll make broccoli. That sounds good." And then I stopped in shock and whacked myself on the head, and said, "Who are you? Since when have you liked broccoli?" But it was true: suddenly my taste for three specific foods switched on: I went suddenly from hating to loving broccoli, grapefruit and peas, and I have loved them ever since.

The other was when I became pregnant, and I abruptly started craving beans for the first time. That taste, too, has remained strongly in the "on" position.

Weird.

[naomikritzer]

When I was pregnant with Kiera, I suddenly developed an aversion to all things fishy. I normally love shrimp, but while pregnant, I couldn't stand them. It was bizarre. I regained my taste for fish and seafood after the delivery.

Here's the applesauce story. When I was ten or thereabouts, my parents my macaroni and cheese one night, and my mother gave me a look of death and told me that if I couldn't come up with anything nice to say, I was not to say anything at all. Since I have always been a smart-ass, I said, "Fine. Ooooooh, my favorite kind of milk. Oh, yummy, the best kind of salt. Oh, and we're having applesauce with dinner...."

My mother was serving the applesauce into bowls, and as I said this, she'd just scooped up a big spoonful of it. And instead of putting it in the bowl, she dumped it on my head.

I stopped dead and then shrieked, "You put applesauce on my head!"

"Yes, I did!" my mother said. "Now eat your dinner!"

"But... but... but... I have applesauce on my head!"

My mother started giggling and dabbed at my head with the napkins. "You can go take a bath after dinner. You needed one anyway."

So I wiped the applesauce out of my hair (it had started dripping down the back of my neck) and ate dinner, much subdued. And -- here is the kind of stunning thing -- I never complained about the food again. I didn't always like dinner, and frequently picked at it if it wasn't something I cared for, but having provoked my mother into completely uncharacteristic behavior once, I was afraid of what might happen if I complained again.

Not that I'm suggesting this as a remedy or anything. But the applesauce did wash out, no harm done.