Cooking for a family can be a topsy-turvy affair. Sometimes things go horribly wrong, and I’m not talking about about spilled milk here. I’m talking something worse. Over the weekend, a certain someone, who might have been so proud of the roasted red peppers he made, brought to tears a certain daughter (who shall remain nameless, in hopes of protecting the innocent). All he wanted was for her to try it. Was that wrong? What about the "eating the rainbow philosophy" for raising healthy children? And don’t get me started on the whole “if they make it with you they’ll want to eat it with you” approach. She practically held the pepper in the flame when I was cooking it. Sheesh.
But there are also high points, such as this morning, when another daughter came trotting out of her bedroom and said “Yummy oatcakes,” as soon as she smelled the aroma from the kitchen. I knew then why it was I get up at 6 a.m. to get breakfast started. Whew.
Man, that “cook with your kids & they’ll taste everything” line is a crock of, um, baloney. My son loves cooking with me, but eating what we’ve made? Nu-uh.
It’s a process, not an event. I like this blog’s perspective a lot: http://itsnotaboutnutrition.squarespace.com/
My own blog documents me cooking with my son – he goes from being a rabid omnivore to being an incredibly picky eater (I even started a tumblr to document the stuff he turns his nose up at!)
The key is not to push, but also not to give up: it can take 20 or more exposures to a food (exposures include just looking at it) to get a kid to accept it.
Its all a crock, the kid will eat what the kid will eat. I am an informed, experimental and confident cook and my daughter sees and helps with tons of it yet only wants pizza, mac and cheese or grilled cheese. Maybe someday she will branch out and have pasta with red sauce (I know, its the same thing that’s on her pizza and in her mac and cheese but she won’t eat them together). I take hope from the fact that she eventually learned to lift her head up and to hold her own bottle. : )