Thursday, May 21, 2009

The kid likes an egg roll, also, What to Make for Dinner

First of all, the lovely TJ over at In Search of a Minimalist Existence recommends Supercook! and so do I! Like many "what should I make for dinner" sites, you put in the ingredients that you have in the house. Unlike others, it asks you if you also have additional ingredients. A few minutes putting in random spices, meats, and other items into my account brought up over 2000 recipes. (OK, Apples and Cinnamon were on my list so 1/3 of those are desserts!) I'm really happy with how it works so far, and I plan to use it for dinner tonight.

OK, now for the main subject of today's post. How to get the toddler to eat when he decides that everything has to be one thing.

Example. When Micah was about 13 months old, he decided that everything should be a meatball. He didn't expect them to taste like meat, mind you. They just had to be meatball shaped. Of course, at 13 months, he was still mostly eating baby food. So, how to get the baby food into a meatball? We mixed his cereal with veggies, added an egg and some bread crumbs, and made meatballs that we then baked and had ready to go in the freezer. It's all about being creative.

Right now, Micah likes Egg Rolls. They don't have to *taste* like egg rolls. They just have to be some kind of food wrapped in some kind of wrapper. They don't even have to be fried! 

So last night, after going through the refusal-to-eat thing, I suggested that he might want an egg roll. Yes, he wanted an egg roll. Into the fridge I went and returned with a corn tortilla. I wrapped his mango curry chicken in the tortilla and he went to town. 

I don't get it, but it worked. It's worked before. In fact, we've wrapped beef stew, stir fry, and re-wrapped chicken enchiladas that apparently didn't look *enough* like an egg roll for him in the past. 

So I guess when it comes to toddlers, the big idea is to work with the kiddo's crazy ideas and hope that he grows out of them soon!

No comments:

Post a Comment