Thursday, August 25, 2011

Is This Karma or Just the Universe Laughing at Me?

I have mentioned before that I was a picky eater as a kid. I am partially reformed now, but there are still a few things that I just can't stand, and two of the worst are beans (it's the texture) and peas (it's the taste).

When Pumpkin was about 3, we noticed that her day care reports indicated that she would eat refried beans. In fact, she would eat them all up, which was (and is) unusual for her.

This was big news, since she didn't (and doesn't) eat much in the way of either vegetables or protein.

So I dutifully bought a can of refried beans and made them for dinner one night. I took a deep breath and put some on my plate, figuring this was just one more of the many sacrifices of parenthood.

But she wouldn't touch them. We tried several times, with different brands and cooking techniques, trying to make the beans just like day care. Nothing worked, and we finally accepted that refried beans are a food she will only eat at day care, for reasons that only she knows.

I was secretly relieved. I hate beans.

This week, I looked at one of Petunia's day care reports and noticed that she'd eaten all of her vegetables that day. This is big news, the last time she ate a non-pureed, non-grated vegetable, she was about 10 months old- back then she really liked cooked carrot sticks and green beans.

So what vegetable did she gobble up? You guessed it. Peas.

10 comments:

  1. Oh that made me laugh! I know how you feel. I'm not a fan of peas either but Moo loves them. A-pea-a-pea-a-pea she cries when she spots them on her plate. I have to admit I frequently give her peas and make a different vegetable for myself. Otherwise I recommend lots of butter and finely chopped mint... Or dolloping on cheese sauce. On the up side, peas are super quick to prepare. And honestly, after repeated exposure, the other night I actually thought to myself - hey, these peas don't taste THAT bad...

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  2. Anonymous4:10 AM

    Have you read Hungry Monkey yet? You should!

    For a while DC was eating broccoli at daycare, "With Ranch" but would not replicate the experience at home. Oh well.

    Frozen peas are also much yummier than prepared peas. They've always been on the yummy list in our house.

    It's great that she's getting all these different food experiences at daycare. And she'll try them too. I bet it doesn't stress them out when she doesn't. At ours DC was learning to experience baby cheetos (off the floor of the infant room-- other moms would send them with their kids), Ritz crackers (for snack once we loosened up on sending our own snacks on Ritz cracker day), and other things he doesn't get at home. Though I guess in the big kids room they did serve a lot of fruit and occasionally broccoli with ranch, apparently.

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  3. Haha! That's too much!

    Now that I have a truly picky eater also, I think I'm most frustrated by the fact that he'll eat up something at daycare/preschool that he won't touch at home. I'll think, "Aha! They said he ate all the orange slices they serrved! Now I can add a four food item to the list, and he will apparently love it!" And when I serve the very same thing at home? Yep. Just like yours. It's a no-go.

    ITA with @nicoleandmaggie about frozen peas. It was how my mom got me and my brother to eat peas, and how I get my daughter to eat them. Stick a bunch of frozen peas in a bowl. I find it's even more fun to get/serve them while you're still cooking, because then it's like a special treat, not part of dinner. In fact, my mom would call them "candy frozen peas!"

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  4. And I don't think there should be an "or" in your title. Afterall, isn't karma just the universe having fun with us? ;-)

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  5. the milliner6:16 AM

    Ha ha. Oh yeah, same on our side. In our particular case, DS loves bananas (I do not like to eat bananas unless they are in a smoothie - a texture thing) and corn (DH cannot stand the sound of people eating corn on the cob...he has to leave the table if we eat it).

    Luckily I can get away with giving DS a banana for breakfast, when we all do our own thing anyhow. And I try to serve corn when it's just DS & I for dinner, as I love it too.

    I only started eating peas a few years ago when DH made Gordon Ramsay's mushy peas recipe (essentially peas with butter, salt and a bit of vinegar, all mashed together) to go with our fish & chips. So good.

    And we definitely have the will-eat-it-at-daycare-but-not-at-home thing. It's mostly for vegetables. I've given up. As long as he's eating them somewhere. I'm assuming it's the peer pressure thing which we just can't replicate at home.

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  6. That is hilarious! We had some similar experiences with food she'd eat at daycare vs food she'd eat at home. This past week has been especially interesting because she's at a week long daycamp and has to bring her own lunch & snacks for the first time.

    When I was very small my Nana took care of me, and one of my very favorite foods to snack on was raisins. Nana really didn't like raisins, but didn't want to discourage me from sharing...and apparently I loved to share my raisins with her. And ever since then she puts raisins on her cereal every morning, and up until she stopped baking used to put them in her cookies too. So here's hoping you manage to fall in love with some food that you've spent far too long hating :) I recently had peas fresh from the garden for the very first time...and they were unbelievably delicious. Not at all the same things you buy at the grocery store.

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  7. My kids like canned peas. I find any vegetable except corn and beans (black, pinto, kidney not lima or green) to be beyond disgusting when it comes out of a can.

    I suppose the wind was blowing the day the apple fell from the tree, which is a good thing because I was a terribly picky eater as a kid (what kid doesn't eat pizza? me.).

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  8. Look in the bright side: at least it's a vegetable you can keep in a bag in the freezer and dole out in individual servings... you won't have to eat them yourself, promise!

    Frozen peas were a big favorite here for a while. One of the four vegetable-ish things le Petit would eat between ages two and three.

    And as a bonus, it's great fun to chase dried, mummified peas across the dining room floor.

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  9. I'm so jealous. Your daycare sounds wonderful foodwise. Back when my daycare still served lunch it was always canned yucky veggies or rubbery frozen ones.

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  10. @First Gen American, your comment made me chuckle, because a group of parents are currently organizing a meeting with the center director to talk about the food. They don't think the kids are getting enough fruits and veggies and that they're serving too many high fat things. I think they're doing fine, but I guess people with kids who will actually eat healthy things might want more of that.

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