Tons of kids are fussy eaters - I've been dining with them since I was a child myself. There have been more tears shed over dinner tables in this land than over the last episode of M*A*S*H and that was a serious heartbreaker.
I gave birth to a couple of these fusspots myself, and I know many parents can commiserate with my dinner time feeding woes. But I’ve given up fighting because it was turning relaxed mealtimes into stressful encounters, and now all of my energy is expended by preparing meals which meet some pretty specific and very pointed culinary preferences. You know those kids who won’t eat a food if it touches another food, or who refuse to try something that grew roots at one point in its life cycle? My kids are nothing like that. They’re worse.
You may be nodding, saying, "Yep; I get it," but I'm not sure if you fully comprehend the severity of our mealtime woes, because my problem may not be quite what you’re expecting.
When the thick department store catalogue arrives each holiday season, most kids turn to the back where the toy pages are. My kids go to the kitchen section and start arguing over who’s asking Santa for the pasta roller and which one of them deserves the Henkel knives. We rarely participate in hot lunch days at school, because the basic order form for “Pizza Day” didn’t include artisan crust, smoked duck, or black olive options. It’s like our school hates kids.
You see then, these kids are serious about their food.
I don’t encourage it. I have remarkably few preferences myself – primarily I require that food arrive hot, and (preferably) dead. I’d be happy – delighted even – to prepare hotdogs or chicken fingers once or twice a week. I could use the break because I'm not a person who enjoys cooking. But these kids are still small and they love junk food as much and maybe more than the next person, but they take it up a notch when it comes to quality. My daughter could pick a Lindt from a line-up of Cadbury with her tongue tied behind her back, and when my son was taken out for “treat” lunch with a friend and his mother, he wouldn’t touch the pogo stick or French fries. When my friend was certain he was pulling her leg when he requested salmon and salad, she (understandably) refused. He then proceeded to everyone’s soggy tomato and romaine garnishes.
During the school year their teachers request that snacks come primarily from the fruit, vegetable, or protein food groups. This helps people avoid some popular allergens and also encourages kids to eat a healthier mini-meal twice a day. My son was almost granted an exception to that rule when he insisted on bringing tuna with roast garlic olive oil marinated tomatoes for his snack every day. His kindergarten classroom may have smelled like an Italian restaurant, but those kids were safe from vampires.
At any given time my refrigerator holds cold poached salmon, pickled white asparagus, and 6 year-old cheddar. None of it is mine. My daughter pores over imported food brochures from the European deli like other girls admire “Teen Vogue” magazine, and my son requested a Crème Brule torch for his fifth birthday. I blame it on their Italian heritage because their Nonna can create a Cordon Bleu worthy meal using nothing more than salt and pepper and an ancient pan she brought to the new country. She’s spoiled their taste buds with amazing fresh food - all in the name of "love" - and now I’m the one who’s paying for it. While I was attempting to dull their gustatory senses with tasteless canned vegetables and rubbery frozen waffles, she was undoing all my hard work with salads so fresh the rain still clung to them.
A few nights ago I put what I thought was nice pork roast on the table. My daughter took a bite and did all she could not to gag on it.
“What did you marinate this in? It’s horrible!” she asked.
“What? Nothing. I just cooked it in a bit of apple cider in the crock pot.”
“Apple cider? A CROCK POT?” she scoffed. “This thing…” she poked it with her fork…”this thing deserves a nice blueberry port glaze.” She shook her head. "Nonna would never feed us this."
“Yeah, and would it have killed you to give it a toasted pistachio crust?” my son added, heaping injury upon already bruised culinary ego.
I apologized and offered to make them some macaroni and cheese.
“Fine,” they conceded. “But could you at least add extra parmesan-reggiano like Nonna does?”
If you need me, I'll be crying in the imported cheese aisle.
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