Real Groceries

kid food

Cooking real food three times a day (at least) restores many rituals and rhythms that used to be part of regular life before convenience food arrived.

Here's one: going to the grocery store (or farmers' market) every day, to buy a little of this or that to make dinner.

Years ago when I lived in San Diego, I blushed when a cashier bid me farewell with "see you tomorrow!"

Now I'm at peace with my grocery habit. I don't buy shoes, or expensive jeans, or computer gadgets...

Polishing off the last head of broccoli is usually what compels me back to the store.

What last bite compels you?

13 Ways to Help Toddlers Overcome Pickiness

 
Most parents wants their kid to be that kid at the dinner table: the one gamely munching on whatever she's offered, curiously sampling unfamiliar foods, and begging for seconds of carrots and bok choy.

My own son, at almost 24 months, is a fairly agreeable eater (more on how he became one later), but his eating habits and propensities are not in a class of their own. At different points in his life, he has rejected everything from spinach and kale to blueberries, mango, eggs, beans, zucchini, carrots, and even Mozzarella cheese. (Not all cheese. Just Mozzarella.) He is, in belly and taste buds, an altogether typical toddler. As a veggie-obsessed mom, I've had to get pretty creative.

I've written before about preparing kids to accept vegetables before mealtime arrives; in this post I collect a few more preparatory strategies, along with my favorite at-the-table tips, tricks, rules, and games for helping toddlers overcome pickiness and establish balanced eating habits.

The list comes from my own experience, the testimonies of other parents, a lot of reading, and a little science. I'm always looking for new ways to inspire kids to love veggies, so please add yours at the end of the post. Enjoy!

1.) Eat vegetables while pregnant and nursing. Flavors transmit through amniotic fluid and breast milk, so you can prime your baby's palate before food ever passes her lips.

2.) Change a food's shape. If cubed carrots don't inspire your little ones, try sliced carrot rounds, carrot sticks, crinkle-cut carrots, or carrot shreds.

3.) Let kids dip. Kids will eat almost anything they get to dip. in something. Try veggies dipped in hummus, yogurt, guacamole, or herbed butter.

4.) Offer foods at a different time of day. Experiment to find out when hungers and moods strike. (This made a HUGE difference for us. We now offer anything bean-based at lunch.)

5.) Serve foods with flair. Eat with colorful forks. Arrange veggies on fun platters. Stab fruits with a cocktail umbrella. Advertisers use gimmicks like this all the time to win over kids, so it's only fair that we, too, wield a tiny balloon on a toothpick.

6.) Add a little grass-fed butter and sea salt. Saturated fat is not only delicious, it's also important for toddler brain growth.

7.) Don't offer substitutes. It's hard not to cave to (potentially shrill) demands, but it pays to stick to your guns. If ratatouille is for dinner, ratatouille is for dinner. If you serve real, nourishing food and your kids are hungry, they'll eat it. Here's a great article about snacking and appetite.

8.) Let them help you make it (or grow it!) Classic, fun, and effective.

9.) "Hide" vegetables. In cognito veggies work in everything from muffins to casseroles, cookies, quiches, smoothies, sauces, and pasta. Just make sure you tell kids the truth about what's inside their food, so next time you serve zucchini, you can remind them that they liked it last time.

10.) Let them see YOU eat well. Nutritionist Karen Collins with the National Institute of Cancer Research reports that "a review of 60 studies concluded that seeing their parents eat and enjoy vegetables was the most powerful influence in promoting vegetable consumption among kids." Get on it, mamas and papas.

11.) Let them roam from the table. Playing and learning is a toddler's mission in life. If he eats twice as many greens on the floor hammering in pegs than he does in his chair, I say bring on the pegs, and worry about table manners later.

12.) Try it again, and again, and again. Research tells us that ten times is the magic number babies and toddlers need to try a new food before they accept it. No problem. Kids should expect to see vegetables on their plates at every single meal. Make broccoli or sweet potatoes normal breakfast foods in your house. Everybody benefits.

13.) Pat yourself on the back. Despite all your best efforts, some days will still be "toast days." Don't give up, and remind yourself that helping your kids learn to enjoy delicious, nutrient-rich food is a gift that will last the rest of their lives.

Happy munching!

Fresh Eggs: Make the Switch!

Why did it take me so long to switch to fresh eggs? I'd been buying the "better" supermarket eggs for years--organic, vegetarian-fed, hormone-free, insert-buzzword-here. They were OK. Then, a few months ago, I cracked open my first fresh, local egg, one laid by a hen who got to scratch and peck at grass, and know sunshine. Holy huge difference.

rich orange yolk, pale yellow yolk

That first fresh egg tasted startlingly delicious, like no supermarket egg I'd ever eaten. It struck me that all eggs must have tasted that way to my grandparents when they were kids. It makes me a little mad to have been duped all these years into thinking that wan, flat, stale eggs were normal.

Of course, fresh eggs cost more: around six dollars a dozen versus around two dollars for a "conventional" dozen. (If you're buying the fancy shmancy supermarket eggs, you're only saving a dollar or two.)

Is it worth spending forty cents on an egg instead of twelve? Yeah. Yes. YES. (By the way, I hemmed and hawed over buying depleted old supermarket eggs to use for this photo. I rationalized it by thinking if I could get one person to switch to fresh eggs, it would be worth it. Then Lisa over at 100 Days of Real Food wrote about this exact same topic, photo-comparison included! It's in the air, people.)

When Darwin and I crack an egg, we've taken to saying, "thank you, chicken, for this egg." Corny, I know, but a fresh egg is a gift; it's even gold.

Where do yours come from?

Raising a Food-Smart Kid

When it comes to shaping kids' attitudes about food, Parents, we have the real power. It's us. It's not junk food commercials, or kids on the playground, or Happy Meal toys. At the end of the day (and the beginning, and the middle...) we're the ones who buy the food and serve it, and better yet, we get to be a gentle, consistent voice promoting what matters: a healthy body, a little patience, and an appreciation of the resources that sustain us.

When it comes to "marketing" these values to kids, we don't have to be half as flashy as commercial advertisers. Of course, every kid and every age is different (mine is 22 months as of this writing, and fairly agreeable, also as of this writing) but at our house, we do three simple things--read books, share kitchen tasks, and play with toy food--to normalize real food even before it's time to eat.

Reading Books

What's that?

A quick Amazon search unearths tons of beautiful children's books about real foods (Lois Ehlert wrote and illustrated two of our favorites: Eating the Alphabet and Growing Vegetable Soup.) Even books that are not specifically about food often have a page or two of good food vocabulary and pictures. The more we read and talk about vegetables and fruits, the more comforting and familiar those foods become. (If we don't exert this influence, junk food advertisers will!)

Soliciting Kitchen Help
"Up, see!" Darwin pleads, pulling at my legs as I peel and chop at the counter. Kids want to know what we're up to up there! Usually, even very young ones have a surprising ability to accomplish (safe) kitchen tasks. Darwin mastered clementine-peeling on his first try. He shelves the measuring cups, recycles the grocery bags, and applies brow-furrowing concentration to tossing a bay leaf into the bean pot. Parents who let their kids help in the kitchen know that it can take an extra five minutes to get a meal on the table, but that kids love eating what they've made.

Playing with Toy Food

wooden crate is and cloth veggies from Under the Nile

Melissa & Doug, Plan Toys, Under the Nile, and other companies sell cloth and wooden toy food sets that, frankly, obsess me. Our collection of toy edibles includes carrots, tomatoes, apples, grapes, chicken, lemons, broccoli, cucumbers, pears, radishes, cheese, bok choy(!) and many more. If you have never made a toy soup with your kids, you have to try it! Show them how to chop and stir the ingredients. Let them feed you a bite. Pretend it needs more garlic.


My favorite thing about these tools is that they're ordinary good fun. Parents don't have to worry, lecture, or prohibit TV to get involved in the way kids think about food.

How do you bring healthy food into family conversations? Does it make a difference at the table?

Real Food Family Staples

With all the corn puffs, flavored yogurts, crackers, applesauce cups, boxed mac-and-cheese, and meal pouches on the market, it’s easy to forget that not long ago in our history (and still today in many parts of the world), kids didn’t eat products; they just ate food.

At our house, we live by the idea that good food for one of us is good food for all of us. I never serve Kid something I wouldn’t eat myself, and I try hard not to assume that something I’m eating is too bitter, spiced, green, or exotic for him to share. (Sometimes this is hard! But he surprises me all the time. He’s into raw radishes right now.)

Nutritionist and food activist Marion Nestle has my back on this one: "Kids don’t need kids’ food. If adults are eating healthfully, kids should be eating the same foods that adults eat. Babies don’t need commercial baby food. Older kids don’t need kids’ products. Families can all eat the same foods, and that should make life easier for all concerned. If you don’t want your kids drinking sodas, don’t bring them home from the supermarket. Teach kids to eat real foods early on, and they will be great eaters throughout life."

Of course, for this idea to work in practice, parents have to actually eat well! No kid will tolerate a heap of spinach while her parents gobble up slices of pizza. I think this is just one of the ways our children make us better people: by demanding of us fairness and consistency in our good habits.

What are your family’s good habits? How did you make them stick?

Here are some of ours, a humble list of seven foods we eat every (or most) days:

Sweet potatoes: On any given day, our fridge is stocked with a handful of foil-wrapped, baked sweet potatoes. There is something so simple and sweet and fulfilling about this vegetable, warm or cold, seasoned or plain. We sometimes stir in peanut butter for a decadent snack. Sweet potatoes make great oven fries, too: drizzle some wedges with extra virgin olive oil and coat with a few dashes of chili powder before baking. 

Broccoli: I have talked to enough pleased parents to shatter the myth that kids don’t like broccoli. At breakfast each morning (yes, breakfast!), we chop and steam a head of broccoli until bright green, then add a pat of butter and a sprinkle of sea salt. Broccoli is cheap, tasty, available everywhere, and fast-cooking. Plus, it looks like trees, which is irresistible to little imaginations.

Steel cut oats: The steel-cut variety is fresher and less processed than old-fashioned oats, which have to be steamed and rolled flat before packaging. A cooked pot of oats holds up well in the fridge for a few days, making quick work of morning prep. We stir in mashed banana, cinnamon, and/or frozen berries before serving.

Beans and Lentils: Did you know that the longest-lived populations on earth regularly eat beans? We pressure-cook a pound of dried beans every five days or so, to be added quickly to soups, stews, curries, and cold salads. Our pediatrician loves that we serve Darwin beans, because they’re a great source of protein and iron.

Whole Cheese: A few thin slices of rich cheese perfectly complement just about any kid’s snack plate. When we’re in a melty mood, it goes into pastas, quiches, or whole grain toast under the broiler. Even though cheese is an everyday food for us, we eat only a serving or two of dairy a day. (The earth’s climate, natural resources, and cows thank us for our moderation!)

Avocado: Blah, blah, blah, good fats. OK, but really! Little brains need healthy fats to best develop, and avocados have them in an easy, creamy, tasty package. Every since I (finally!) figured out that avocados ripen best in a paper bag with a banana, we eat them nearly every day, sliced or mashed on toast.

Fresh Fruit: I think Kid would trample down a door to get to a bowl of raspberries. Berries, pears, grapes, kiwis, oranges, bananas, peaches, pineapples: these things are the original treat for children. I adore the moments just after I give Darwin a little dish of berries, when he is all smiles at his good fortune, quiet and focused and appreciative.

Fast and familiar

What are your favorite real food staples?

Happy eating!