On picky eating
Pasta, any shape. Tomato sauce in small quantities. Parmesan cheese, grated or shredded. Whole wheat bread, plain or -- occasionally -- with cheddar cheese melted on top. Strawberry yogurt. Pineapple pizza with the pineapple removed. Apples and bananas. Various dry cereals. Goldfish crackers. French fries (sometimes). Potato chips and tortilla chips. Quesadillas, sometimes with ketchup. The bottoms of vanilla cupcakes. Vanilla, raspberry, or banana rum ice cream, preferably melted. Whole milk and heavy cream. Rice cakes and Ritz crackers. Pretzels. Oatmeal cookies. Vanilla creme cookies. And, once in a very great while, raisins.
This is the list of all the foods that Baby Blue will eat, inclusive. LG's list is similar. He eats a greater diversity of bread products (challah, bagels, the NYT's no-knead bread), and will allow them to occasionally make the acquaintance of cream cheese or strawberry jam. He'll eat Asian noodles of any style as long as the vegetables have been picked off, but he won't touch my tomato sauce for love nor money. He's not as enthusiastic about apples, but will eat grapes and canned peaches occasionally. He leaves the pineapple on his pizza, and will eat dried pineapple as well. He will eat challah French toast in small amounts, but not pancakes or waffles. He hates French fries, but eats pickles. He eats his quesadillas with salsa. In that, he is more adventurous than Mr. Blue, who eats his quesadillas plain. But Mr. Blue will allow a spoonful of tomato sauce on his pasta, at least.
I have complained before about my family's picky eating, and I'll complain again in the future. But the real truth? My complaint is not so much about the fact of their picky eating, but that their picky eating does not align more closely with my own. Plain pasta with a dot of sauce every night would not be my choice of diet, but I could last a long time on, say, black bean quesadillas with various mix-ins and salsas. I have eaten pizza for dinner every night for a week and been only a little sick of it by the end. I have an extraordinary tolerance for the same foods over and over again, though those foods are not the same as those that the rest of my family would prefer.
I was a famously picky eater as a child, living on bread and water and ice cream. It wasn't until college that I learned to stop fearing new foods, and to add new dishes to my diet. I was 20 before I ate salad or cooked vegetables, spaghetti, even yogurt. My diet these days is a wonder of diversity compared to what it was like when I was six or sixteen, but I am still the person who gets the same dish at a restaurant every time we go. Is that the definition of picky eating? I don't know. Because what seems to drive the concerns about picky eating is the fear of new foods. I am no longer afraid of new foods (and, at this stage of my life, far fewer foods qualify as "new" anyway -- I've been around the culinary block a few times). It's more that I love the foods that I love. Why should I get something other than tofu tamarind at my favorite Thai restaurant? It's not that I hate or fear the curry. It's that life seems very short, and one's very favorite dishes seem never to be served often enough. Perhaps if I went to the same Thai restaurant every week, I'd get bored and order other dishes. Maybe if we got Indian take-out more than once every few months, I'd stop ordering aloo mutter every time. It's not that I hate okra; it's that I swoon with happiness at the thought of the potatoes and peas in spicy sauce. I know full well that my children are still afraid of new foods, but I think it is also true that they swoon with happiness at the thought of yet another meal of pasta and cheese.
Though I have complained endlessly about my children's eating habits, I have never made any concerted effort to change them. That's partially because I am very lazy, and it pains me to expend frantic efforts towards goals that are almost guaranteed to fail. The rest of it is that I see myself, and my husband, and I suspect that there is very little external motivation that I could apply that would transform my children's palates from picky ones to adventurous ones. I did eventually learn to smile at vegetables, even to crave them, but I never have and never will be the sort of person who feels that life shines most brightly when a new food is on my plate. Quite the contrary. I feel a sense of comfort and order when my diet is shaped by season or availability. It doesn't excite me to find a new, exotic food in the store, but it does excite me when my favorite summer squash appears at farmers' market in mid-summer. I'll happily saute it for myself twice a week and eat it monotonously until it disappears again in the fall. I'd eat red peppers for dinner every night, or peas. I'd gladly eat an apple every day from August through March, as an accompaniment to the peanut butter and jelly sandwich that I'd also gladly eat every day, and have, for decades at a stretch.
Has anyone ever read Adele Robertson's The Orchard? It's one of my favorite books, and I suspect that I'm drawn to it because I find it downright romantic to contemplate an entire winter eating nothing but apples. Of course, Robertson never ate apples again after that winter was over, which leads me to suspect also that the experience is much less romantic than I'd like to believe. But her experience is much closer to a human norm than we might sometimes remember, here in this nation of acre-long grocery stores and produce flown in from thousands of miles away. There were, not so long ago here, and still today in many places, seasons of dietary plenty and diversity, and seasons of plainness and scarcity. The ability to eat new foods adventurously must have been an advantage, but I can't help but think that the ability to be content with five or six foods for weeks at a stretch must have also been advantage. How many different foods did little Laura Ingalls have available to her in any one month on the Kansas prairie?
I worry about my children's diet because I worry about their total calorie intake, obviously. (I guess I should be serving more meals in front of the TV set, no?) I worry about my children's diet because I worry that they will hurt the feelings of future hosts (hell, I worry about my husband's diet for the same reason -- it's not uncommon for him to quietly fill his plate with plain bread and salad rather than try a new dish). I worry that my children will not take their picky eating out into the world with as much aplomb as Rebecca's little mac-and-cheese ambassador. But perhaps I'm not giving them enough credit.
Perhaps I'm not giving them enough credit on any of it. Perhaps it is possible to make or shape adventurous eaters? Maybe I should be working dilligently to stretch their palates as I work on increasing their total intake. But, honestly, I would happily settle for the slightest broadening of their culinary horizons. I won't mind if they are forever swooning over their few favorite dishes, as long as they learn not to fear the foods that they don't favor. Am I setting the bar too low? Have any of you transformed yourselves or your spouses or your kids from truly picky eaters into an adventurous ones?
This is the list of all the foods that Baby Blue will eat, inclusive. LG's list is similar. He eats a greater diversity of bread products (challah, bagels, the NYT's no-knead bread), and will allow them to occasionally make the acquaintance of cream cheese or strawberry jam. He'll eat Asian noodles of any style as long as the vegetables have been picked off, but he won't touch my tomato sauce for love nor money. He's not as enthusiastic about apples, but will eat grapes and canned peaches occasionally. He leaves the pineapple on his pizza, and will eat dried pineapple as well. He will eat challah French toast in small amounts, but not pancakes or waffles. He hates French fries, but eats pickles. He eats his quesadillas with salsa. In that, he is more adventurous than Mr. Blue, who eats his quesadillas plain. But Mr. Blue will allow a spoonful of tomato sauce on his pasta, at least.
I have complained before about my family's picky eating, and I'll complain again in the future. But the real truth? My complaint is not so much about the fact of their picky eating, but that their picky eating does not align more closely with my own. Plain pasta with a dot of sauce every night would not be my choice of diet, but I could last a long time on, say, black bean quesadillas with various mix-ins and salsas. I have eaten pizza for dinner every night for a week and been only a little sick of it by the end. I have an extraordinary tolerance for the same foods over and over again, though those foods are not the same as those that the rest of my family would prefer.
I was a famously picky eater as a child, living on bread and water and ice cream. It wasn't until college that I learned to stop fearing new foods, and to add new dishes to my diet. I was 20 before I ate salad or cooked vegetables, spaghetti, even yogurt. My diet these days is a wonder of diversity compared to what it was like when I was six or sixteen, but I am still the person who gets the same dish at a restaurant every time we go. Is that the definition of picky eating? I don't know. Because what seems to drive the concerns about picky eating is the fear of new foods. I am no longer afraid of new foods (and, at this stage of my life, far fewer foods qualify as "new" anyway -- I've been around the culinary block a few times). It's more that I love the foods that I love. Why should I get something other than tofu tamarind at my favorite Thai restaurant? It's not that I hate or fear the curry. It's that life seems very short, and one's very favorite dishes seem never to be served often enough. Perhaps if I went to the same Thai restaurant every week, I'd get bored and order other dishes. Maybe if we got Indian take-out more than once every few months, I'd stop ordering aloo mutter every time. It's not that I hate okra; it's that I swoon with happiness at the thought of the potatoes and peas in spicy sauce. I know full well that my children are still afraid of new foods, but I think it is also true that they swoon with happiness at the thought of yet another meal of pasta and cheese.
Though I have complained endlessly about my children's eating habits, I have never made any concerted effort to change them. That's partially because I am very lazy, and it pains me to expend frantic efforts towards goals that are almost guaranteed to fail. The rest of it is that I see myself, and my husband, and I suspect that there is very little external motivation that I could apply that would transform my children's palates from picky ones to adventurous ones. I did eventually learn to smile at vegetables, even to crave them, but I never have and never will be the sort of person who feels that life shines most brightly when a new food is on my plate. Quite the contrary. I feel a sense of comfort and order when my diet is shaped by season or availability. It doesn't excite me to find a new, exotic food in the store, but it does excite me when my favorite summer squash appears at farmers' market in mid-summer. I'll happily saute it for myself twice a week and eat it monotonously until it disappears again in the fall. I'd eat red peppers for dinner every night, or peas. I'd gladly eat an apple every day from August through March, as an accompaniment to the peanut butter and jelly sandwich that I'd also gladly eat every day, and have, for decades at a stretch.
Has anyone ever read Adele Robertson's The Orchard? It's one of my favorite books, and I suspect that I'm drawn to it because I find it downright romantic to contemplate an entire winter eating nothing but apples. Of course, Robertson never ate apples again after that winter was over, which leads me to suspect also that the experience is much less romantic than I'd like to believe. But her experience is much closer to a human norm than we might sometimes remember, here in this nation of acre-long grocery stores and produce flown in from thousands of miles away. There were, not so long ago here, and still today in many places, seasons of dietary plenty and diversity, and seasons of plainness and scarcity. The ability to eat new foods adventurously must have been an advantage, but I can't help but think that the ability to be content with five or six foods for weeks at a stretch must have also been advantage. How many different foods did little Laura Ingalls have available to her in any one month on the Kansas prairie?
I worry about my children's diet because I worry about their total calorie intake, obviously. (I guess I should be serving more meals in front of the TV set, no?) I worry about my children's diet because I worry that they will hurt the feelings of future hosts (hell, I worry about my husband's diet for the same reason -- it's not uncommon for him to quietly fill his plate with plain bread and salad rather than try a new dish). I worry that my children will not take their picky eating out into the world with as much aplomb as Rebecca's little mac-and-cheese ambassador. But perhaps I'm not giving them enough credit.
Perhaps I'm not giving them enough credit on any of it. Perhaps it is possible to make or shape adventurous eaters? Maybe I should be working dilligently to stretch their palates as I work on increasing their total intake. But, honestly, I would happily settle for the slightest broadening of their culinary horizons. I won't mind if they are forever swooning over their few favorite dishes, as long as they learn not to fear the foods that they don't favor. Am I setting the bar too low? Have any of you transformed yourselves or your spouses or your kids from truly picky eaters into an adventurous ones?
Labels: Serve it forth, Weighty matters
posted by Phantom Scribbler at 12:53 PM 
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