Everyone of my nutritional clients who has kids, suffers the same dilemma; if given the choice, their children will almost always choose fun and tasty over healthy and nutritious (maybe it's not just our kids :-/). I've had some parents go as far as making 2 separate meals, and in the extreme cases of multiple picky children, 3 or 4 different meals for dinner.
I might be a little too impatient, lacking in compassion and time restricted, because over the years, I've adapted a pretty stringent one-meal-at-a-time policy that I don't think I'll ever deviate from, barring any rare allergy outburst. As a younger father when I was still a little wet behind my ears in my nutritional journey, I admittedly did make a different meal for myself and my children a few times. That didn't last long, however, as I quickly noticed the gut-wrenching misalignment in my priorities as I selfishly took the utmost care for my health, while blatantly neglecting both the opportunity and responsibility to help my children create healthy habits around their nutrition.
From this place my desire to go to culinary school to learn some solid principles around food preparation was birthed. I've worked tirelessly with several completely un-edible attempts along the way to make food fun and kid friendly, and now feel fairly competent in the kitchen. Through trial and error I've become the Ratatouille of a handful of meals that keep my kids interests and get them to explore their baby palates a little.
Appreciating the Differences
I used to be of the mindset that if they are hungry enough, our children will eat whatever we present them with. But, after a few years of battling my two youngest children at the dinner table, while also being conditioned to be a little more sensitive and compassionate I started evolving my cooking to suit the foods I see them naturally drawn to, cooked in the ways that seem most appealing to them.
I also heard of a study along the way that posed the idea that children could possibly have more quantity and more sensitive taste buds than adults. So now when my kids disrespect my amazing cooking because it has too much onion or tomato, I hit them with "Oh, you must still be tasting it with your baby tastebuds, one day you'll have some big-boy (or girl) taste buds and you'll be able to enjoy all this flavor I'm giving you!" I like that response because it doesn't deny their individual preference, and it gives hope for a new possibility, isn't that a key to success in life? Isn't It?
Latest Ratatouille Moment
A few weeks ago I was invited to dinner with my children and their mother at one of their favorite spots to eat, Ghengis Grill, which I probably never would have discovered on my own. Like them, I loved the sense of ownership of the meal as we were afforded the ability to pick from multiple choices and come up with our own unique meal that served our individual preferences. Some of us got a little overzealous and put so much variety that it was overwhelming, while others were able to balance it out just right. I didn't get my mixture right which probably fueled my desire to one-up Ghengis. That coupled with the fact that, although it wasn't a disappointing selection of ingredients, it definitely fell short of the quality and sensibility of the products I would choose from my favorite place to shop, the Mountain View Market Co-Op; which serves carries an abundance of organic, humanely raised and local products.
Siddeeq's Stir Fry - Ghengis Style
The object of this meal is to get creative, get variety and to get your kids to try some new things. You can up the buy-in of your children by letting them cut or prepare some of the ingredients and use that time to educate them on the value of the foods they're preparing. This meal was able to make everyone happy.
Ingredients:
Eggs
Chicken Breast (Cut into inch long pieces)
Broccoli
Cauliflower
Squash
Potatoes
Green Beans
Snow Peas
Tomatoes
Onions
Mushrooms
Egg Plant
Bragg's Liquid Amino's ("Healthy"Alternative to Soy Sauce) - To Taste
Cayenne Pepper - To taste
Directions:
Because of it's versatility it is hard to give directions for this meal, also their are no portion sizes because you will have to gauge what each individual will be choosing. At the end I made two separate stir-fry's to be eaten the next day with all the leftovers.
The main considerations I had to make were for my oldest daughter who doesn't like eggs any more and how to combine their ingredients in the most flavorful way.
The eggs were used in all the other stir fry's in a similar fashion to making fried rice; once all the ingredients that need cooking are fried, I throw the beaten eggs over it to tie it all together, being careful to not over cook the eggs or leave them runny.
Their is always a timing issue when frying different ingredients, if they chose potatoes those were the first to go in, if not it was the egg plant mushrooms and onions.
The chicken was cooked ahead of time to make the process even quicker. Anything that I enjoy eating raw I put in last so they can stay crisp and keep the majority of their nutritional makeup.
The best part of this meal was seeing the kids pick ingredients they normally would avoid like the plague (i.e. onions, mushrooms, and egg plant) and, watching them enjoy the meal throughly!
Let me know what ingredients you added that set your meal off in a unique way. Thanks for tuning in and be well!
