The concept of ‘kid’s food’ had always befuddled me. My parents never fell for that marketing tactic nor did they indulge our wining, so I only became acquainted with it at other people’s houses. My friends had cabinets full of cookies, crackers, cans of Chef Boyardee and bright cereal boxes filled with puffed rice or corn covered in sugar. They always seemed to eat frozen pizza or hot dogs when I stayed for dinner. I admit that I envied their snack and cereal selections, but even at a young age, I knew I could make a better meal than what they pulled out of their freezer.
Cooking came as naturally to me as eating; I started composing meals back in the blur of my first memories. I know I started making my own breakfast and lunch in second grade, if the simplicity of pouring milk on cereal and slathering peanut butter on bread counts as cooking. I progressed to boxed mac and cheese, quesadillas, nachos, and scrambled eggs through elementary school. Come high school I started to consider the lumpiness of my form and switched my pasta toppings to fresh tomato sauce, traded the quesadillas and nachos for burritos stuffed with my signature bean & salsa mixture and added bananas to my cereal to bulk up the nutritional content. I enrolled in every cooking elective available at my school, and in college, opted for a nutrition class to earn my science credits.
Of course a kid cook would not fare so well without the proper equipment, ingredients, and support, and our kitchen came well-stocked. My mother’s family all contributed recipes into a large three-ring binder full of family specialties and most members on my father’s side of the family had ties to the food industry in one capacity or another, whether they imported European wines, managed the produce procurement for a food distributor, or handled marketing for a large prepared food corporation, everyone in my family spent a healthy portion of their day contemplating food in some way.
Perhaps my gourmet tastes received inspiration from the many cookbooks that lined our shelves, from the white-tablecloth restaurants I frequented in my booster seat, from the huge holiday buffets complete with steaming silver platters reflecting the wine glasses in the candlelight, or even from the simple Monday through Friday meat, starch, and salad meals my mom would cobble together in the hour after she arrived home from work…with our assistance from set-up to break-down of course. My mom also subscribed to cooking magazines, hooked me on cooking TV before cable designated a whole network for the purpose, and spent summer weekends weeding her vegetable garden.
I knew quite young that not everybody enjoyed such culinary exposure. When my mother served one of our favorite dishes, cheese tortellini with pesto sauce, to one of my elementary school friends, I found myself battered with ridicule the next day when the rest of my classmates learned that I liked eating ‘green pasta.’ My friend had refused to let it touch her lips and everyone applauded her for it. We never did become very close. One day a girl brought a bag of ‘nachos’ to school, (‘nacho cheese’ flavored Doritos). Now nobody likes a know-it-all, but when I pointed out that real nachos taste nothing like these bright orange-powder coated salt bombs, I found myself surrounded by know-it-alls who swore that the Doritos company had invented nachos and no such melted cheese over tortilla chip appetizer existed on either side of the Mexican border.
Gradually they caught on though, and by high school I had enough associates appreciative of my cooking to host pasta parties at my house. In college, my roommates and I made collaborative meals a regular occasion. From that point forward, everyone who came to my home never left hungry. I even cooked my own rehearsal dinner the day before my wedding.
However, I found social cooking stressful and cooking for one more fun, when, free to experiment, I relaxed an entire evening away constructing untried scratch-made concoctions. A failure only called for one condiment or another. Cooking for oneself isolates the pleasure to your own opinion, and avoids the contention of others’ preconceived notions about food, which extends far beyond taste to include timing and dining traditions. For example, my first real boyfriend doused everything in hot sauce, from delicate asparagus risotto to beef tenderloin to (already) spicy Thai curry, his first course of action after taking his place behind his plate involved uncapping the Cholula and shaking the bottle until the entire meal shone a bright red. My ex-husband had two food quirks, first in that he detested sweetness in savory dishes which extended to sauces and marinades, winter squash, sweet potatoes, certain uses for corn, and all fruit. Secondly, he ate very little, the only person I ever met who could make a meal out of one slice of pizza, he made me feel like a heifer still hungry and spying my third slice (when I knew I could fit in four.)
Derek, per his character, acted like the ideal dining partner. He preferred to pay the tab when we went out, and he enjoyed watching me cook at home, without any interference of opinion. He asked me some odd questions though, and I found myself introducing him to ingredients my grandma would consider commonplace but hey, he always tried anything I set before him.
When we discussed co-habitating with Andee, he warned me that I would need to cook more ‘normal’ meals for her. I determined ‘normal’ to mean things like sandwiches, soups, pasta, stir-fry, and simply presented meats with sides like potatoes, rice or sauteed vegetables. I planned to accommodate by just toning down some of my more flamboyant meals. Instead of stuffing the pork chop with apples, serving the apples as a side, making a rice pilaf instead of a risotto, sauteing up some corn instead of polenta, I thought I could easily make do.
Our first family dinner exposed the extent of my underestimation. Always ready to recognize a special occasion with a meal deserving of the event, I roasted chicken breasts on a bed of carrots and sweet peppers, and tossed some cooked rice with butter, salt, and a touch of parsley. I recall seeing Andee fondling her knife as I took my seat beside her, but as Derek and I dug in she slouched in her seat. I encouraged her to eat. She took the knife and stabbed it into the middle of the breast. Derek, ever diplomatic, casually pulled her plate towards him and started cutting bite-sized pieces out of the chicken. It hadn’t occurred to me that she would be incapable of using silverware at 10, but sure enough, once he slid the plate back to her she took a chunk of chicken between two fingers. I asked her to use a fork. She asked me what the stuff under the chicken was, (while brushing off the wisp of an onion with none too clean hands). I introduced her to the vegetables and told her she needed to eat a few. She scowled and slouched further. She nibbled on the chicken piece in her hand for the next half hour.
“Try to eat it baby,” was all Derek would offer. I asked her to try the rice if she didn’t care for the chicken.
“There’s green specks in it,” she said scrunching up her nose. I was dumbfounded. Buttered pasta or rice with parsley was a staple of our early childhood repertoire. By the time we were eight though we had moved on to real food, which we cut with silverware.
Derek’s complete lack of input angered me more than Andee’s refusal to eat. My parents had set minimums on food consumption. He just ate his plate, gave her a few words of encouragement (that went unheeded) and to add insult to injury, offered to microwave her some eggs when he finished.
“I told you that you need to cook ‘normal’ food,” he said later. “Why can’t you just make chicken and rice? Why do you have to make everything so fancy?”
“I just added some thyme to the chicken (sprigs of which I removed prior to service) and parsley in the rice. Do you want chicken and rice with no flavor? Nothing on it?” I said, and when he seemed encouraged by this statement I tried another tactic. “How does she usually like her chicken?”
“Uh, like nuggets,” he answered.
I discovered that Andee never learned how to use a knife because she never needed one. The concept seemed strange to me but not unheard of. I once met a woman who ran the food service program for an elementary school. She said that most of her job involved familiarizing kids with ingredients, because, according to her, “most kids eat out of a box or a drive thru” and the school lunch represented the only nutritious food they would have all day. I took this as a self-aggrandizing statement until faced with this reality from Derek. Of course I couldn’t imagine him whipping up full meals in the dingy little kitchen they came from, but I figured that he would have enough concern for her health to at least make sure that she ate something decent.
Derek then confessed that before he met me, he considered himself a ‘picky eater.’ Ann shared this trait, but while Derek had slowly exposed himself to more options, especially to earn the regard of a cook like me, Ann remained as confined in her tastes as Andee. Derek’s version of ‘normal’ food originated with simply cooked meats, canned vegetables and the ever-present potato at his family table, but once he started making his own food choices, he adhered to the typical man menu: hot dogs, hamburgers, pizza & sandwiches. Not knowing Ann, I can only recite heresy on her habits. According to Derek, her cooking skills involved following the instructions on a box. I know her sister’s family baked a lot of cookies and cakes, but I never heard of much sustenance coming out of that house, and I knew quite well that Ann detested fish. Derek told me this as an excuse for Andee’s behavior whenever I cooked it. Apparently her mother told everyone eating fish in her vicinity how disgusting she thought it was. I had trouble not repeating this sentiment every time I asked Andee what she ate at her mother’s house and she told me the same daily options: Ramen noodles or McDonalds.
To compound the problem, Derek’s determination to shelter Andee from any of the unpleasantness he had experienced as a child discouraged him from setting the standard parental food quotas. “My mom would make me stay at the table until all my peas were eaten and I remember sitting there until midnight. It was horrible. I would never do that to my kid,” he said.
“I agree that canned peas are horrible but I make good food,” I retorted. “She has no excuse.”
I first attempted to identify the foods that Andee actually preferred in order to build meals around them, but Derek grew defensive when I quizzed him for Andee’s favorites. He said he knew she had picky tastes, but all kids do, and instead of force-feeding her, he concentrated on making sure her tummy got filled. Then he confessed that she liked popcorn, yogurt, granola bars, bacon and eggs, but when I pressed him on dinner options he ran aground. She liked Cup of Noodles, one brand of canned chili and Taco Bell tacos with meat and cheese only. He said she liked pasta, but when I made fresh pasta with fresh tomato sauce she wouldn’t eat it. She was used to having Ragu brand sauce at her aunt’s house but said she never liked it. I told her that I never liked store-bought pasta sauce either but I enjoy my own. She wasn’t convinced.
Since my chili didn’t taste exactly like the brand she preferred she wouldn’t eat that either. My eggs were too fluffy, her dad usually popped them into the microwave until they exploded, my taco meat was too moist, she only knew dry Taco Bell. During these early attempts to please she would pick through whatever I placed before her, demanding that I explain all the ingredients involved, as if the 15-letter preservatives and mystery meat that she willingly consumed from fast food joints came from a more trusted source. I would fly into a rage at this, and suggested that we try going out to dinner on our nights together.
We started with their regular haunts, but when we went to their favorite burger joint, I watched her eat her usual dinner there, french fries. When we went to their favorite Chinese restaurant, I watched her eat her usual dinner there, steamed white rice made inky black with half a cup of soy sauce. Moreover, she would insist on bringing toys in with her, and seemed incapable of sitting still in her seat. Once a waitress asked Andee what grade she was in and then tried to hide her surprise at the answer. Only I felt the twitch of judgement in her fleeting grimace.
Resolved that we needed to work on her issues in private, I switched tack. Having identified that Andee preferred everything ultra-salty or ultra-sweet, I started placing a sugar bowl on the breakfast table and salt on the dinner table and started serving to my preference (because at least I knew two people who would enjoy eating it.) I encouraged Andee to season to her taste. She would try to salt every individual bite so I cut her off at a certain point. (I once challenged Derek to try the rice she had half finished. He said it tasted like he stuck his tongue in a salt shaker.)
I also stocked the house with healthy snacks to ensure that she at least received some nutrition if she failed to eat her dinner. On Derek’s suggestion I chose granola bars and yogurt, but she complained about my selections. Derek explained that she had only liked certain brands of each and pointed them out in the supermarket. The ‘granola’ bars were actually candy bars marketed as a ‘healthy option’ to parents who pay no attention to the nutrition information. The yogurt tubes she liked listed sugar three times, first as the main ingredient and then twice more disguised as ‘fructose’ or ‘sucrose.’ The dairy component was ‘dry milk solids’, and gelatin congealed this mixture, not live active cultures, yogurt’s most beneficial element.
Derek suggested that I talk to his sister-in-law Ellie for more recommendations of foods Andee might like. He said she always ate all of her dinner at Ellie’s house.
Ellie hosted the first holiday I attended with Derek’s family. It was Christmas and she had a spiral-cut ham, mashed potatoes, Kraft macaroni and cheese, and one of those veggie plates with ranch dressing which she served right out of the divided plastic container it came in from the supermarket. I only witnessed Andee eating the mashed potatoes. Ellie attended numerous events at our house since, standing at my side absorbing my cooking tips.
“I never ate vegetables until I went on this diet recently,” she admitted when I asked what vegetables she thought Andee would like. Turned out that her food background resembled Derek’s, lots of canned goods growing up, hardly anything fresh. She said she never attempted feeding vegetables to Andee, but she agreed that she had a way too limited palate. “She’s made progress though,” she said. “Not long ago she would only eat Taco Bell, popcorn, and one brand of canned chili. I had to make her try macaroni and cheese.”
I told her that Derek recommended that I seek her cooking advice and she laughed. “I force her to eat and take no excuses. She is not leaving the table until she eats most of what I give her.”
Given this testimony from Ellie, and the weight of science on my side, Derek eventually agreed that his daughter needed more nutrition in her diet and started to gently coax her to try my dinners, and I came to understand that he had only grown so complacent due to the struggle involved in enforcement.
Dinner, once my relaxation outlet, my favorite time of the day, became an arduous experience. Andee sneered at whatever I put before her, and would only try anything new while pinching her nose. The moment it touched her lips (not even her tongue) she would spit it out gagging dramatically. We tried to teach her manners, like how to cut her food the correct way, starting at one end, but she would ignore us and try to cut wedges out from the very center of the portion and then give up and grab the whole hunk in her hand to gnaw on it with one side of her mouth. In those cases I found myself torn with the choice to either enforce manners or praise her willingness to eat. Dinner became an exercise of constant vigilance and correction with the main conversation a self-perpetuating loop. “Eat!” “Use your utensils!” “Close your mouth” “Eat more!” “Use your utensils.” She would pick out the preferred pieces with her fingers whenever we redirected our attention and then we would have to sit there for a half hour after Derek and I finished, coaxing her to eat the pieces she had tried to avoid. She would chew on the same piece forever to stall. Derek put the kibosh on conversation during this time since she would babble on and on about anything to avoid eating. She also gulped water between each bite as another stalling tactic. Frustrated and irritated I often fled the scene before I created one of my own, abandoning my parent’s rule that everyone remain seated until the last person finished.
True, Derek had waited far too long to enforce eating standards on Andee, but I noticed that even parents as vigilant as Ellie viewed food marketed for kids as their only options, subjecting themselves to years trying to wean them off it. While their bodies build the frame that will hold their future, even highly educated parents feel justified to excuse all rules of nutrition and fuel this runaway machine with empty calories. When I worked at a restaurant I would cater to health conscious parents who would order salads for themselves and then complain that the cheeseburger they ordered for their 8 year old came with lettuce and tomato. “But he’s a kid,” they would argue.
Though it’s not their most preferred food group, I never heard any evidence on the adverse effects of vegetables on children, but still parents I knew felt justified to omit them altogether. Children’s menus at most restaurants we went to consisted of hot dogs, hamburgers, grilled cheese, french fries, and macaroni & cheese. The prevailing wisdom seemed to dictate that children can only digest foods in the most processed form: ultra refined white flour, amalgamated meat, cheese-food, the only vegetable fried beyond nutritional benefit, and always a dessert! Derek, who rarely ate sweets, suggested we should keep cookies around for Andee. I asked why we should buy her cookies when she hardly ate her dinner, and he gave me the mindless answer I heard other parents recite, “because she’s a kid.” I heard parents at the restaurant, ready to pack up and go, suddenly stop because they forgot to get dessert for the kids, as if they would just die without more sugar at the end of a meal packed with fat and starch.
“All kids were raised that way except for you,” Derek said.
I begged to differ. I had worked for a short stint at a health food market, and watched vegan parents toting around their vegan kids munching banana chips and sunflower seeds happy as the ice-cream licking cherubs at the Dairy Queen.
Derek just wanted to feed Andee something easily acceptable, but he prescribed that for her by following the parameters set by popular opinion, and he feared testing the boundaries because he preferred not to challenge her because challenging her brought on an argument and he preferred not to argue with her. In his ‘forever 4’ perspective, Andee was a kid, and kids ate certain food for kids. She was not and would never be a person whose future tastes and habits hinged on what they gained exposure to. I pointed out that while not all people share the same preference in food, not all kids respond to the same meals. Andee, for instance, didn’t like bread. So that took the options of hamburgers, hot dogs and grilled cheese off of her kid’s menu.
“Kid food has only a few limitations based on mouth construction, capacity, and sensitive taste buds,” I argued. “Little kids eat with their hands because they lack dexterity, but once they can hold a pencil to write a legible sentence, they should be holding a fork during dinner. Once they have mastered the fork they can practice cutting things like pancakes with butter knives before moving on to tougher substances and sharper utensils.” I said this knowing that Andee could not write a legible sentence, but I knew Derek would not admit that for sake of argument.
“I don’t expect her to like spicy, bitter and sour flavors because those are acquired tastes, but you can’t go stuffing kids with rich, salty and sweet foods guaranteed to make them happy because it sets a dangerous precedent. As the taste buds mature, what once satisfied as sweet or salty starts to seem bland, and if spicy, bitter and sour don’t join the party to keep the tongue entertained, a diet of sweet, salty and rich food can potentially cause health problems. They may not like them until later in life but you need to at least introduce them now. You can even present healthy foods in the rich, salt or sweet way to get them used to it. Calamari was one of our favorite foods as kids. We had no idea what it was but ordered it at every restaurant that offered it. By the time we gained enough brains to question it my mom said, ‘We really don’t know what goes into hot dogs but you have been eating them without questions for years. Now continue to enjoy your fried squid.'”
We had this argument at a restaurant during one of Ann’s weekends. Derek had pointed out a child Andee’s age and said that, despite her picky preferences, at least Andee had more advanced table manners. The girl chewed with her mouth open and rubbed her greasy hands on her pants instead of on the folded napkin beside her. I begged to differ with his statement and the conversation had evolved into an argument.
During our next family dinner I set Derek facing Andee and reminded him of our conversation. To his surprise, Andee chewed with her mouth open, picked at her pasta with her hands and rubbed them on her clothes when we corrected her, but before I had enforced the family dinner ritual he would never have noticed this.
With the exception of the burger joint and the Chinese place they frequented, they had only rarely sat across from each other while eating. Instead, Derek would give Andee something when she asked for it, and he would eat when he felt like it, only sometimes would the two coincide. Even at holiday dinners, Ellie would set out a stack of plates and silverware and everyone would help themselves at different times, sitting or standing in different places, at the counter, at the table, at the couch. Andee would only eat when Ellie forced something upon her. Derek had far less diligence. Without Ellie, Andee would have made a meal of 5 cookies and he would have been none the wiser.