Another post about food

I never know what my kids will find tasty. Things I think they'll love, they won't touch. Things I think are going to be a fight to get them to eat, they gobble up without a word of encouragement from us.

The other night we had pork chops, mashed potatoes and fried okra. This is usually a meal I can count on (minus the okra. Their mood changes around okra as to whether they like it or not.) Pork chops they love. As for the mashed taters, it prompted some, what I thought were funny comments. Our oldest (and by far the best eater) Kristin, said, "These mashed potatoes make me want to dance!" Ahhhh...what a lovely thought about food! I love to eat but never have I thought to describe my experience as making me want to spring forth in movement. I was brought down from my cheeriness over Kristin's enthusiasm over the food when our youngest (and worst eater), Elliott, says, head hung low, the best frown on her face I've seen in a while, "These mashed potatoes do not make me happy." I did not make her eat her mashed potatoes. I thought they were good. I'm not sure why they were such the topic of conversation.


Of course, I'll never forget the time our middle child, Grace around the age of 3 or 4 says (completely out of the blue, no where near a meal time) "God doesn't want you to make me eat things I don't like." That kid is always thinking of a way out of things.


The other night we had "little food." Little food started a couple of years ago on a Sunday evening when I didn't particularly have any meal planned for dinner. So I took to the fridge to find what I could find. I ended up with quite an eclectic (that is one of my favorite words. glad I found a reason to use it!) grouping of little bits of different foods. There were things like, gherkin pickles, cherry tomatoes, cheese cubes, peanut butter crackers, apple slices, olives, probably some chopped up hotdogs, and whatever else I might have had on hand that I didn't have to cook or prepare. To make it seem more appealing to the kids, I stuck toothpicks in the food. They loved it and now frequently ask, "when can we have little food again?" So a few days ago, mostly because we had a big lunch and I wasn't hungry when the kids and hus were and therefore didn't feel like cooking, we had little food. I wish I would have taken a picture. It was quite the spread. We had most of the things I mentioned above plus cherries, strawberries, fresh peaches from our trip to the farmers market today and carrot sticks. The kids were happy.