A Meal for My Muses

Today in the world of BlabbeeCare I had my two staple kids: Doc and Roxy. Roxy is my sister’s two-year-old daughter who is so sly and feisty she needed a feisty nickname to match. Doc is Roxy’s three-year-old cousin on her daddy’s side. For a couple of weeks, he came in multiple different costumes, including Iron Man, Spiderman, Batman, a surgeon, and a fireman. The day he came as a surgeon, he wore a surgical mask. He came up to me and complained about his mask, asking me to do something with it. Assuming it was annoying, I started taking it off. “No!” he said. “I want you to fix it!” Apparently it had been falling down. So I pulled it over his face again and tightened it. “Thanks!” he said through the mask, and ran away to play with some toys. He wore that mask the ENTIRE day except for eating, and I had to tighten it for him frequently. Thus, the name Doc.

When it comes to eating, Roxy will put almost anything into her mouth, sometimes too easily as everything inside and outside is fair game. Dog food is a particular favorite. Doc, on the other hand, is a bit more hesitant, and a bit more typical I would say. But as the time has gone by I have discovered some secrets on how to prepare food to make it Doc-friendly. Today’s lunch exemplified a typical BlabbeeCare meal.

First, I started by cutting up a tender piece of steak into very small pieces, almost pea-size. Then I put a wad of coconut oil in a pan and turned it on medium heat. I minced some garlic, scraped it into the pan for about thirty seconds, and then threw in the steak. I stir fried the steak just until it turned brown and then added about a half-cup of coconut milk. Then, I made a mistake. I wanted to put in a touch of lime juice, but when I poured it, it was more like a punch of lime. Sure enough, I tasted it and my sour alarms went off. So, I put in more coconut milk and added some green curry paste and the lime factor decreased substantially, but was it enough for the kids? To finish the meal I finely chopped some spinach, let it cook down, and then cool off.

Finally I was able to dish up some of my steak curry concoction for the kids. Roxy dove right in taking two big bites and then pushed it away saying, “I don’t want it.” I wanted to be disappointed, but instead I said “my bad” under my breath.

Doc, following Roxy's lead, said, “I don’t want it either!”

“You have to at least try it,” I said, but still assumed that he would do the same. I then started heating up some beans that I had on hand for a side dish. Once the beans were ready, I turned to dish them up. Doc, surprisingly, was eating up the steak curry, and then dove into the beans. Although he doesn’t typically eat anything green, he was also eating the spinach that was mixed into the curry.

Coincidentally, today as I was researching some recipes online I came across tips for feeding kids. One of them was to dish up the food, and then talk about everything BUT the food. When you focus on the food the kids do to. When I told Doc to try the curry and then got busy doing something else (as opposed to hovering over him telling him to eat it) it seemed to be a good trick. Well, at any rate, it did the trick.

Roxy also pushed away the beans. She was feeling especially feisty. However, she usually is such a good eater I don’t tend to get upset when she doesn’t want to eat something. So, I started thinking of snacks to give her when she beat me to it. “I want spinach,” she demanded. I was a bit confused until I noticed the spinach on the table that I had cut up to put in the curry. So I put some in front of her and she started chowing down on the spinach. And this is why I don’t tend to get mad at her.

As the lunch went on Doc continued to eat his beans and curry and Roxy ate raw spinach, almond butter, blueberries, and cashews, and I saw the strategy I had developed for feeding these two emerge.

1. Try it

First, they have to try what I give them. If they don’t want it, they must politely say they don’t want any or “no thanks.” If I hear the word “yucky” at the table the dark side of Blabbee emerges. I had a nephew say “yucky” once the second I took lettuce out of the fridge. Something came over me, it was like Kalie was the calm, introverted Dr. Jekyll and Blabbee had become my crazed alter-ego, Mr. Hyde.

I leaned over the counter, put on the best mom eyes a non-mom can feign, and said, stearnly, “You do not say that word in this kitchen. If I hear the word yucky again you will not get any treats that the other kids get for the entire day.” I didn’t have treats, but the grandma and great-grandma who made frequent appearances at BlabbeeCare did. He new the stakes were high.

With me, the kids can track mud all over the kitchen, throw toys down the stairs, rough house on my guitar case (or with my guitar for that matter), or make a crazy mess on the counter when they “help” me cook, and I won't say so much as a peep. But they have quickly learned that Blabbee has a zero tolerance when it comes to “yucky.” Not surprisingly, I haven’t heard it in quite some time.

2. Give healthy alternatives

If they try it and don’t like it, I give them alternative options that are equally healthy. Many times if I don’t think they’ve eaten enough or they’ve turned up their nose at food (politely of course) I get out bananas and apples and put almond or natural peanut butter on them, or I will have lunch meat, baked chicken, nuts, chopped veggies, and dried fruits on hand and we will have somewhat of a snackfest lunch. For me I am less worried about the amounts they eat of any particular food, but moreso I try to expose them to a wide variety of wholesome food.

3. Exposure

Really, exposure should come first in the list, as it pertains to the meal planning, grocery shopping, etc. I try to give Doc and Roxy a wide variety of foods and I try hard not to assume they won’t like something, like spicy foods. For a while I cooked meats and vegetables almost entirely bland, thinking that any spice wouldn’t do well with the kids. Then I learned Doc, especially, loved spice. I started giving him spicy taco meat, spicy curried chicken, and salsas. He went from poking at his meat to not eating it fast enough. Quite the discovery.

Also, I have to try hard not to worry too much about waste. For example, for the first week Doc didn’t eat carrots. If I put them on his plate he would chew on them and spit them out, but he still seemed to like to chew on them. I thought this was a problem, until the next week his mom told me Doc had been requesting carrots all weekend. I grinned ear to ear. To me, even getting kids to talk about food, identify it, and take the tiniest taste is a huge accomplishment. A request for something healthy? Now that’s just out of the ballpark.

4. Eat and cook with them!

This last one is a huge huge huge huge huge piece to BlabbeeCare, and was a gigantic reason I wanted to take care of kids in the first place. They watch me cook, and many times want to be involved and other times are less interested. When they are interested, I make sure to involve them.

The set up is the kids sit at one side of the counter, and I cook on the other side. If they are hungry before lunch is ready, I give them little cutting boards, plastic knives, and some veggies so they can feel involved and munch on veggies at the same time. Many times the food isn’t ready at the same time, so I give it to them in courses. The first course is always the one I think they will like the least, or the one I want them to eat the most of (meat, veggies, etc.). The second is often the one they will like but has less nutritional value (noodles, bread, etc.). The last is the sweetest, most often fruit. In the end they will have a variety on their plate and they can choose from that variety, but very rarely do I give them all their food at once, a habit that just formed on its own.

Also, I eat what I cook in front of them. This is the kicker. When they are hungry and see me eating something – be it spinach, kale, salmon, beans, or whatever – they want to have it (I once had a nephew beg for kale before going to bed because I was up late processing it to freeze). This is the benefit of cooking while they are at the counter and eating in rounds. They see me cooking and tasting and smelling and they want to mimic me.

One of our favorite activities is smelling spices. Every time I get a spice out of the cupboard when Roxy is around she yells, “Smell it!” Often it surprises me because I'm in such a cooking zone, but once I realize what her request is I break from my hustle and we all stop to smell the spices. Today we smelled cumin, paprika, and cinnamon.

Finding Inspiration

I have definitely had times in my life when I have felt uninspired. Jaded by high-pressured food industry jobs, jaded by the expectation to put career above all else no matter the sacrifices, and jaded by a world heavy with question marks, I’ve often felt more confused than confident. Now is not one of those moments.

With every new idea about how to incorporate wholesome, nourishing food into these smiling faces that either like to stuff their face with dog food at any chance they get or wear an Iron Man costume for a week straight, I find myself perpetually inspired. Life without my muses? Don’t see that happening for a long time.