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August 28, 2006
Picky eater
Ethan's funny. I guess many kids are like this - put something new in front of him, especially if it's green, and he'll say, "I don't like that!" "Have you ever tried it?" "No... I don't like it!"
Last night I made some potatoes in the oven - kind of a gratin sort of thingy - that I was sure he'd like, but he didn't want to try. Finally he tried them, and then he said, "Oh, I DID try this before one time... I DO like it!" And then he gobbled them up. We'd be hard pressed to get him to try anything vegetal, though.
Still, I can't complain, as I realized on Saturday night. We went out to Nicholas - our favorite Lebanese place - and he happily munched a couple of felafel in yogurt sauce. (For which they only charged us $1.50, by the way.) I took a moment to be grateful that even though he's picky about many things, at least we can take him out to sushi, to Thai food, to Lebanese food, or whatever, and he'll find things he loves to eat.
There's this funny thing in the world called the kids' menu. At many, many places this menu is exactly the same: you can count on chicken strips and fries, probably mac n' cheese, quesadillas, pizza, a few other standbys. In New Zealand it was INCREDIBLE - everywhere you went, seafood, Indian, Thai, whatever - the kids could and did get chicken strips with fries. This is how you end up with kids who only want to eat at McDonald's. After we got back from New Zealand, we started noticing that kids' menus are similar here, though not quite as bad. Some restaurants offer small portions of their regular fare, though that's rare. We realized that we're often better off just ordering him something small off the regular menu, or sharing ours with him - he loves the beef stroganoff at Caldera, for example. Of course, he always wants to look at the menu and choose for himself.
At least he likes carrots, cucumbers, peas, soybeans, and corn.
Posted by ktingey at August 28, 2006 08:59 AM