It is all well and good to have a child who loves Thai food, sushi, pho and spicy chimichangas but none of these will help you in a pinch at the family barbeque. Aunt Betty will be serving up corn on the cob, cheeseburgers and hot dogs along with potato salad, macaroni salad and fried pickles (okay, ideally she'll be serving up fried pickles, but more realistically it'll just be a jar of dills). Let's just rule out the salads because they have gloppy mayonnaise and the ingredients are all slopped together (generally unappealing for the kids). Kids who don't like cheeseburgers or hot dogs will need to survive on corn alone. I've attempted this before with my patented all-popcorn diet and it's not really a great option. Let me also add a disclaimer here. If it's one or the other... it should be hot dogs. Hot dogs are faster and easier in a pinch. Plus you can buy them at a gas station when your child is claiming to be starving on the way to a play date.
Pizza and birthday parties go together just as fruit punch and crazed children; which is convenient because all birthday parties have pizza and fruit punch (and crazy children). So if your child doesn't like pizza, he or she will go home full of chips and cake instead. Recently Joshua has decided that he doesn't like pizza... and then that he likes pizza... and then that he will only eat pizza without sauce... and then that he doesn't like any pizza... and then that he will eat pizza again. When he is in a no-pizza mood, it really puts a damper on things. Not only does it make birthday parties awkward ("Sorry, do you have anything else, he doesn't like pizza.") it also removes the option for a quick and easy meal after grocery shopping. WHAT is not to like about pizza? It's bread, it's cheese and it's sauce? To top it all off, now that Josh is back into pizza (thanks to a baseball game and a cool older brother who does like pizza), his favorite part is actually the crust. That's not inconvenient... it's just weird.
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| Making a pizza together for Valentine's Day 2011, back when Josh still liked pizza. |
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| With a home-made pizza like this, what's not to love? |
Peanut butter. This is a staple food for moms everywhere who just want to give their kids some protein for heavens sake! It's portable and delicious. And the possibilities with peanut butter are just endless. You can have plain, PB & J, peanut butter and honey, peanut butter and Fluff (admit it, you've tried it), peanut butter and apple butter, peanut butter and bananas, peanut butter and apples, peanut butter and cucumbers, peanut butter and celery with raisins (gross), peanut butter and maple cream (yum!) as well as peanut butter and what-ever-your-mommy-feels-like-hiding-in-the-sandwich-today! Just so many options... all mostly healthy. If you have a kid who is really into peanut butter, you can even be sneaky enough to spread it on healthy wheat grain bread! But if your kid doesn't like peanut butter, you will have a sore reality to face when you are packing your next picnic. Trust me, it's best if you can convince them to eat peanut butter... even if that means adding that Fluff to the sandwich.
I hesitate to even explain the chicken nuggets... because chicken nuggets are a mainstay in our household. If all else fails... there are chicken nuggets. And if chicken nuggets fail... there are dinosaur shaped chicken nuggets. Dino chicken nuggets are one of my kids' favorite things to play with. It never gets old, listening to them talk about predator-prey relationships as they chomp off the heads of a T-Rex and a stegosaurus in quick succession. If my kids didn't like chicken nuggets... well, that'd just be it. The McDonald's drive-through would be completely out (considering that the kids have a love-hate relationship with cheeseburgers which translates into loving them when we order and hating them when they unwrap the paper). If they disliked chicken nuggets, it would just be devastating for long-distance travel. I don't think I'd approve of the kids eating tacos in the backseat.
Not that there is anything you can do... at all... to encourage your child to like hot dogs, peanut butter, pizza and chicken nuggets. It's really completely out of your control. Actually, that's not true. The more you emphasize the need for them to try and to like one of these things... the more likely they will be to dig in their heels and declare a life-long distaste for life's most convenient foods. If that happens, good luck. I have a friend who carries around frozen burritos in her purse. That could be you. Lord knows, I will probably need to carry a bag of chicken nuggets with me the next time we go to a birthday party.
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