As a mother I am always trying to sneak healthy foods into my kids’ meals. As every parent knows, chicken nuggets and pizza can be great to satiate the kids, but the challenge is trying to include nutrient-rich foods into their fickle little diets. Sometimes these covert operations are met with more success than other times. Recently, I was making chocolate zucchini bread (well, chocolate bread to my 10 year old daughter), when she caught me red-handed standing over the bowl of chocolate batter with the offensive green squash in one hand and a grater in the other. I may as well have been holding a a bottle of rat poison and a dirty syringe based on her reaction.
Just as the trust was being rebuilt, (and she was finally convinced I wasn’t trying to poison her), my culinary antics were blown wide open again. For years I had strained anchovies into her miso soup, but the gig was finally up when she discovered a tiny little anchovy eyeball staring back at her from her bowl. Clearly, I should have used a finer strainer. Her reaction was epic as far as meltdowns go.
Even now, I still mince yellow peppers (so finely that it might as well be a puree) into her spaghetti bolognese. The older she grows, the more her taste buds and sense of smell evolves. Most attempts at concealing healthy food now are as she put it a “#fail”. Thus the days of fooling my little princess into believing her food is unadulterated are pretty much done.
Trying to outsmart a 10 year old is challenging. My daughter likes things simple. If it’s apple pie, it better not have blueberries, just apples. Same with chocolate cake. Add a few raspberries on top and suddenly its not a chocolate cake anymore. It’s a raspberry cake.
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