I never would have guessed a few months ago that we would have a picky eater on our hands. Mazen gobbled down all sorts of things, vegetables of every kind included. For some reason I thought we had a long time before the toddler picky eating attitude arrived.
But these days, as I should have figured, he is much more particular about what goes in his mouth.
He likes cheese and meat and bread and fruit. But he does not want anything to do with anything green. Clearly his parents love their veggies, so I don’t think it’s a learned behavior from us. He’s too young to share gossip about “gross veggies” with his playmates. The only thing I can conclude is that there is something biological about the way kids just don’t like vegetables. I’m sure there are some kids who never reject green foods, but perhaps others just have an aversion. I even wondered if it had to do with their high growth needs. Vegetables are very light in calories, so maybe with all the growing babies need to do their bodies crave more calorie dense foods and might go as far as to find the taste of vegetables displeasing. Just a thought! It’s also odd to me how pregnant women in their first trimester and babies have this aversion in common. There has to be something to it we don’t yet understand.
The good news is that M still eats veggies. He just doesn’t know it. Here are a few of the meals we’ve been feeding him lately.
Frittatas. This was our favorite staple until just this week! M has decided he no longer likes eggs. I guess I gave them to him too much! But for weeks we could get him to eat anything in little bites of egg. We would cook some vegetables and then pour over 2 beat eggs and let that cook on low heat with a lid on so the top would cook through. Worked great when he liked it!
Green smoothies. So far so good on these! I make them with whole milk yogurt, milk, banana and greens.
Now that it’s pumpkin season we’ve been giving him pumpkin yogurt with a little cinnamon like this mama. Since he doesn’t like us to feed him with a spoon, I’ve been serving yogurt in the Sili squeeze.
Pumpkin is a vegetable, yes!? Actually I think it’s technically a fruit…
Emily wrote about making rice cooker applesauce for Cullen last year and with the return of apple season I made some.
In went a bunch of sliced apples with cinnamon and a quarter cup of water…
And out came roasted apple sauce after a whirl on the quick cook setting.
Wish I could say that Mazen loved these, but he was only luke warm. I, however, gobbled them down!
He also LOVES using a fork for meals. He’s actually pretty good at it too.
He did love the quinoa and black bean balls I made for him from my Cook Smarts post! And his current favorite food is raw tomato.
I thought I would be smart and bought him fresh spinach gnocchi, but he didn’t really love those either – even with pesto and cheese all over them. Silly guy!
Lastly, for the days that I don’t have my act together, I have some of these pouches on hand. I mostly use them when we have zero other options to eat – as a supplement for restaurant food when we’re out to lunch or as a snack. I like all the brands and always look for ones heavy on the veggies that also have some protein. The Mish Mash ones are my favorite for snacks.
Speaking of snacks, M likes applesauce, yogurt, cheese, toast, fresh fruit (berries and bananas especially) and graham crackers if I’m spoiling him. I never though feeding a baby would be so hard, but man is it challenging to keep a variety of foods on hand for him. Generally he does eat what we eat, but the difference is that his foods need to be prepared STAT when he wants them, so we can’t wait around for things to cook. Most of the time I have a plate of leftovers or pre-cooked food that I can heat up very fast for his lunch or dinner. He often eats that and then has bites of our dinner when we all sit down together. He likes bites from our dinners most of all, and sometimes he’ll even try something green from our forks!