Frozen peas

I don't much remember what breakfast was like as a kid. It must have been pretty uneventful. Maybe I was always hungry and just ate whatever was put in front of me and moved on with my day. But in my adult life I've always been a pretty good breakfast eater.

Our girls are often distracted at breakfast and don't eat much. They've just got too much energy and too much other stuff to do, which is pretty inconvenient when you're on a schedule to get them to camp or school. But you'd better make sure they eat something, or watch out. You'll end up with a kid crankier than a pissed off hippo.

Check out the pic below from a day ago. This is an example of a very half-assed attempt at them eating breakfast. The waffles have maybe a bite or two out of them (that's cream cheese, not butter), and the blueberries were barely picked over. Even the water glasses remain full. Our little munchkins devoted minimal effort to this meal.

Usually in cases like this we run out of time and we resort to giving them Z-Bars in the car. That's what happened on this occasion, but we try to avoid it because a Z-Bar isn't exactly the poster-child of a nutritous breakfast.

Then, at dinner, the difficulty often comes down to whether there's dairy or chicken invovled. It sounds random, and I guess it kind of is, but Audrey has issues with both. Dairy, because she says it hurts her back (the doc says he doesn't understand the linkage, but she has said it often enough that we try to serve non-dairy dishes), and chicken, because she has an aversion to it. At age 4 she informed us she wanted to be a vegetarian, but has since taken to liking ham. May she meant veterinarian.

The other issue is timing. Sometimes, at 6pm, they're just not that hungry. But it's interesting when bed time rolls around and they haven't eaten much - the stall tactics kick in and suddenly they are starving.

Fortunately there is a vegetable they both like, which is peas - as long as they are served frozen. They didn't get that from me - I remember being served peas as a child, and I despised them. If peas showed up on my plate I knew there would be a standoff - me on one side, my mother on the other, and the peas in between.

She was pretty strict about us eating most of what was on our plates, but given my hatred of peas I'm not quite sure why they routinely showed up. There are dozens of other tasty and fun-sounding vegetables to choose from. Like chard.

I tried every trick I could think of. Spreading the peas around on my plate was one, in order to make it look like I'd eaten some of them. She caught on pretty fast to that one. Hiding them under a pile of mashed potatoes was another, and can work if the focus is on eating the veges and not the starches. I also remember once chewing them up, spitting the green mushy ball into a napkin and then excusing myself to use the bathroom to flush the paraphernalia down the toilet. Gross, I know.

When the tricks didn't work, I'd be forced to sit at the table for hours until the peas were eaten or until my mother gave up. Usually she ended up giving up (I was a pain in the ass.) Maybe we should have tried frozen peas instead.

2 and a half

Frozen peas

Comments