![]() ![]() ![]() As Seinfeld also points out, "As I learned the hard way, the more pressure you apply, the more kids will "hate" certain foods." (Like, um, green beans)? Nature probably hardwired small children back in the cave days to resist strong or strange tastes and textures to protect them from eating spoiled or poisonous stuff, so the spicy variety that adults dote on is just not in the cards for most young ones. ![]() What about teaching a "spirit of adventure" in eating? What about learning to appreciate a variety of taste and texture? Well, that's the goal, all right. Her recipes have the criteria you could call the three P's: kid pleasing, easy to prep, and easy in the process. It's actually a pretty easy technique: with blenders, food processors, and baggies in every kitchen, it's simple enough to cook up a batch of fresh veggies (or use those leftovers from the dinners where only the adults had a serving), puree them, and pop those puppies into the freezer for the next kid pleaser menu. Armed with a variety of pureed fruits and vegetables and some "whole foods" ingredients in the pantry, she advocates a bit of sneaky cuisine, sticking pumpkin puree into pancakes and cauliflower puree into mac and cheese. Jessica Seinfeld votes for a little loving deception. So what does the nutritionally concerned parent do? Maturity will most likely take care of the pickiness problem, but knowing what we do about the crucial nature of early nutrition, do we want to wait? But some won't, no matter how firm or scary the parents are (and believe me, my dad could be more scary than present laws allow). Some kids will compliantly down those two bites or finish their peas if those are the house rules. If this scenario sounds familiar, here's a children-and-food book with an interesting new twist, Jessica (wife of Jerry) Seinfeld's cute and clever cookbook titled Deceptively Delicious: Simple Secrets to Get Your Kids Eating Good Food. My father and I had a classic power struggle going over those beans and their rightful place in my diet, and had it not been for my mother's common sense and mercy, I'd probably be sitting there still. That film of saturated pork fat that congealed on top didn't exactly enhance them as they cooled down either. We called them "string beans," back in those days, not without good reason, and the traditional Southern style of cooking rendered the beans limp and khaki-colored. In the haze of memory a significant portion of my childhood was spent sitting at the dinner table, long after the dishes were done, over a portion of untouched green beans. ![]()
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