Remember when I used to blog about childhood obesity? Feeding your children age-appropriate foods? Following the MyPlate guidelines? Paying attention to whole grains, leafy vegetables, fruits, and such? Remember?

Okay. Well, remember when I had a kid two years ago? Yep, me too.

Well, here I am two years in and I would like to formally apologize to all of the parents out there who read my blog back then without rolling their eyes and “liked” my seasonal rutabaga mash, saluted my 8-hour Julia Child recipe experiment, and put up with my “all organic, never processed, seasonal point of view.” I’m not knocking that point of view, because it is a VERY important point of view. I won’t spend time on this post warning the universe about how our entire food system might just do us all in. Another post for another day, I suppose.  Okay, back to the lighthearted post I originally started…

Let’s face it: moments of desperation come on reallllllly fast in my household when it comes to food.

Welcome to my current reality where my 2-year-old loves to eat the following things:
Fruit (lots of it- every single kind)= A+
Hummus (chickpea = vegetable; eats it with a spoon) = A+
Crackers (any kind, any time, processed all of the time) = B
Pizza (HomeRun Brand) = _____*
Cheese Dip (my child can say cheese dip before we are even seated at our local restaurant, El Cazador; he also eats it with a spoon) = ____*
Banana Sandwiches with Cream Cheese (fruit + bread + dairy) = A
So you get my drift. Those asterisks above are giving you the opportunity to fill in the blank since I  already know I will give myself an “A” just because the food is actually going in the child’s mouth. I’m winning when the child eats. Period.

Green vegetables? Not having it. Not one of them. I’ve tried everything. Trust me. A few weeks ago I did what I always said I wouldn’t do (you know, back when I didn’t know any better): I covered broccoli with cheese. Yep, I did it. I found THIS Cooking Light recipe: Zesty Broccoli Casserole. I thought, “THIS might just work.”

Broccoli sauce cheese2Panko

I followed the recipe really closely — well, except for the fat-free ingredient part. Sorry, I just tend to use full-fat ingredients (cheese, mayo, etc). I guess it wasn’t “cooking light” after all, but I pretended it was. Every. Single. Time. I . Ate. It.

So what I’m saying is,  it was really good! Well, at least my husband and I thought it was. My kid? Um, he didn’t fall for it. He could see the green from a mile away. Refused to touch it. We still “offered it” like all of the books tell us to do over and over and over and over again. I’m just keeping the faith that one day, he will eventually eat it.

Sending love and support and everything else to all of the parents having similar frustrations. It ain’t easy being or feeding or living green, people.

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