This weekend I bought a pumpkin, which inspired my son to beg for pumpkin pie. The kid has an insatiable sweet tooth (he’d eat sugar straight, if I’d let him), but since pumpkin pie is one of the healthier desserts he could ask for, I agreed that we could make it on Sunday.
In fact, I’ve decided to take a slightly different tack on trying to curb his sweet tooth. My plan is that on Sunday he will be allowed to choose a recipe, and make the sweet thing of his choice with Mom or Dad. He can indulge all he wants in the finished product on Sunday. After that, whatever it is gets put up out of sight, and will be distributed on a very limited basis. We were getting a little out of hand with dessert every night—gummy worms, Rice Krispy treats, cookies, candy corn, marshmallows. Not all of that in one sitting, of course, but that was perhaps the catalog of a weeks’ worth of desserts. Too much crap, too often. I’d far rather have him satisfy his sweet tooth with something homemade, and I’d like to encourage him to make it himself (with our help) so he gets a feel for cooking. And we’re not talking about cake from box mixes here—if we’re making cake or cupcakes, we’re starting with flour, sugar, eggs, etc.
I did not, however, force him to make the crust for the pumpkin pie. I think that would be a little cruel, especially since the recipe I originally chose (from the Bon Appetit cookbook) included the instruction “refrigerate dough for 30 minutes” at least twice, and involved the cutting out and scoring of pie crust leaves, then scattering them across the surface of the baked pie. That’s hard on a little kid who just wants some pie. It was hard enough getting him to wait until the one we made cooled down. But we did find a good recipe for pumpkin pie that involves few ingredients, and little measuring, and so is ideal for small children to help with. The recipe comes from the back of the little container of McCormick’s Pumpkin Pie Spice that I bought at the grocery store on Friday. It goes like this:
1 15oz can pumpkin puree
1 14oz can sweetened condensed milk
2 eggs
1 Tablespoon pumpkin pie spice
1 frozen pie crust
Combine pumpkin, milk, eggs and pumpkin pie spice in a bowl. Pour filling into pie crust. Bake for 15 minutes at 425. Reduce heat to 350 and bake for another 40 minutes. Cool. Eat.
Couldn’t be simpler. The next time I would blind bake the crust, at least half way. It was a tad underdone for my taste, but the recipe did clearly call for a frozen pie crust. Otherwise it was perfectly fine, and even the twins at age two could help. Matthew cracked one egg, Chris cracked the other, and Chris, Patrick and I each lent a hand (or a finger) to getting the mixer turned off and in an upright position. This actually does require some tricky manipulation because of my lame duck mixer.
Everyone had a slice with whipped cream (made by all interested parties with the help of Dad) for dessert. Chris loved it, Matthew liked it, and Patrick was a little unsure. He’s the pickier of the twins anyway. Matthew pretty much shovels it all in and looks around for more.
The other great food event from this weekend was that I actually made something from scratch (well, OK, mostly from scratch) that my kids would eat. You simply cannot imagine my delight. Granted, what I made was bean and cheese “burritos” made with canned refried beans, but hey, it’s a start! It didn’t start life as a brick of ice that spent two and a half minutes in the microwave before hitting my dining room table. I actually assembled and baked them in the oven, and my kids ate them. In fact, when I coaxed Chris into trying a bite, the first words out of his mouth were:
“It’s yummy! Can I have some more?”
It brought tears to my eyes.
I put burrito in quotes here, because I didn’t have burrito sized tortillas, so they were kind of funny looking. Also, because the tortillas I started with were cold, they broke when I tried to fold them around the filling. But since they get cut up into little squares anyway, appearance isn’t that important to my kids. And I didn’t hear, “It doesn’t taste like at school.” This is the sentence I so dread, because I know what I’m competing with is processed, over-sugared, over-salted, lacking-in-nutrient crap. Of course it doesn’t taste like at school—it has actual food in it, instead of a laundry list of chemicals!
So between the semi-healthy pie (healthy, that is, as compared to something like gummy worms), and the warmly accepted bean and cheese burritos, it was a good food weekend. For someone as food-obsessed as I am, my children’s acceptance of my food is one of the keys to my happiness. I know I need to work on this—I can’t dissolve in tears or become angry when they reject something I’ve made. Food shouldn’t be the only way I have of showing them that I care about them. And I do try. I do my best to shrug and think, “In a few years—they’re just little kids.” I also remind myself how downright finicky I was as a child. I must have driven my mother completely around the bend. I guess this is what they mean when they talk about karma. I’m getting as good as I gave.
Showing posts with label kid food. Show all posts
Showing posts with label kid food. Show all posts
Monday, October 08, 2007
Monday, September 10, 2007
TV Dinners
A few months ago I made a kind of TV dinner for my kids. It was just before we moved, and really all of our plates, pots and pans were pretty much packed, so I didn’t have much to cook with, or serve food on. I’d seen Kid Cuisine TV dinners in the grocery stores for years, but had never tried them. Now I understand why. They’re a huge pain in the butt to make.
They feature basic kid food—spaghetti, chicken nuggets, macaroni and cheese—but they tried to go a little fancy with the desserts and have things like iced cake and stuff that gets sprinkles on it. The problem with things like that is that frosting and sprinkles don’t heat up well in an oven or in a microwave, so they have to package them separately and you have to remove them from the package prior to cooking.
Even without the removing of the dessert topping step, they’re extremely complicated. I’ve made whole meals from scratch that required less futzing around than these things. First I had to remove the sprinkles or whatever, then I had to peel back plastic from this area, loosen plastic on that area, cook it for awhile, then remove it from the oven and remove the plastic from this other compartment, and re-cover that other thing. They only cook for about twenty minutes, but it seemed that I was yanking it out of the oven every five minutes to reposition plastic film over the various components.
I was remembering my own experiences with TV dinners back in the 70s. This would have been when they actually came in a little foil tray, instead of in some kind of rigid paper thing that could go in a microwave oven. I think you peeled the foil back from one section—the potatoes, if memory serves—and then stabbed holes over the meat part to vent the steam and then just chucked the whole thing in the oven for a half hour or so. Thirty minutes later you had perfectly baked horrible food.
Actually, I loved TV dinners. I wasn’t much for Salisbury steak, but I loved fried chicken. I honestly only remember three types of TV dinners—the Salisbury steak, the fried chicken, and the turkey with dressing. I guess there were probably others, but those were the three my parents bought for me. Or perhaps those were the three I was willing to eat.
The things I remember most about TV dinners are that the fried chicken was always soggy, the mashed potatoes seemed to be one solid mass of…whatever, and somehow there was always a piece of corn in my dessert. I hate when my food touches, so the piece of corn in my dessert was an abomination in my book. In fact, TV dinners were perfect for me because I didn’t like any of my food to touch, and the little sectioned tray made sure that pretty much nothing would (except for that pesky kernel of corn).
A few years later we started buying Mexican food TV dinners. These my father nicknamed “puddle food” because everything did seem to come in a sort of a puddle. A puddle of refried beans here, a puddle of enchiladas there, even the rice seemed to be a somewhat liquid plop on the tray. Mexican food isn’t really TV dinner food to me. TV dinner food really should be generic “American” food, with no loyalty to any nationality (or any nation that would be willing to claim it, for that matter).
At some point we stopped buying TV dinners and I stepped up to Stouffer’s entrees. These I do buy for my kids, and they’re not bad to make. Mostly you just peel the plastic to vent them, then cook them for awhile. They don’t require the same level of attention as a puppy that hasn’t been housebroken, the way the Kid Cuisine ones did.
In even later life, I moved on to Lean Cuisines and Smart Ones and other low fat/low calorie offerings. These aren’t really TV dinners, per se, because they come in a single tray, like Stouffer’s entrees (which also don’t count as a real TV dinner in my book). Real TV dinners come in a sectioned tray and aren’t low anything. Lean Cuisines aren’t bad in a pinch, but I’ve stopped eating them on any regular basis. I don’t like them enough to eat them more than about twice a year.
I wouldn’t bother to buy a “real” TV dinner today. Even if I cooked it in the oven instead of in the microwave, it still wouldn’t be the same. Now that they’re formulated to cook semi-acceptably in microwaves, they’re different, just like the pot pies I loved as a child. I wish TV dinners were the way they used to be, even though I probably wouldn’t eat them, but I guess everything has to change, even mediocre frozen meals.
They feature basic kid food—spaghetti, chicken nuggets, macaroni and cheese—but they tried to go a little fancy with the desserts and have things like iced cake and stuff that gets sprinkles on it. The problem with things like that is that frosting and sprinkles don’t heat up well in an oven or in a microwave, so they have to package them separately and you have to remove them from the package prior to cooking.
Even without the removing of the dessert topping step, they’re extremely complicated. I’ve made whole meals from scratch that required less futzing around than these things. First I had to remove the sprinkles or whatever, then I had to peel back plastic from this area, loosen plastic on that area, cook it for awhile, then remove it from the oven and remove the plastic from this other compartment, and re-cover that other thing. They only cook for about twenty minutes, but it seemed that I was yanking it out of the oven every five minutes to reposition plastic film over the various components.
I was remembering my own experiences with TV dinners back in the 70s. This would have been when they actually came in a little foil tray, instead of in some kind of rigid paper thing that could go in a microwave oven. I think you peeled the foil back from one section—the potatoes, if memory serves—and then stabbed holes over the meat part to vent the steam and then just chucked the whole thing in the oven for a half hour or so. Thirty minutes later you had perfectly baked horrible food.
Actually, I loved TV dinners. I wasn’t much for Salisbury steak, but I loved fried chicken. I honestly only remember three types of TV dinners—the Salisbury steak, the fried chicken, and the turkey with dressing. I guess there were probably others, but those were the three my parents bought for me. Or perhaps those were the three I was willing to eat.
The things I remember most about TV dinners are that the fried chicken was always soggy, the mashed potatoes seemed to be one solid mass of…whatever, and somehow there was always a piece of corn in my dessert. I hate when my food touches, so the piece of corn in my dessert was an abomination in my book. In fact, TV dinners were perfect for me because I didn’t like any of my food to touch, and the little sectioned tray made sure that pretty much nothing would (except for that pesky kernel of corn).
A few years later we started buying Mexican food TV dinners. These my father nicknamed “puddle food” because everything did seem to come in a sort of a puddle. A puddle of refried beans here, a puddle of enchiladas there, even the rice seemed to be a somewhat liquid plop on the tray. Mexican food isn’t really TV dinner food to me. TV dinner food really should be generic “American” food, with no loyalty to any nationality (or any nation that would be willing to claim it, for that matter).
At some point we stopped buying TV dinners and I stepped up to Stouffer’s entrees. These I do buy for my kids, and they’re not bad to make. Mostly you just peel the plastic to vent them, then cook them for awhile. They don’t require the same level of attention as a puppy that hasn’t been housebroken, the way the Kid Cuisine ones did.
In even later life, I moved on to Lean Cuisines and Smart Ones and other low fat/low calorie offerings. These aren’t really TV dinners, per se, because they come in a single tray, like Stouffer’s entrees (which also don’t count as a real TV dinner in my book). Real TV dinners come in a sectioned tray and aren’t low anything. Lean Cuisines aren’t bad in a pinch, but I’ve stopped eating them on any regular basis. I don’t like them enough to eat them more than about twice a year.
I wouldn’t bother to buy a “real” TV dinner today. Even if I cooked it in the oven instead of in the microwave, it still wouldn’t be the same. Now that they’re formulated to cook semi-acceptably in microwaves, they’re different, just like the pot pies I loved as a child. I wish TV dinners were the way they used to be, even though I probably wouldn’t eat them, but I guess everything has to change, even mediocre frozen meals.
Saturday, May 19, 2007
No Regrets
My kids eat a lot of typical kid foods. The other day I was thinking of the ones I wasn’t going to miss when they got old enough to eat other things. This was actually in the context of things I wasn’t going to miss in general about my kids being small: sippy cups, baby gates, pacifiers. Don’t misunderstand me—I know when they’re not babies anymore, I’ll look back and think how cute they were, and wish they could have stayed small forever. But there are some things I simply will not miss about having small children, and some of them are food-related.
Cereal Bars
Right now we buy boxes of cereal bars at Costco. They come in strawberry, blueberry, and apple. My older son will eat only the strawberry ones, the twins eat all the flavors. A cereal bar is their typical “first” breakfast. They also get another breakfast at daycare, and on weekends we often make something else around 9 a.m. or so. They’re really nothing but cookie with jam in them, but they serve their purpose. I’ll be glad, however, to see them go.
Eggo Waffles
Again, something else we buy in bulk at Costco (with four kids, there aren’t many things for the kids we don’t buy in bulk at Costco). My older son likes them cut into shapes with a cookie cutter, primarily Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer (which then gets its nose dipped into a little tub of red decorator sugar). He dips the shapes into his syrup. The twins get no syrup. Nutritionally, these aren’t quite as bad as cereal bars (although the syrup is no gem), but they’re still something I’m tired of buying and making.
Gogurt
I had a debate with a friend about Gogurt. Her position was any yogurt was good yogurt. I said I agreed right up to Gogurt. Any of those kid yogurts are fine, but Gogurt is just garbage. There’s so little of it in a tube, and it has so much sugar, that I think any positive effects of active cultures or calcium is completely negated by the sugar. Although we buy it, it stays in the freezer and is an occasional treat. In truth, Gogurt is no friend of mine, and it does not get a Christmas card from me.
Chicken Nuggets
I don’t mean McDonald’s chicken nuggets. I sheepishly admit to kind of liking those. I’m talking about the ones we buy in bulk that are orange, for God’s sake. They’re fast—they heat up in the microwave in 30 seconds or something, and they claim to be made of whole breast meat (not mushed up reformed random pieces), but that doesn’t redeem them completely in my opinion, and I won’t miss them when the last of my kids stops saying she wants chicken nuggets for dinner.
Hot Dogs
We buy Hebrew National all beef hot dogs, and I actually like them, but I’m kind of tired of making hot dogs. Because the twins are under two, they have to be cut up in small pieces, and my older son actually eats his cold (yes, I agree that this is vile). I won’t mind when hot dogs take an occasional role in our diet, but their constant presence is tiresome.
Juice Boxes
I just seem to be down on all the common kid foods, don’t I? Juice boxes squirt when you squeeze them, which little boys think is hysterical. Mothers do not think this is hysterical because they have to clean it up. Yes, juice boxes are convenient, but they’re messy. I won’t miss them.
In general, I will be very grateful when my kids are old enough to eat the same things my husband and I want to eat (although I know it will likely be many years before they’re actually willing to eat things like fennel and lentils). Still, when they stop eating cereal bars and juice boxes, I won’t shed a tear.
Cereal Bars
Right now we buy boxes of cereal bars at Costco. They come in strawberry, blueberry, and apple. My older son will eat only the strawberry ones, the twins eat all the flavors. A cereal bar is their typical “first” breakfast. They also get another breakfast at daycare, and on weekends we often make something else around 9 a.m. or so. They’re really nothing but cookie with jam in them, but they serve their purpose. I’ll be glad, however, to see them go.
Eggo Waffles
Again, something else we buy in bulk at Costco (with four kids, there aren’t many things for the kids we don’t buy in bulk at Costco). My older son likes them cut into shapes with a cookie cutter, primarily Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer (which then gets its nose dipped into a little tub of red decorator sugar). He dips the shapes into his syrup. The twins get no syrup. Nutritionally, these aren’t quite as bad as cereal bars (although the syrup is no gem), but they’re still something I’m tired of buying and making.
Gogurt
I had a debate with a friend about Gogurt. Her position was any yogurt was good yogurt. I said I agreed right up to Gogurt. Any of those kid yogurts are fine, but Gogurt is just garbage. There’s so little of it in a tube, and it has so much sugar, that I think any positive effects of active cultures or calcium is completely negated by the sugar. Although we buy it, it stays in the freezer and is an occasional treat. In truth, Gogurt is no friend of mine, and it does not get a Christmas card from me.
Chicken Nuggets
I don’t mean McDonald’s chicken nuggets. I sheepishly admit to kind of liking those. I’m talking about the ones we buy in bulk that are orange, for God’s sake. They’re fast—they heat up in the microwave in 30 seconds or something, and they claim to be made of whole breast meat (not mushed up reformed random pieces), but that doesn’t redeem them completely in my opinion, and I won’t miss them when the last of my kids stops saying she wants chicken nuggets for dinner.
Hot Dogs
We buy Hebrew National all beef hot dogs, and I actually like them, but I’m kind of tired of making hot dogs. Because the twins are under two, they have to be cut up in small pieces, and my older son actually eats his cold (yes, I agree that this is vile). I won’t mind when hot dogs take an occasional role in our diet, but their constant presence is tiresome.
Juice Boxes
I just seem to be down on all the common kid foods, don’t I? Juice boxes squirt when you squeeze them, which little boys think is hysterical. Mothers do not think this is hysterical because they have to clean it up. Yes, juice boxes are convenient, but they’re messy. I won’t miss them.
In general, I will be very grateful when my kids are old enough to eat the same things my husband and I want to eat (although I know it will likely be many years before they’re actually willing to eat things like fennel and lentils). Still, when they stop eating cereal bars and juice boxes, I won’t shed a tear.
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