Today's Discovery

We had spaghetti for supper tonight. This broke a days-long streak of highly processed meat for the kids’ supper, be it in weiner or nugget form. Those, along with macaroni and cheese, are my fall back suppers, the foods I serve when I don’t want to deal with thrown food and whiny children. At least I don’t have to deal with whiny children until after the meal when I inform Abbie that two platefuls are plenty for anyone, even daddy.

Spaghetti is what I serve when I don’t want to deal with the guilt over serving my children highly processed meat every night. Those things are filled with fat, salt, and preservatives. Even though Spaghetti is filled with starch, salt, and preservatives, at least it also contains vegetables, albeit highly processed ones.

The problem with spaghetti is Abbie doesn’t like it. She used to love it, but she recently changed her mind when she realized she could eat highly processed meat every night instead by refusing to eat. Fortunately the boys lack the memory needed to realize there are more delicious suppers out there. This may partially explain why Lunchables will never enter my house; they can’t want them if they don’t know they exist.

I stopped serving spaghetti for a couple weeks, but the guilt, and the smell from the leftover, noodles grew too powerful for me to ignore. I opened up another jar of sauce and prepared for the worst.

Around the time I started dreading Abbie waking from her nap, I got a bright idea. I turned Abbie’s chair to face the television, readied a Dora DVD, and waited for her to run into the room screaming in fury.

When I heard the wail, I prepared her for supper as normal, except I deposited her in front of the television. She was transfixed, staring at the television like she hadn’t already watched that episode a half-dozen times in the last week. I served her a plate with a steaming pile of spaghetti resting on it, and watched her start happily munching away.

This may be the key to making her try new foods. My old technique was to serve a small portion of the new food surrounded by old favorites, but she thwarted that by eating everything but the new food. Now I might be able to slide new foods into her with a palette-cleansing dose of Dora to put her in a good mood. That should work, at least until I feel too much guilt about letting her watch television over supper.