Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans..
I have done a few catering and foodie things last week, but I have to say that again we did not get to The Random Lunch Challenge last weekend–shopping for the upcoming birth of grandchild took over. Lunch was just a quickly grabbed BBQ sausage and onion in bread from a fund raising stall outside supermarket. But somehow, still oh so good.
Family life/relationships are foundational to many of my cooking and eating experiences, and thinking about babies and children is the seed for the following: on children and food.
I have a few fond memories of food things in my childhood;
My mother’s very resourceful and creative cooking;
Poring for hours over the Time Life cook books at my father’s house;
my Aunty Hazel’s meals and the cooking set she gave me as a birthday present once;
coming home from (early primary) school with my brothers to get industrious in the kitchen and make things like banana cake–whole, unpeeled bananas included!
In all, I had positive, creative and enthusiastic input about eating and cooking, and I really believe that that sort of influence can colour a child’s approach to even the most basic level of eating the food provided for them. (I am not going into the whole area of allergies, etc.–that is a different issue.)
In more recent years, pre children, I cooked at child care centres that provided the children with morning teas, hot lunches and afternoon teas. With all nutritional requirements understood (there are many good internet articles on this), I developed menus that were tasty, interesting without being totally unfamiliar and even had an educational input about where different food items/ingredients came from or how they were made. Roughly, the main meals were centered on a pasta recipe, a couple of meat recipes, a vegetarian recipe, and a fish based recipe over the week.
Menu examples are:
| Morning Teas | Toast and savoury spread/fruit Ricotta hotcakes with a few berries in |
| Lunches | Moroccan Lamb, cous cous, salad ingredients Vegetable filled bolognaise style meat sauce, spaghetti, salad ingredients Chilli chicken, rice noodles and steamed green vegetables Zucchini slice, baby poatoes, green salad Cheesy tuna pasta bake, green vegetables or salad. |
| Afternoon Teas | Cheese scones, fruit platter Museli slice, fruit platter Custard and fruit cups Dip selection and turkish/Lebanese bread, vegie sticks. |
These are but a few examples, and are all meals I would consider family-friendly for cooking at home.
When I had my own children, they never liked sloppy mush and basically went from first cereals to soft but holdable food such as carrot sticks. In fact, they ate a softer version of what us older family members were eating. That was always the case–after 8 months or so I never cooked them a totally different meal than the family meal. I really believe that sometimes we make a rod for our backs by cooking different meals unnecessarily. Maybe this is the product of many of us having the luxury of better incomes to be able to do this.
And again I am not talking about food allergies or health requirements.
And I do acknowledge that we all have different tastes and textural appreciations, but my experience has shown me that a new food sometimes has to be tried at least 5 times before considering it not working.
My 4 children all enjoy cooking and eating well (creative, interesting nutritionally balanced) and hopefully they in turn will be able to teach and positively influence their children.
A little postscript:
We gave our boys a Wusthof Trident cooks knife each for the celebration on becoming teenagers. They proudly use them each morning to prepare their school lunches (and dinner once a week for family).
I am sure they will continue to use them as they grow into adults and cook for others.
I would have never thought of giving a kitchen knife as a present to a teenager, but what a wonderful idea – something useful to keep for ever and always be reminded of when they turned 13.
We were thinking about giving something they could make an heirloom type thing,and with their interest in cooking our minds started thinking in this direction. We wondered about the suitability of a knife, but trust their wisdom and know they will use them responsibly. An episode of The West Wing spurred it on for me, when Pres Bartlett got Charlie to look for a good knife, then presented him with a precious family heirloom knife.