Smooth Operator

Now September is upon us it’s the start of the academic year and this week most children across the UK will return to school (or start for the first time – gulp!)

There is a certain amount of time pressure in the morning to get out of the house on time. A time pressure which my daughter is completely oblivious too! Although maybe this will finally alter now she herself has to be at school on time (I can but hope!)

Eating first thing in the morning is something my daughter isn’t really ‘into’ therefore it can take her ages to pick *ahem* I mean eat her way through her breakfast.
Just a spoon full of sugar?

It’s truly tempting to serve her up a bowl of sugar coated cereal to guarantee “something” gets eaten within the allotted time frame but in my book this doesn’t constitute a healthy start to the day from any angle. Given school will be far less accommodating than her pe-school, who served up fruit and snacks from almost the moment she went in, finding a solution has become rather pressing.

My Milkshake Brings All The Boys To The Yard!

So for the past week we have been trialling smoothies and milkshakes for breakfast with a side serving of nuts. This seems to tick all the boxes with my daughter. She loves nuts and she loves fruit smoothies. She thinks Christmas has arrived early and I’m happy she is eating something far healthier than a bowl of junk cereal. Win win 🙂

One evening we sat around the kitchen table chopping up bananas and strawberries and popping them into little freezer bags along with blueberries. She found this a really fun job to help mummy with and now we have a week worth of smoothie bags stashed in the freezer ready for blitzing in the food processor. This little bit of advanced prep work should make our school mornings nice and easy.  We chose bananas, strawberries and blueberries for our smoothie bags. We chopped up the strawberries and bananas into smallish pieces. The blueberries we left whole. Depending on the size of bananas you’ll either need one small one or half a large one. Just add milk and blitz in the food processor until it’s smooth. If you are feeling indulgent you could always add a scoop ice ice cream !

Crust can’t get enough!

Fed up of cutting off crusts but can’t face a monumental melt down or food battle before you’ve had your first coffee? Removing crusts from toast feels like a massive waste of food and if the ducks at your local pond no longer greet you with quacks of happiness but feign sleep instead then maybe it’s time to use your loaf and make teddy toast!

It’s crust an illusion!

It really couldn’t be easier! Absolutely no artistic or culinary skill is required! Instead of buying your usual tin shaped loaf opt for a bloomer. This style of loaf is already the perfect shape for creating a convincing piece of teddy bear shaped toast so no need for cutting or trimming to size and therefore no food waste – sorry ducks!

Spread a little happiness!

Bloomin’ Marvellous!

Simply pop in the toaster and then use your child’s preferred topping to create ears, eyes and nose. Warning: cutting teddy into pieces may result in a distressed child so serve whole! Marmite and Nutella are ideal toppings for making realistic looking bears.  Teddy Toast makes the perfect vehicle for introducing a new topping such and marmalade or a new flavour of jam.

My daughter was never that keen on scrambled eggs until they were presented on teddy toast. Visually, to me, it looks like a piece of toast with a few dollops of scrambled eggs strategically dolloped on the corners and in the middle. But as far as she is concerned it is a bear and gets consumed quicker than Goldilocks tucking into baby bears’ bowl of porridge. And that, as far as I am concerned, is a result!

 

Can bento picks sway a picky eater?

Would an over priced piece of plastic convince my children to eat their words about their food dislikes? Or was I barking up the wrong tree?

To date I have resisted the appeal of plastic bento picks which make frequent appearances in Japanese lunch boxes. But curiosity got the better of me and I decided to give them a whirl! 

A browse through You Tube had connected me to an unrecognisable world of Japanese bento style lunch boxes. They were a feast for the eyes! Filled with a myriad of foodstuffs a world away from the staples typically found in a UK packed lunch ( sandwich, yoghurt, box of raisins and block of processed cheese) It was an absolute joy to see children tucking into a wide variety of healthy food choices with gusto. And it was enough to make me shell out an eye watering amount on a small pack of plastic bento picks.

Plastic Fantastic!

After several weeks wait they arrived. It was an exciting moment. I tentatively selected the tree shaped pick and slotted on broccoli. Instantaneously the broccoli was transformed into a tree. How would my children feel about eating trees? My daughter was already a committed fan of broccoli so she was simply delighted at how cute it looked as a tree and was enthusiastic in her praise. My son, who to date, had never let a piece of broccoli pass his lips was immediately sold! I couldn’t believe it! Since then he has happily eaten broccoli florets with the bento tree-shaped pick firmly rammed into the stalk AND florets without the plastic embellishment!

Magic Mushrooms?

Would my daughter be converted to mushrooms merely by their metamorphosis into a tree? Unfortunately not! To date she has not been swayed in the slightest to try a mushroom by the inclusion of such trickery. However, I have had some success convincing her to enjoy cherry tomatoes when they are cunningly disguised as balloons!

Overall I would say that the use of props can encourage a child to eat an item previously shunned by your child. So it was a small price to pay to have my children both happily munching on broccoli and cherry tomatoes, as for the mushrooms – tomorrow is another day!

Dessert Island Discs http://youtu.be/N1EBAn6Lpu8

 

My daughter doesn’t like kiwi fruit and the moment she spots it on the plate she shouts “kiwi fruit – yuck!” Her older brother adores them and given that they are a rich source of vitamin c and a handy lunch box ingredient it would be super convenient for me if she liked them too!

Shape-shifting

I usually cut the kiwi into round circles and I have even tried to sneak them into “cucumber trees” All to no avail. I wondered if I tried a slightly different approach and sliced them lengthways she would find them more appealing and give them a try. I would love to say that this worked and she gobbled up the lot but that didn’t happen and they remained resolutely uneaten on her plate.

Small Steps

I am deeply encouraged as her first reaction wasn’t to shout “kiwi fruit- yuck!” Secondly they weren’t frantically ejected from her plate. They remained in situ whilst she calmly consumed the rest of the dessert. Once she had eaten the other items she remarked “I will try them mummy, but not today” I am certain that presenting them to her in a different shape and context enabled her to break with her usual “kiwi fruit – yuck!” stock reaction.  I will give it a few days before making this again and have a secret weapon of sugar strand sprinkles at the ready to scatter liberally!

 

Because I’m Happy!

Thank goodness it’s Friday!

For many children Friday is synonymous with fish and that usually means one thing on the menu – fish fingers! I have nothing against fish fingers but after them becoming our fail safe daily meal I was becoming rather uninspired by them.

Minion Impossible!

Perhaps it was fear that they would also go off them? If so I’d really be stuck for a meal that guaranteed a clean plate! Or maybe it was because we’d recently watched Despicable Me and that inspired me to jazz up their meal time staple and give the humble fish fingers a make over!

It couldn’t be easier to transform fish fingers into minion. Simply cut them in half and hey presto you have a pair of well behaved yellow minions on your plate who require very little in the way of additions to make them look utterly convincing. I chose slices of radish and nori to add their features but slices of spring onion and peas (attached with ketchup) would have a similar effect.

I also decided to get radical and banish the usual waffle accompaniment and serve with rice and soya beans which I moulded into minion shapes. My children were delighted with their minion lunch and to my complete amazement they gobbled up the slices of radish and nori with gusto without any of the usual nit picking over the ingredients.

Disney on Rice!

 

Struggling to get rice on the menu?  Do you wanna build a snowman?

Before I started fiddling around with rice and shaping it there was definitely a marmite approach going on in our family. My son hated it, whilst my daughter loved it! Rice lends itself beautifully to being shaped and is completely transformed by the simple addition of a few fruit or veg features. It couldn’t be simpler or easier to do, just make sure it’s cool enough to handle first.

Snow Fun!

My two children are now firm rice converts so this Olaf plate was more about sneaking foodstuffs into the snowflakes. Nestled alongside cucumber snowflakes the broccoli stalks were unnoticed and much fun was to be had by fitting the various parts into each other to create different combinations but the Edam cheese got a massive thumbs down and was the only item to be left on otherwise empty plates.

 

Aversion to potato skin? Or is it only skin deep?

An aversion to potato skin? Or is it only skin deep?
A speck of visible potato skin was always guaranteed to reduce my son to tears, and make for uncomfortable mealtimes. We tried our best to persuade him to eat what is widely accepted to be the most nutritious part of a potato, though always in vain!
Eventually I gave up trying… It was too difficult. So instead I painstakingly peeled each individual potato, before carefully placing it on his plate. Then potatoes themselves became a further cause of friction at mealtimes…
Before abandoning hope of him ever eating potatoes again I decided instead to take a different approach and try turning the humble spud into a fun potato head with edible eyes and ketchup lips, and – without any hint of a drama – these were readily accepted by my son! Hurrah!
So the next logical step was to include potato ‘hair styles’ and use tiny slivers of olives, which would become eyebrows and moustaches. And these worked a treat too!
I am now vaguely hopeful of my son enjoying autumnal jacket potatoes dripping in butter! We’ll see how it goes

Be A Happy Eater!

It couldn’t be easier to add a smile to your plate to make it happy and appealing. All it takes is a slice of olive or a sliver of cucumber skin to add interest, fun and happiness to the simplest of plates. If you have a hole punch or a craft stamper use them to cut out identical shaped eyes from nori or improvise using slices of beans, spring onions, asparagus, baby corn, the possibilities are endless. Adding a features to your food brings instant cheer to your dish and also provides the ideal opportunity to add a new or previously feared food item in a fun and non threatening way.

My son is resolute in his “I only eat/like cooked carrots.” Given that three months ago carrots cooked or otherwise were cause for tears this is a considerable shift. However I believe that over time I may be able to convert him into enjoying raw carrots too if I can occasionally incorporate them in a minute amount after all a few weeks ago nori, radish and broccoli were no-go items.