Monday, April 2, 2012

Cooking for a picky eater {Quinn’s Weekend Adventures}



Do all parents have this much trouble feeding  one year-olds? Getting Quinn to eat some days can be extremely frustrating. He recently went through a phase where he wouldn’t let me feed him, but he can’t wield a spoon on his own very well yet. So finger foods were our only option, and there are not many finger foods Q is willing to eat.

Over the last few days, he’s decided that he’ll let me feed him again, so at least I can get some food into his mouth. How many bites he’ll actually take, though, are not predictable. So I always need to have something on hand that he will eat and can feed himself.

This poses a problem since the only foods he will consistently eat with gusto are string cheese, Cheerios, steamed carrots and blueberries. (Seriously, Q shovels this stuff in.)

He’ll decide he likes something one day and chows down like there’s no tomorrow. So I give it to him again the next day, and he won’t even put one bite in his mouth. Toast is a good example. The first few times I made him toast with cream cheese, he loved it. Now he just throws it on the floor. So I tried putting jelly on it, and he liked that at first, too, until he decided he didn’t anymore. So now I just put butter on it, and that’s his current toast topping of choice. Who knows what he’ll be willing to eat tomorrow.

I’ve tried a few recipes from this baby cook book I bought, and so far it’s been a horribly disheartening experience. Q’s hated everything I’ve tried to make. (Oh, how I miss the days I could just open a jar of Gerber baby food and call it dinner.)

On Saturday afternoon, I decided to try two new recipes. First, mini banana muffins. Q likes bananas and bread, so there’s no reason why he shouldn’t like these little muffins, right? The muffins came out exactly the way they were supposed to, and I thought they tasted quite yummy.

*Disclaimer: Some people can take pictures of food, and it looks amazing. I do not have this talent. The following food photos are not great. I didn’t arrange the food on a pretty platter. I do not own a pretty platter. I have plastic storage containers. However, I do promise that the food tastes way better than it looks in the photos. (By the way, how unfair is it that these people have awesome cooking AND photography skills?)

I was very excited for Q to try my yummy banana mini-muffins. When he woke up from his nap, he ate two of them for a snack! He loved them! Whoo-hoo!

See, don't they look yummy?

No suspicious looks so far.

He actually tried a bite!

Oh yeah. Now Q's chowing down.


Feeling quite proud of myself, I gave the muffins to Q again for breakfast on Sunday morning. He picked up one piece, examined it closely, put it in mouth… and spit it back out onto his tray. Then he threw all the pieces of muffin onto the floor. *sigh* Oh well, I guess I will eat the other twenty muffins. Good thing they’re mini.  

I also made cheesy rice balls. Quinn LOVES cheese. He even says “cheese” now. It’s really cute. He also really liked this chicken and rice dish my mom made when she visited afew weeks ago, so I thought this would be a perfect recipe to try.

I tried this recipe a few weeks ago, and I couldn’t get the rice to form into a ball. But this time, I used risotto rice, and I got it right. I was so excited! There was no way Q could find anything wrong with these.

Ugly, but delicious. 


I gave Quinn some rice balls with dinner that night. As soon a piece touched his tongue, he spit it out and threw the rest on the floor. *sigh*

I thought Q might like them better after they’d been chilled. I gave him some rice balls again for lunch the next day, but I got the same result. Spit and throw. GRRRR!!!

I’m at a loss. This weekend’s misadventures in cooking for and feeding Quinn have left me very frustrated.

Okay, mommies of picky toddlers. I need your help! What the hell are we supposed to feed these kids? The boy can’t live on Cheerios, string cheese, carrots and blueberries.

Now I know why chicken dinosaurs exist…