Trying New Foods

Filed Under Avon, Cooking/Baking, Food, Sensory Processing Disorder, Two and a half years old | 4 Comments

We had some major progress today with trying new foods! It is SO hard to get Bailey to try anything new. After hundreds of hours of OT, and a cooking class at her Early Childhood Center, we have determined that she is just going to be a picky and hesitant eater. It frustrates me to no end. It’s like if I could just get her to try a certain food, I know she would like it. Mealtimes are not pleasant at our house- mainly because I stress out over everything and Jonathon keeps trying to convince her to eat.

Well tonight, I made a pot roast for dinner. Roasts are one of my favorite comfort foods. Jonathon is not a big fan, and Bailey has never touched one before. Well despite the opposition from those two, I make a roast anyway once every few months. Today Bailey smelled it cooking and started asking what it was. She said she wanted to taste it. At dinnertime I put a few carrots, pieces of celery, and meat on her plate. Along with a half a banana, a buttermilk biscuit, and some corn. We always give her at least one thing she is guaranteed to eat (in this case the corn and banana) and one thing we KNOW she won’t eat (the roast) and one thing that she might try (biscuit).

She started off by telling us that biscuits were for dogs, and flat-out refusing to taste it. So she kissed it goodbye and handed it to me. That was fine. Then she ate all of her corn, as expected. Then I casually picked up a carrot off my plate and commented, “I’m going to bite this little carrot in half.” She picked up her own carrot, repeated that, and ate it. Then she said, “That’s very good!” and ate the rest of her carrots. AND tried the celery- which I thought she would hate- but she said, “These green beans are good!” Since the child has honestly not eaten a green bean in at least a year I guess she didn’t even know that wasn’t what it was. We just went with it and she ate about five bites of cooked celery and took seconds on carrots!

Once she was done with that, she wanted to get down and I told her to eat her banana first. She did, and then as I was washing dishes she came into the kitchen and asked for more carrots. I’m not one to ever deny my child a vegetable (maybe because she only eats them once every six months) so we stood in the kitchen and picked cooked carrots out of the pot and ate them together.

We opened a new silicone baking pan that I got from Avon, and I showed Bailey how we can make little cakes and muffins in the shape of butterflies, ladybugs, etc. She wanted to try it, so we used a Jiffy chocolate muffin mix (the box ones that are like 2/$1). It was the perfect amount of mix and they only took 12 minutes to bake. She was so excited to watch them in the oven with the light on. After we took them out I told her they needed to cool off, and that when we got back from delivering Avon we could have a tea party with our special cakes.

We went to deliver some Avon orders and drop off new brochures to my customers. She mentioned a few times how she wanted to go home and eat one of her special cakes. She had fun deciding which one to try. She ate a ladybug one and I had a butterfly. They turned out really cute. This is my child who will NOT eat any sort of bread, muffin, or cake. She has has problems in the past with gagging on these textures and basically avoids them at all costs now. I think she was excited enough to try these, that she didn’t worry about that. She ate almost the whole ladybug and then told me she wanted to save the rest for later.

This was a super way to make a snack into something fun. I am going to have to buy more healthy mixes (like berry ones instead of chocolate!) so we can do it again soon. If you have a child who is a picky eater, this pan is an absolute miracle. They aren’t available yet on my website because they are brand new, but I can advance order them if anyone is interested. I believe they are only around $10 intro price.

Anyway, all this talking about food. If you have a child who eats normally it doesn’t make sense. If your kid is a bad eater like Bailey, well first of all HUGS to you, and second, you know why I am so happy about this small step we took today!

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