RACHAEL RAY

Many other moms of picky eaters have written to us to tell us how their kids enjoy anything wrapped up in a soft, flour tortilla. We tried this on our picky eaters and it worked with some. Specifically, they seem to like quesadillas with cheese and nothing else, turkey and cheese or ham and cheese roll ups that look like cigars or are sliced into pinwheels or peanut butter and banana roll ups. These are all great ideas to try with your picky eater, especially if you have one (like mine) who won’t even look at a sandwich.

Some Rachael Ray recipes:

Was’up Tuna Salad Pinwheels-these babies are great for lunchboxes. You can use sliced turkey instead of tuna.

Latin Chicken Wraps

Apple Jack Quesadillas

Chicken Quesadillas Pinwheels

Grilled Green Chili Quesadilla

Last weekend, I had a friend, who used to be a caterer, over for dinner.  We both have two kids and one picky eater each.  I thought, because he was a chef, he’d give me the ole “if you let them cook with you, chances are they will be more interested in what you are making and be more apt to try it.”  I have heard that so many times and that may work for the slightly picky/moody eater, but not mine.  Case and point: tonight we made home made pizzas, using Mario Batali’s grilled pizza recipe.  By the way, it was outrageously good and we did a whole pizza taste test where we grilled two pies and baked two in the oven on a stone.  The grilled guys were 1000 times better, and I didn’t think pizza could get any better than from my oven stone.  The grilling cooked it all the way through and made it crunchy and airy.  Yum-o!  Anyway, back to my picky eater, he had a blast helping me assemble the pizzas-he “painted” on the sauce and added the mozz, which was made fresh about an hour before from the cheese shop in my town.  Did he want to eat any of the fresh cheese?  No, his answer was only, “yucky,” as we were all inhaling it around him.  He did, however, take a spoon and eat the grated Romano cheese out of the bucket.  Why?  I can’t even begin to explain this one.

Needless to say, he ate the pizza because it is one food he enjoys.  But I can assure you, this had nothing to do with the fact that he helped me prepare it.  We have tried this so many times where it doesn’t work.

However, the one thing I did notice this past weekend, was that he did break down and try something new when he saw another kid eat it.  It’s almost like, seeing the other kid do it made my picky eater realize he would live if he gave it a bite.  So my advice is, as part of the picky eater’s introduction to new foods, try it when you have some friends or family over when he can see people other than his parents or siblings trying things.  I’m all about not pressuring the child to try new foods.  He’ll come around when he’s ready.  But I couldn’t contain myself when I saw him sampling a rib the other day.

The other thing my son did, which I thought was really cute, was take an interest in my garden.  He is not intrigued, at least not yet, by the tomatoes that are just starting to pop, or the peas, but he did taste, with my slight encouraging, my herbs.  I started with the mint plant, knowing he would like the taste, and he actually took a leaf and bit it.  He said is famous line, “yucky” but then kept going and tried basil, thyme, and some lettuces and then back to the mint.  To me, this was a milestone as I saw him try some pretty intense flavors and not run away screaming.

It may be that he is just maturing, but I do think these picky eaters will try foods in their own time and it is not something to worry about.  As long as they are eating a balanced and healthy diet, if they never try the Boeuf Bourguignon that you slaved over, they’ll live even if it makes your life difficult.

Recently, I had a visit with a friend who put together a delicious cheese board. In fact, here it is:

You gotta love the camera phones! It’s like walking around with an extra cartridge for your memory. Anyway, I digress. My friend filled this lovely plate with aged Goudas, blue cheese, camembert and other hard and soft cheeses. She served these with slices of baquette bread and that bread with the fruit and nuts in it, which I think is the perfect accompaniment to a soft and mild cheese such as a brie. Grapes, olives and hot peppers completed the tray and she added a bottle of honey as a condiment for the cheese and breads.

I looked at this gorgeous tray and decided that something like this might work for my son, the picky eater. Only for his tray, I would not have olives or super hot peppers, but I would have all kinds of nuts (he does love nuts), crackers, cheeses, salamis and sausages, apple slices, grapes, raisins and maybe some carrot sticks. The key here is to give him a tray of variety and choices so he could have fun grazing and sharpening his cocktail party skills at the same time (that’s supposed to be funny). I figured if I snuck some new items onto the tray, wedged in between his old favorites, like carrots and peanuts, then maybe he’d give them a try.

Now all he needs is a mint julep!

Rachael’s soft cheeseboard

I was always afraid of backyard trampolines, frightened by stories of kids somehow breaking their arms.  I imagined my kids getting bounced off the trampoline and flung across the backyard.  Then, my next door neighbor got one and the inevitable happened-the 8 and 10 year old kids next door invited my 5 and 3 year olds over for a bounce.  I hid behind the couch in my living room while my husband escorted them over for a little jumping.  I was too afraid to look.  However, nothing happened except for the fact that my kids had the best time ever on that trampoline!  When I finally got up enough courage to check out the contraption, I inspected the trampoline and found it to be really secure.  So I asked my neighbor, who happens to be a nurse, what about all of those kids who get hurt on trampolines? She said a few things that made sense:  No more than 200 pounds on the trampoline at once, no flipping or somersaults, especially when there are more than one or two kids on the trampoline at once, no more than 4 kids on at once, make sure it’s all zipped up and various other precautions that I now follow religiously.  The trampoline has turned out to be the best thing that has ever happened to us.  We are over there every day now, even when my neighbor isn’t home, we go over and sneak a jump.  It’s like having a pool nearby.  We will never leave these poor people alone.  Hey, it’s great exercise and I have realized that I can zip my 3 year old in there and let him go to town while I do some weeding nearby.  It’s a win win for all of us.

Here is my 3-year old enjoying his turn on the trampoline with my husband standing by, closely observing his every move.  We’ve eased up since then.

So I had another winning moment with my picky eater this weekend. We went out of town this weekend and as he continued to eat nothing but apples (is that a bad thing?), I worried about him, as usual, but then lo and behold, he surprised me on Saturday. We went to a big party and there was someone working the grill and making chicken and beef satay sticks-in other words, chicken breast and beef pieces skewered on wooden sticks and grilled, then served with a peanut dipping sauce. While my guy wouldn’t touch the sauce, he ate two whole chicken satay sticks. He walked right up and grabbed them off the plate and strutted around eating each like it was a lollipop or an ice-cream cone.

I don’t know if it was because he was a) hungry-he was, b) he saw another kid his age grab one or c) he really liked the whole grab it and eat it while he was walking around aspect to it.

Whatever the case, I will make these at home, and better than we had at the party. I can easily skewer a nice and juicy piece of chicken, give it a little EVOO and salt and pepper and throw it on the grill. Let’s see if lightening will strike twice!

Here’s Rachael’s recipe for Chicken Satay

This weekend we dusted off the coals and fired up the grill like many Americans.  We were so excited to be out in our backyard for three days straight that we cooked up a storm.  My husband put on his grillmaster apron that I got him last year for Father’s Day, complete with a bottle opener and a pocket which specifically holds a beer.  He told me to step aside while he got out his grilling tools, like a man going into battle.  He worked all day, in fact for two days, at preparing Baby Back Ribs by following the rub and barbecue sauce from Adam Perry Lang’s recipe collection on our site.

***Stay tuned because we will be putting out a whole Grilling Minisite by the end of this week***

I made tons of side dishes, my favorite being Rachael’s Orzo Salad.  Because we made Greek-seasoned lamb kabobs along with the ribs, this salad was a perfect match. Additionally, I made Greek yogurt sauce (Tzatziki) by blending in a bowl:

• 1 container of good quality, plain Greek yogurt, such as Fage brand (use 17 ounce container of 2% or whole milk)
• 1-2 cloves of garlic, minced
• 2 tablespoons of dried dill
• Juice of 1 small lemon (taste it after you squeeze 1/2 lemon in first to see if that is enough)
• 1 large cuke, peeled and shredded into the bowl

We served the meal with pitas, fresh from the oven and let people wrap the lamb kabobs in the pitas with the yogurt sauce.  Orzo salad was served on the side.

What does this have to do with ribs and my picky eater?  Well. while everyone else was assembling their Greek pitas, no one was watching my son who eyed the lonely plate of ribs sitting on the table.  Much to my surprise, he helped himself and gnawed away at a couple of ribs.  I was thrilled to see him try something new and without my cajoling!  He also managed to polish off a hamburger, one of his faves, so you could say he ate well that night.  Now if only he’d have eaten a veggie!

I know this sounds crazy, but I had never made meatloaf before last night, not had I tasted it.  I guess it was one of those things that as a child I didn’t like the idea of so I never got around to tasting.  I don’t think my mom made it too much either, so where else are you going to have it?  Anyway, my kids and I were watching a Stuart Little cartoon where the main plot line involved Mrs Little making 12 meatloaves for a school function.  The meatloaves get stolen, and well, the rest really isn’t important.  But my kids thought it was so funny, that I thought I would try making meatloaf to entice my picky eater.  I know, here I go again using pop culture to influence my kids, but in a positive way, so I can justify it!

Anyway, I took this recipe of Rachael’s for Turkey Meatloaf with Asiago Gravy and Roasted Broccoli and Tomatoes but I simplified it because  I knew my kids would not want the gravy and I didn’t have any Asiago cheese in the house anyway.  However, I made the meatloaf recipe just as Rachael describes here, except instead of 3 slices of bread (I cut the recipe in half and made one loaf using one pound of ground turkey), I used a bread-oatmeal combo.  I had heard other moms say that they always put oatmeal in their meatloaf so I decided to try it.

The meatloaf was a hit.  I told my picky eater son that it was hamburger when the whole Stuart Little reference in the end failed to entice him.  I served it with steamed broccoli and I must say, this wound up being a pretty healthy meal!

Try this one with your family, it’s delish!

My daughter is 5 years old and it learning to play piano as of a few months ago. We started her on lessons after she showed an interest in my parents’ old piano every time we would visit them, 8 hours away. We had always said we’d be a musical family, so when we heard of a teacher who was well-liked by small kids, we signed up. The lessons have been great, but after a month of two, the teacher insisted we buy a piano of our own, saying she could no longer progress in teaching our daughter without her practicing. We started to look around for new upright pianos and were floored by how expensive a new piano could be! So we turned to Craig’s list and found a ton of used pianos that were more reasonably priced. Still, we procrastinated buying one because we knew we would have to go in person to see the piano with a tuner before we made the purchase. My daughter continued to go to lessons and we continued to get warned by her teacher. It was embarrassing.

Then one day, I was driving down our street with my father, who was visiting, and we spotted a small piano on someone’s curb, waiting to be picked up by the trash truck. We immediately stopped and checked it out. It was, in fact, a real upright piano, but a junior sized one. I had never seen one of these:

It’s really the cutest thing you’ve ever seen and perfect for my daughter. So my poor father pushed the thing uphill to our garage (it’s really heavy so he couldn’t life it into the house) and we started to clean it up. We told the teacher about the piano and we thought by her look that she was going to tell us that it was not a serious piano but we begged her to send her husband, also a pianist, to our house to inspect it.

As I was retuning from work last night, I saw him in the garage tinkering with the piano. I also saw the people who were throwing it out on the street and I stopped to tell them we had it and ask them if it was in working order. The woman smiled and said, “yes it works well, my boys just don’t play it anymore.”

She then asked me if I knew whose piano it was before she owned it. Of course I didn’t know. Apparently it belonged to a little girl who is quite famous in our town because she died at 8 years old from a rare form of bone cancer. In fact, our local playground is named in her honor.

I have to say I was touched to learn whose it was. We didn’t know the little girl and her image looms with us in the playground where we spend much of our weekends. She sounded like quite the special little person and to think that we may have just inherited something she loved, makes me feel like we can carry on a bit of joy in her honor. And who knows, maybe she is looking down on us and providing a bit of divine inspiration. I’d like to think so.

So when I pulled up into our driveway, my husband started to tell me that the man examining it said we could keep it for one year until she is really in need of a bigger piano. He didn’t get halfway through his first word when I just looked at him and said, “we’re keeping it.”

Julianne, we didn’t know you, but we are thinking of you now.

My girl:

You would think every kid would love a bowl of nice hot chicken soup, right?  What’s not to love?!  I have been making it my whole life and my oldest child absolutely adores the way I do it.  I add a can of whole tomatoes or a tablespoon of tomato paste to give the broth a little richness and flavor.  I guess you could call it Italian style.  Anyway, the other day I made my famous soup and my daughter had THREE bowls.  My picker eater son ate none.  So I strained the soup and took the broth, without any noodles or anything else (did I mention he will only eat spaghetti and not any other pasta shape now?) and poured some into a sippy cup with an ice cube.  I didn’t tell my son what was in there and gave it to him like it was just a regular drink.  He took one sip, made a face that said “what the heck did you just give me?” but then he drank it!

I figured the broth is a pretty important part of the soup.  No, he did not get the nice chunks of chicken or the carrots, but the broth has to contain some nutrients that are good for his body.

You moms of non-picky eaters will read this blog and think I am crazy.  You fellow moms of picky eaters will completely get it!

We’ve been talking about kids and the bottle and kids and sleep, but how about potty training. We had to train both of my kids by age 3 because their pre-school wouldn’t let them come to school in diapers. I thought that was cruel when I first heard of the policy but apparently it is common.

With my daughter, the training was no problem. She was turning 3 in October so she was almost 3 when we trained her the summer before. She took to it like a champ and had no accidents in school. For the next year, she would have the occasional accident but it was usually because she was so caught up in some fun game with a friend that she didn’t want to stop to go potty until it was too late. Live and learn.

With my son, he turned 3 last September and I was so terrified of potty training him, thinking he’d never get it, that I put it off until the month before he was to start school, the same month in which he would turn 3. Some of my friends had told me that they didn’t train their sons until they were 4, so I really was worried about my son, who was also not a good communicator so I couldn’t tell if he understood what I was trying to get him to do. But sure enough, he learned quickly and he never had a single accident in school. He was much smarter than I thought about it-he knew enough to hold it all morning at pre-school, then when we would pick him up, he would immediately wet himself on the car ride home. Eventually, he stopped doing that as well and we got alot smarter about making him use the bathroom before we left the school (duh). We still kepthim in diapers at night for next few months but at one point I had to ask myself how he would ever learn if I didn’t just remove the diapers completely. So I did. Months ago. And just when I thought we were out of the woods, he wets his bed. so now here’s what I do-I put him to bed at around 8pm. When I go to bed, around 11 or 11:30, I put him on the potty and he goes, literally in his sleep. Then he is usually good until morning, but if I didn’t do that, he’d wet the bed.

How do I get past this? My husband wants to throw the night diaper on him again but I just can’t do it. I feel like we need to tough it out as long as it takes.