Toddler's Changing Tastes Pose Challenge for Food Writer
If he tagged along to a restaurant, I fed him whatever I was eating. I silently cheered as he devoured every bit of duck confit off the top of my tot waffle at Adventure Dinner 's Paris Olympics pop-up in Shelburne this summer, even though I didn't get any myself. At Frankie's in Burlington, he went so ham on the pommes purée — with his hands — that we had to order a second bowl (and borrow a towel to clean the banquette afterward). He ate beets, sardines, tropical fruits and kidney beans.
Emphasis on . Toddlerhood is a whole different ball game. At 16 months old, my sweet, exuberant son would prefer to subsist on freshly fallen leaves and bathwater. And maybe cheese, . As more of his calories have shifted to solid food, my adventurous eater's tastes have turned beige. Now, his three meals and two snacks a day have narrowed into a predictable roster of things he won't throw on the floor. I'm still trying, but if "food before 1 is just for fun," as they say, food after 1 is for dashing Mom's hopes.
The transition from infant to toddler showed up first in my son's lunch box. I'd been sending cute little meals to his infant childcare classroom, with a couple tufts of roasted broccoli or chunks of sweet potato for him to gnaw on, packed in a small two-compartment Tupperware container. When he moved up to the toddler room this summer, he got a bento box. Two compartments turned to five, and his appetite increased accordingly.
He also started eating the school-provided snack. Every day, I'd hear a bit about what he liked (kiwi, cheddar bunnies) and what he didn't (when his cereal touches milk). His sign language exploded, thanks to a love of blueberries (more!) and snack time in general (eat!).
Those communication skills — and a recent mastery of nodding and shaking his head — have made it clear that he not only has food preferences but also has figured out how to express them, sometimes strongly. No yogurt. Absolutely not. Ditto for pancakes, his teacher said, even when they contained chocolate chips.
Still, every night, we put a bit of what we're eating on his dinner plate. Usually, it ends up in the Catchy — an easy-to-clean contraption that sits under his high chair's footrest and catches whatever he drops before it hits the floor. I bought it after seeing the most successfully targeted Instagram ad I've ever been served.
The more popular part of my typical meal offering tends to be the cheese — usually Cabot Creamery 's rustic-cut cheddar — which he stuffs in his mouth while donning an appropriately cheesy grin.
As molars and germ season have rolled in, his appetite has become even more limited. I've succumbed to puffs and the dreaded applesauce pouches, which he sucks down faster than I used to slurp Jell-O shots in college. In an attempt to hide some vegetables on a particularly picky day, I stuffed individual peas into mac and cheese noodles; the over-the-top effort actually worked, but it took so long that I've yet to repeat it.
I find myself dreaming of his duck confit days or thinking of all the recipes I wanted to make from the , which sits optimistically beside my stove. It's too hard to watch him chuck something after I spent an afternoon cooking it just for him. But, like everything kid-related — as far as I can tell 16 months in — his tastes keep changing. Month by month, week by week, day by day and even minute by minute, if the kiwi is all of a sudden too squishy, or if he remembers that he really, really loves Bolognese.
We recently spent a weekend in southern Vermont with friends from college: eight adults and five kids between the ages of 2 months and 6.5 years. The meal planning looked a lot different from reunion weekends in our twenties, when we'd spend all day in the kitchen together cooking elaborate dishes. Now we had taco night, a simple breakfast, spaghetti and meatballs.
One friend texted to the group, "Does anyone's kid have food allergies?"
"We're a maybe on strawberries," another messaged back.
"No allergies here, but what he'll actually eat is TBD," I wrote.
"Saaaaaaame," came the reply. We all immediately hearted it.
