Here Comes Mommy Chef: A Parent’s Perspective

I love food. Indian food, Malay food, Chinese food, Thai food, Greek food….the list is endless. As a child, I was a breeze to handle during meal times. I learnt to self feed at a very young age and had a penchant for eating rice with curries, simplifying my mum’s task of planning family meals.

When my daughter Kirtu turned six months old, I had pleasant visions of mother and daughter sitting down for hearty meals of home-made Ratatouille and Minestrone soup, freshly baked blueberry muffins, steamed puddings, and my favorite pastas. I scoured the Internet for recipes on how to make the most interesting and wholesome baby food and purées to get her started on solid foods. Annabel Karmel became my guru for her ability to make plain spinach goo look so tantalizing! I knew the vitamin and mineral content of so many foods I could have given nutritionists a run for their money. The top 10 iron rich food, foods that were bursting with anti-oxidant goodness, non dairy calcium rich food –

Yes, I was a walking encyclopaedia on food for babies and toddlers. So imagine my horror when Kirtu showed no interest whatsoever in anything that I made for her!

Baby no likey!

Her first solid food was mashed banana, which she hated with a vengeance. Seriously, who hates bananas? I could eat tonnes of them, raw, fried or baked in cakes and there she was, throwing her bowl onto the floor! Okay, so bananas weren’t her thing, I thought, and moved on to avocados instead. She did show some interest in it, for all of five seconds. In the next few months we tried peaches and cereals, pumpkin, squash, apples, pears, sweet potatoes, beet root, quinoa porridges, chicken broth and the response was always lukewarm bordering on tepid.

I had to give in to the fact that my baby was a fussy eater. It was a hard pill for me to swallow. I felt pangs of envy hearing mommy friends share tales of how their babies polished entire bowls of rice and noodles while mine didn’t so much as bat an eyelid at the baby-friendly lasagna I (sort of) painstakingly made.

It was time to get creative!

I decided to change the game plan and make meal times more fun and less stressful. It was tough at first as I was clueless on what to do, but reading and joining parenting groups online helped immensely.

I got my girl interested in cooking. She was already 15 months old by now and loved mimicking me in the kitchen so I let her beat eggs, mix flour, cut veggies (with a spoon). She would stand on the two- step ladder and watch me whip up some simple but nutritious meals. I varied each meal, sometimes just by grating cheese on leftovers from lunch or making a dip or sauce to go with extras from the previous meal. I presented meals to her as if they were art – Grapes arranged to form balloons; spaghetti strands forming kite strings and French toast made into the shape of The Gingerbread Man. I even taught her shapes and alphabets through food!

We’re surely getting there!

Today Kirtu is 27 months old and I wouldn’t say she is a foodie but I wouldn’t call her picky or fussy anymore. We have a just one bite game we play with new food – When there is something new on the dinner table that day, she has to take one bite and describe the food to me. If she doesn’t like it, I don’t force her to continue, but if she likes it, then she can have as much of that food as she wants. I also keep a cardboard book on food she likes, which we made together, in which I’ve stuck pictures of her favorite food and written down why she likes them.

There are days when she reverts to not eating almost anything, so I offer her colourful smoothies made with her favourite fruits. She especially likes dragon fruit smoothie and we make believe that it’s the Barney shake (her favourite TV character). On some days, even that won’t work, so I’ve learnt to Let it Go, Let It Go!

Taking it a easy for a bit

It’s not easy dealing with a picky eater. I tend to wonder if she’s lacking in nutrition or if she’s developing well enough. However, I have learnt that giving her some space and allowing her to take her time and even play her food and have fun at meal times worked for me.

Many of my ways were unconventional, such as ditching the high chair and having a picnic on the floor or spreading a rug in our garden and having our meal outside on a pleasant day. In time, I found that my girl had to develop her own taste for food and that some things in life just can’t be forced. Along the way too, my daughter helped show me that meal times could actually be fun, enjoyable and adventurous. It is a kid’s world, after all!