I About Fell Off My Chair...

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Tonight for dinner we had steak tips, french fries, broccoli and eggplant croquettes. Well, the eggplant croquettes were for me because my family is not what I would call adventurous eaters (yes, eggplant is considered a weird thing in this household).

I did the obligatory offering of the croquettes to every one and to my surprise my five year old son said he would try it. That was amazing in itself but then he actually liked it and asked for more! Say what? My child who for the past few years has been adverse to trying vegetables actually just ate eggplant and didn't spit it out with a look of terror on his face. I was so proud of him but then something that made me almost fall off of my chair happened- my husband asked if he could try some too. Seeing picky Tyler chowing down made him think that it may actually be good.

My husband only eats a few veggies- beets, corn, potatoes and sometimes peas if they're mixed in a stir-fry. When I eat my veggies he looks at me like I am eating a pile of rancid dog poo, so him saying he wanted to try the eggplant croquettes was crazy.

Even crazier, my picky husband actually liked it and said I should make them for dinner again. The same thing happened a few weeks ago when I made pumpkin muffins- he thought they were gross but then randomly decided to try one and he now loves them.

So Yo Gabba Gabba was right when they say "try it, you'll like it". That is all I ask- just try the gosh darn food I make and you may actually not want to throw up after eating it. Now I feel inspired to make other weird veggie dishes to get the picky men in my life to eat their veggies.

Whole Foods

Health is Wealth Chicken Nuggets $4.99

Earth's Best Fish Nuggets $4.99

Mom Made Pizza Pockets $3.79 - Free MC Coupon

Well Kids Chicken Hot Dogs $4.99

Total: $13.77

The cashier took off $4.99 for my free coupon instead of what the price really was- I guess they aren't too used to coupons at Whole Foods.

I am very happy with what I got. The chicken nuggets and fish nuggets are breaded in whole wheat bread crumbs and don't have tons of artificial and junky ingredients. I have been looking for healthier hot dogs for my son and these chicken ones are great- there are only a few ingredients in them and are better for him than beef hot dogs. I now have some foods that I can use to get my daughter to eat meat and open up her food repertoire a bit.

I went to the Whole Foods in Dedham, Ma and wowza- it is huge. I was also pleasantly surprised to see that they have a huge wine selection and that they sell beer. What really floored me was that Whole Foods had wine for $2.99 a bottle (with a screw cap) and really nice looking wine with a real cork for $3.99 a bottle! I will so have to buy some the next time I make a trip there.

Shopping at Whole Foods in general is such a lovely experience (except when I have to bring the kids and my daughter is being a little monster). Everyone is so polite and the store is so nice and neat. It is the polar opposite of the Wal-Mart in my town which I would rather cut off both of my hands than ever step foot into again (horribly ignorant and rude customers and the store is just a hot mess in general). If only I were rich enough to do all of my shopping at Whole Foods but I'm not so I will just have to suffice on once in awhile visits.

Why Must My Kids Be So Picky?

I was still sick as a dog today but after being  completely lazy all morning I felt I needed to do something that made me feel somewhat productive. I decided to make homemade and somewhat healthy pop tarts.

To tell you the truth this was a recipe I wasn't too sure about in regards to how my kids would like it. That is why I halved the recipe. It really didn't take long to make them and they smelled delicious when they were in the oven. For the filling I used Polander all fruit jelly- my kids love it and it is made of just fruit with no sugar or other junk. I didn't try these because I hate jelly with a passion but the crust was really good and flaky which was surprising considering I used all whole wheat flour.

I gave one to my daughter and she would not eat it. I was so annoyed because all of the sudden she is not eating things that she used to love to eat and she is way against trying anything remotely different. I still continue to give her different types of food because I know someday she will give in and eat like a normal human. My son tried it and spit it out and then said "nice try cooking mommy". His issue is he does not like things that are crusty. I don't know why because ever since he started eating solid food I have never cut the crusts off of his food but now he has decided that crusts are yucky and anything remotely crusty is super yucky.

So, I think this is a wonderful recipe- my kids just have issues right now which are really annoying the ever living crap out of me. Maybe I will make them again and try half regular flour and half wheat flour and maybe I will try different fillings. What I do know is that just because my kids want to be picky doesn't mean that I am going to give in and feed them junky food- I will not give up without a fight!

I Somehow Pulled Dinner Together Without A Meal Plan...

As I said yesterday, I am not doing a meal plan this week. Sometimes doing a meal plan makes me feel like I have my shite together and sometimes it stresses me out beyond belief to plan out a week's worth of meals. his week was one of the weeks that I feel better just winging it.

Tonight we ate very well with zero stress for me. We had panko crusted pork chops (we sure do love our panko in this house- especially the Progresso italion panko crumbs), homemade fries (not really fries, just cut up baby potatoes with olive oil, salt and pepper roasted in the oven until crispy and yummy), corn and fresh spinach sauteed in olive oil, salt, pepper and garlic salt.

 Pretty good meal for something that I came up with at 2 pm. We had everything on hand and the only minimal planning ahead I had to do was to take the pork chops out of the freezer and defrost them in cold water (my prefered method to defrost meat is in cold water- my fridge takes about twenty years to defrost anything and leaving meat out on the counter to defrost at room temperature is really gross because all that I think of is the bacteria multiplying by the zillions).

I am starting to think that my 19 month old daughter is a vegetarian who hates vegetables and loves carbs and fruit. Whenever I put food that we are eating on her plate she picks it up and hands it back to me and then freaks out because she wants me to wipe any residue of the offending food off of her fingers. I am stubburn and will continue to piss her off at dinner every night by putting food in front of her she hates because someday I will break her. My son was not as picky as her but he used to hate vegetables. Now because of my iron will he will eat a little broccoli, beets in vinegar (I give credit to my husband on this one), baked potato, the occational pea if I take the skin off and tonight he ate a piece of spinach (okay, we bribed him with chocolate ice cream- maybe that was bad parenting but he ate the darn spinach and realized that it wasn't gross). But I digress...

So, tomorrow after lunch I will put my thinking hat on and come up with something else to feed my family.