Real strawberries and apples

We are now into week 8 of our pantry overhaul. Not one Goldfish has taken up residence in our house in almost 2 months. Whoa! Even I can’t believe that. My kids have learned to accept that at-home snacks consist of fruits, raisins, cheese, cereal, crackers, yogurt, homemade baked goods, etc. We’re really trying to get rid of the snacky snack foods at home since I know they get them elsewhere.

But what I also want them to develop is a sense of adventure with food. Yes, apples are great, but sometimes apples mixed in things are OK too. It’s fun to experiment with foods. Anna is a bit more game for this than Alex. Yesterday it started with a special treat of strawberry yogurt. Believe it or not, my kids both love plain yogurt. No flavors, just the yogurt. But Anna loves strawberry as well. So I bought a few little ones. She devoured hers in seconds. Alex starts to eat it and makes a face. “What’s this mommy?” I explain it’s strawberries in the yogurt. Both things that he loves: strawberries and yogurt. “Eeww, I don’t like strawberries in here. I only like real strawberries.” Later upon serving him the apple cake I made from our fresh farm-picked apples, he managed to pick out all the apples (which he also eats) and listened to him tell me about how apples shouldn’t be in cake. There is cake and there are apples, apparently. I could go on with a million examples, but you get the idea. My son is a purist with food. No adventure. No experimenting.

Anna is no stranger to this game either. A week ago I took her to Target for a rather long shopping trip. I bribed her full on with a muffin from Starbucks. She picked out the muffin which happened to be Pumpkin Cream Cheese. She yummied it down as fast as she could until she go to the cream cheese part.

“No like the banana, mommy,” she says. I explain that it’s not banana (which she does eat) but it’s cream cheese (which she also eats). She reinforced yet again that she didn’t like the banana in the muffin and could I eat it for her. We go round and round with this until she gives up. Crumbles the rest of the muffin her hand. Cries about the mess on her hands and dress. Cries that the muffin is gone. Throws her head back and hits the back of the seat and cries because she’s hurt. Lucky for me I got a bite of the muffin before we got to this point. It was really good, especially the cream cheese. Next time, though, I think I might buy Goldfish.