Homemade Hummus

Ever since I discovered how to make hummus at home, it's been a staple in our refrigerator. We've been making a lot of it lately, and I have to say, it hasn't gotten old. I don't follow a recipe, so it's slightly different each time I make it, but always good. I start with two cans of garbanzo beans, which I rinse and drain. 

To that I add a heaping scoop of tahini, salt, fresh lemon juice (from about 1/2 a lemon) and paprika. Most people would also include garlic, but I'm not always in the mood for garlic-y hummus, so lately I've been leaving it out. I put all the ingredients in the Cuisinart and slowly add olive oil until the consistency is smooth and creamy. I then sprinkle paprika on top to make it look nice. And that's it. I dip vegetables in hummus, I use it as a spread on sandwiches, and of course pita chips are wonderful dipped in hummus. Because hummus is made of garbanzo beans, it's packed with fiber and protein, which tend to give it staying power.

What I was most delighted to discover this weekend was that my daughter enjoyed it too. On Sunday she asked me for hummus and sugar snap peas, and I just about fainted on the spot. She didn't love the sugar snap peas, but she certainly had fun with the hummus!

How Stickers Are Transforming Mealtime

As you know, I firmly believe in letting a toddler choose what he/she wants to eat and how much, even if that means having only a cupcake  for dinner, or only broccoli on her plate. I've read over and over that when presented with a wide array of foods (including sweets), toddlers will balance out their food choices in the long run. That said, I've also been sensing that our daughter is becoming frightened of tasting new foods (except for Hanukkah gelt ). And I don't want this to become a "thing" where we go to a friend's house for dinner and have a child who won't eat anything simply because it isn't Cheerios or puffs. I also don't want to become a short-order cook. And most importantly, I don't want my daughter to be scared of food.

So I decided, with the agreement of my husband, to conduct an experiment with the goal of helping teach our daughter that it's okay to taste new foods. That she'll like some of them, and she won't like some of them. And even if she doesn't like a food, that's okay. We now have a chart (we call it a chart, though there is no order to it whatsoever) hanging on our refrigerator where our daughter is collecting stickers. She gets one sticker for every new-to-her food that she tastes. We're also trying to require a two-bite rule with these tastings, because oftentimes the first bite gets spit out and labeled yucky, but the second bite is more tolerable, sometimes even enjoyable. 

The first food we tested this system on was our New Year's Eve Potatoes Au Gratin, which were delicious, and frankly, aren't that far off from two foods she already likes: macaroni and cheese, and french fries. E sat on my lap for a good 10 minutes saying she didn't want to taste the food, but she wanted a sticker, and then a "snack," because she was still hungry (and didn't like what was served for dinner). I told her if she just took two teeny-tiny (smaller than a pea sized) bites of the potatoes, she could get a sticker for her chart and have a snack.

My husband asked if she was scared to taste the potatoes (an important question that I'm so glad he asked), and the answer was yes. So I told her to squeeze my finger if it tasted bad. She took a bite and spit it out. "Yucky," she said. She didn't want anymore. But I told her in order to get her sticker and have a snack, she needed to taste one more (smaller-than-a-pea-sized) bite. I also reminded her that she didn't have to taste it--she only had to do so if she wanted the sticker (and snack that wasn't part of what mom cooked for dinner). Finally, after about 3-5 more minutes, she took a second bite, and we asked, "What did you think?" "Good," she said. She even told my parents about it the next day and said the potatoes were yummy.

The next night we went out to Chinese food (with cantaloupe and graham crackers stashed in a purse) and she surprised us by diving into an egg roll and Chow Fun noodles before any of us realized what had happened (she tried two new foods). The next day, E's cousins came over for lunch, and ate some cuties (clementines) with the meal. At first E didn't want one, but I reminded her that she could have a sticker on her chart if she tasted two bites. Instantly, she asked her cousin for a bite. During the first bite you could tell she was evaluating whether or not she liked it. After the second bite, she asked for more, and ended up splitting another two cuties with her cousins, juice running down her chin and arms all the while.

Just two weeks into this experiment, our daughter discovered that she likes dim sum, tortilla soup and green beans!! In fact, when I asked her about the green beans, the conversation went like this:

Me: "What do you think? Do you like the green beans?"

E:   "Good."

Me: "Are the green beans crunchy?"

E:   "No, they're yummy!"

Me: "Do you want another one?"

E:    "No."

End of conversation. After three bites of a brand new food--green beans--she'd decided she liked them, but didn't want more. And that's OK! What I'm finding is that the more and more comfortable she gets with a new food, the more (quantity) she is inclined to eat of it, but not on the first night. And there is never any pushing from mom and dad to have more. Tortilla soup is a great example of this. In a period of about one week, she went from eating two bites of soup with a "what is this" scrunched up look on her face, to eating about a 1/4 of a bowl of it three nights ago.

So while I don't think we should make the dinner table a battlefield for our children, I do think we need to know our own kids. I was sensing our daughter was putting up a wall with food because she was scared. But I also sensed that if we could break through that wall, a whole new world of food would open up for her (to her delight). This experiment is still new, but so far, so good. Our daughter is much more inclined to taste a new food, and I'm finding that by the third or so night of tasting a new food, she's starting to like it.

She also seems to be "getting" that what mom and dad make for dinner, is what's for dinner. The ability to earn a sticker through tasting something new has somehow lessened her urge to walk to the refrigerator and get something that's not being served for dinner. Hence the "transforming" nature of mealtime at home. What a delight!

Have you had similar experiences with your kids?

Cookies for Breakfast!

You know by now that we don't label foods as "good" or "bad" in our household. You know that I let my daughter choose to eat a cupcake for dinner a few months ago, which resulted in her eating two+ servings of broccoli instead. Well, I thought I'd report in on another similar story.

We made chocolate and peanut-butter chip cookies a few weeks ago (Santa needed something to eat while delivering our gifts!). Our daughter enjoyed dumping flour into the bowl and helping us mix all the ingredients together. When it came time to sample the cookies, she ate about a half of a cookie and then wanted to play. 

The next morning, when I asked her what she wanted for breakfast, she said, "Cheerios." When she saw the tupperware filled with homemade cookies a moment later, she said, "and a small cookie." (No idea why she wanted a small one.)

"Okay, Cheerios and a cookie it is," I said.

I got out the cookie for her as I poured Cheerios and milk in a bowl, and she took a bite immediately. A teeny-tiny bite. She then sat down at the table and took another bite. A teeny-tiny-nother-bite. Then she began eating Cheerios and milk. She kept her cookie by her side throughout breakfast, and eventually declared "All done," with her entire cookie-minus-two-teeny-tiny-bites still intact. That was the end of her interest in cookies for the rest of the week.

Don't get me wrong -- my daughter has her fair share of toddler-inspired "preferences" with food, and while most of the time she doesn't want to try new foods, sometimes the excitement of a new and yummy food gets the best of her, especially when it's wrapped in a shiny gold package such as Hanukkah gelt wrappers!

At a Hanukkah dinner last month at which my daughter ate next to nothing at the actual dinner table, she discovered gelt with the older kids after the meal. She ate probably 8+ pieces of it, which resulted in a tummy-ache at bedtime. The next morning we had a conversation about how eating a lot of chocolate all at once can give us tummy-aches, especially when we have nothing else in our tummies. About a week later, at another Hanukkah party, she ate one bite of one piece of gelt and that was it. I sense that she learned--by listening to her body--that too much gelt gave her a tummy-ache, though she did want to at least unwrap one of those shiny coins.

My daughter is also in a phase of declaring all foods unfamiliar to her as "YUCKY!" Like many parents, I find these preferences highly frustrating at times, mainly due to the unpredictability of them. 

And while I'm grappling with how I might help her discover the joys of trying new foods, I do firmly believe that allowing her to choose her own foods--even if that means Hanukkah gelt for dinner--is sort of a game-changer. Sometimes she wants only bread for dinner, sometimes she wants broccoli for dinner, or cantaloupe and yogurt for lunch. That's what toddlers do.

And while I can't predict what my child will want to eat at any given meal, I can tell quite clearly that she views a homemade cookie and Cheerios with exactly the same emotional pull. Why did she choose the Cheerios over the cookie for breakfast (when given both)? I have no idea, but I do think it's probably because her two-year-old intuition told her that Cheerios would be most satisfying to her body first thing in the morning.

Toddlers really do know a thing or two. Can you imagine taking these two teeny-tiny bites out of a cookie and leaving the rest on your plate? How come?