Dinner Dilemma

My sons aren’t the worst eaters in the world but they are by no means the best. There are certain foods that they will eat without complaint but generally they are the pretty bland options. They like their Weetabix in the morning, they love toast [especially when it comes off their parent’s plate] and they will eat noodles and yoghurts without much fuss. It goes without saying that they will cheerfully tuck away sweets, crisps and chocolate until they can no longer walk and have to be rolled from one spot to the next, a la Violet Beauregard. As far as real food with actual vitamins in them go, it gets a bit trickier. They like Spaghetti Bolognese as long as there aren’t many lumps in it but you need to get the timing right and make sure that they are hungry or else you might end up wearing most of it. They will sometimes eat an apple [sometimes they will just bite an apple and spit out apple skin] and if they are in the right mood they will eat a banana, but only if you leave it in the skin and let them hold it.

After that, it’s a very short list. We always try to get them to taste new things but mostly they downright refuse and when they do acquiesce it rarely stays in their mouth long enough for them to have possibly tasted anything.

This is a longer than usual preamble but I am almost at my point so bear with me.

Aunty Lemons came over last Sunday to mind the boys while myself and Hannah went off to coach a basketball game [a glorious victory in case you are wondering, if such a thing can be achieved in the Dublin Under 13 Boys league] and arrived just as we were about to feed the boys lunch. We wanted to try and expand their menu so Hannah thought of mashing up a banana and covering it in yoghurt to feed to them. They like bananas, they like yoghurt so this was a sure thing, right?

Wrong!

One spoonful went in and before it had time to settle on the taste buds the tongue was thrust out. We were in a hurry and not in the mood for a fight so we just got another yoghurt which they ate happily and even had the cheek to look for more. The last of the yoghurt was now mixed with banana in the neglected bowls so we were about to tell them no more when Aunty Lemons suggested putting the banana yoghurt mix into the pots and seeing if we could trick them into eating it. Cue a trip into the kitchen to surreptitiously refill the pots.

I swear that Monkey Boy was looking at the pot suspiciously when I offered him the first spoonful but he must have decided that it looked enough like the old pot for him to open his mouth. It was not well received. We decided that one pot of yoghurt was enough and I went and changed my t-shirt.

To balance off Aunty Lemons clever [if unsuccessful] suggestion, I have to tell another story [if I had more time I would write a blog just about her]. When we got back from the game the boys were asleep so we got some lunch while it was quiet. I was eating some hazelnuts left over from Halloween and when she saw the nutcracker she asked what I was doing. Turns out the boys aren’t the only ones with limited tastes and she had never eaten hazelnuts straight from the shell before. I cracked one open for her and she was examined it carefully.
“Do you just eat it like this” she asked.
“Of course not, you have to peel the skin off first”.
I turned away and tried to hold it together while she tried to scrape the brown bits off the nut with a finger nail. She was at it for a couple of minutes before Hannah came in and asked what she was at. I managed to proudly announce that I was teaching her to peel the skin off hazelnuts before it all got too much for me and I broke down laughing.