|
by Kathy Buckworth
Visit a local bookstore and you’ll
see that the cookbook section is filled with several variations
of the theme of “Deceptive Cooking”. Loosely defined,
parents are apparently being told to disguise good, nutritional
food in fun and exciting ways, in order to convince their
fussy eaters to switch over from “bad food” (for
example breaded, greasy pre-formed objects which require plum
sauce), and instead eat broccoli, yams, and various other
“good” foods which are ground up, stuffed, and
shape shifted into eye catching delights for toddlers. And
I thought I was tricking them by putting that ketchup smile
on their Kraft Dinner. Am I the only one who thinks that this
new approach is taking things a bit too far in the Pandering-to-Children-World
that we live in? Not only does it neglect to teach children
about which foods are actually good and/or not bad for them,
it has to be causing Moms and Dads a huge amount of extra
effort. This method of feeding children is only for the very
rich (i.e. Jerry Seinfeld’s wife Jessica, who wrote
the bestselling of these books) who don’t spend anytime
changing toilet rolls, looking for lost hockey equipment or
stitching up that favourite rabbit, OR, for those with extreme
amounts of spare time on their hands (those Moms who hand
make 30 little Valentine Cards, for example.)
Parenting experts have long told us not
to become short order cooks in your own house – feed
the kids one thing for dinner and if they don’t like
it, they don’t eat. This works for me on many levels
– first of all I only cook one meal, secondly the kids
know they are going to be served food that they don’t
like on occasion, but that they have to literally suck it
up anyway, and thirdly, that they are given the opportunity
to learn about new foods and try new foods. I have four children:
One of them a pseudo-vegetarian, one of them a growing teenage
boy who advises the others to “drown everything in hot
sauce”, another child who loves my cooking almost as
much as she loves to wipe food all over her face and then
on her sleeve, a six year old who can use up a half a bottle
of salad dressing on one piece of cucumber…and a 44
year old who won’t look up from his BlackBerry long
enough to take in the fact that he’s actually sitting
at the dinner table and not still on the GO Train. At this
stage I’m not so concerned with disguising food as much
as I am with simply dispensing it. I only have a rota of about
a dozen meals that I can get to the table in an edible format
anyway, between driving to the hockey games, the violin lessons,
the mall, and oh yes the grocery store…yet I think the
result is more positive than stuffing tiny pieces of broccoli
into french fry wedges and pretending they’re swords
with emeralds. Why?
- My kids routinely expect to be served
something they don’t like, so anytime it’s a
meal they actually like, I’m Mother of the Year.
- They have gone from saying “What
crap is this?” to “Oh not this crap again!”
- When we go out to a restaurant, or to
a friend’s house for dinner, I’m not madly trying
to manoeuver the Brussels sprouts into the centre of bun
and pronouncing it “Baked Boogers” (for the
five year olds), or “EarthDay Surprise” (for
the teens).
- They know precisely which foods they
like, and which ones they don’t like. And can describe
in wonderfully descriptive and imaginative ways in which
the offending food resembles poo.
The biggest food related deception we have
going on in my house is that until the kids start eating meals
at other Mom’s houses, actually believe that my cooking
skills are adequate. I have deployed a much more organic approach
to the deceptive cooking philosophy. Make the food, serve
it up, and then pull out the “Doesn’t that cloud
look like a ship?” approach if necessary. Come on, kid
– doesn’t that sprout actually look like a green
Bacugon? Well then you just can’t be that hungry.
 |
Kathy Buckworth’s latest book, “Journey to
the Darkside: Supermom Goes Home” is available in
bookstores everywhere. Read Funny Mummy every month and
watch Kathy on Slice Network’s “Birth Days”,
Friday nights at 10:00. Visit www.kathybuckworth.com
|
[top]
|
