Friends There Was Sushi...

I suppose I first have to address my utter and complete slackerdom when it comes to this blog. Honestly I'm not quite sure what's happening here...we shop for food, we cook food and we eat food (a lot lately in fact), but when it comes to writing about food, I got nothin, nada, zilch.

But here's the thing, I'm not going to overthink it, rather I'm just going to forge forward, as sometimes I think the best way to bust through a rut is to stop thinking so much and just do. Yes?

So now for our latest foodie adventure...as you probably gleaned from the title, it involved sushi (which is well...huge) and Millie, who it should be noted, is by far the pickier of my two girlies.

As I mentioned in my last post, one of our all-time favorite reads is The First Book of Sushi... Audrey was obsessed with it as a toddler, and now the tattered and torn little board book is a daily read for Millie. But here's the difference, while Audrey loved reading it, she never once connected the words and images on the pages with food she would actually want to consume. Millie, on the other hand, is obsessed with both reading about and (the idea of) eating sushi. So much so, that for the past couple of months, every. single. time. we'd finish reading the book, she'd sigh really dramatically and say, "I want sushi."

Umm...ok.

Now a good "foodie"mom (especially one that loves sushi as much as I do) would have taken her kids to eat it early on...to get their palettes used to the different flavors and textures, but here's the thing (and I know you know this) sushi is expensive. And I couldn't bear to throw down loads of cash only to have them whine and gag and partake in their usual "there's no possible way I'm eating that" dinner theater.... So I waited. But then Millie started asking for California rolls and miso soup and shrimp ebi, and it was officially go time.

I'd like to report that she loved it, that sushi has now become a go-to meal, that neither girl ended up eating giant bowls of cereal when we got home, but I can't. I can say that Millie was an excellent sport. She tried everything we gave her, didn't gag or spit anything out and seemed to be generally excited about the entire enterprise, which I have to say, is in and of itself a pretty big accomplishment...

Next up tripe. ;-)

So What I Said About Snacking...

a photo of my current snack of choice taken with my blackberry...

Well, I might have to take it back.

Pinkberry has landed in Dallas...and it's close to our house.

Too close.

Now I know it's not especially novel to blog about Pinkberry (it's right up there with cupcakes and Anthropologie in oft-blogged topics), but friends, I can't help it. This stuff is good. In fact, it's so good (or I should say the coconut with toasted almonds and raspberries is so good) that it's forcing me to take back all of my "I don't really snack...only on nuts and cheese...but I don't really seek snacks out..." blah, blah, blah, because I sought out this very snack two days in a row last week.

So I might now be a snacker. I'm just saying.

But I also might be OK with that after reading all your insightful comments re: snacking. So thanks for that. Thanks for weighing in and forcing me to rethink some of my issues with how the girlies are approaching food rather than just blindly forcing my own (apparently former) eating habits on them.

+ it seems every time I start to obsess over some bad food habit the girls seem to be adopting, they surprise me with an altogether unexpected food moment. Take Audrey's Pinkberry experience: she ordered a small cup of chocolate (of course) with raspberries. When we got back to the car, Bryan and I asked how she liked it, and she said, "it was great, but next time I want to order just a cup of raspberries." "Is that cool?"

Cool with me...

Oh Salad

There's a passage in Alice Waters and Chez Panisse where Alice muses (and I'm paraphrasing here) that given her own immense love of salad, it would be unfathomable to her that her young daughter Fanny wouldn't just come out of the womb craving it.

Lucky for Alice, this is essentially the case, and she's able to make wee Greek salads to tuck into young Fanny's lunchbox, which she happily gobbles right up.

Let's just say that's not so much what's going down at my house.

If my kiddos liked certain foods solely based on the fact that I liked them, there would be no need for this blog. They'd be happily lapping up any number of delicacies that they currently (vehemently) refuse, like, yes, salad.

I love salad in ways that a mere blog post can't adequately describe. Like Jora, I could eat it every day. In fact, if I had a pick only one thing to eat if stranded on a desert island, it would most certainly be salad...+ it's a perfect meal for when you're stuck in a post-holidays cooking rut (thank you for all your great suggestions/support for crawling out by the way, I just picked up a slow cooker cookbook, and I'm using that until inspiration strikes again...)

But the girlies, well the girlies won't touch salad.

I realize it's largely a component thing, as they like tomatoes and carrots and celery and any number of other things you'd put on a salad, but they just don't like them all tossed together with dressing (oh God no, not dressing...) oh and and stinky cheese. I think salad is infinitely better with some stinky cheese perched on top.

So for this one, (and truth be told, many others I'm sure) I'll just have to live vicariously through Alice, but I'm hoping the girlies will come around to my beloved salad... One day.

The blood oranges are gorgeous right now, so I built a salad around a couple I picked up at Whole Foods this weekend. Super simple and v. yummy.

Blood Orange Feta Salad

• One small head of butter lettuce washed and torn into small pieces
• 1/4 cup Feta cheese
• One blood orange thinly sliced
• 1/4 cup salted macadamia nuts, lightly crushed
• (this weekend I used sesame garlic SASS dressing, which is pretty much the only bottled dressing I'll buy, but my favorite dressing is below)

Dressing

• 1 cup walnut oil
• ½ cup chardonnay vinegar
• 1 tsp. sugar (or more, to taste)
• 1 shallot finely minced
• Salt and pepper to taste

Oh the Progress

It all started with a loaf of pumpkin bread.

Albeit it was incredibly good pumpkin bread, and it was delivered in the most magical, Normal Rockwell-esque way (by two kind neighbors, in a basket, on Christmas morning), so there was all sorts of good stuff happening with that bread before we even sliced it open. But really, other than cornbread, I’ve never seen my daughter devour something with such unabashed gusto as she did this bread. And she’d never tasted pumpkin bread before. + (and this is the big part) there was no cajoling, no begging, no “I promise you’ll like this, just try it for God’s sake…”

She just popped a bite into her mouth, and then another, and another…until half the loaf was gone.

That was the start.

A few days later during our New Year’s week trip to New Orleans, she also ate (for the first time with very little cajoling) and loved the following items, in no particular order:

• Jambalaya
• Dirty rice
• Cabbage (in full disclosure, she didn’t love the cabbage, but she tried it without gagging, so that’s something…)
• Black eyed peas

But wait, there’s more. That photo above, that corn, roasted red pepper and edamame succotash. Yep, she tried that too.

Honestly I’m not sure what’s happening here friends. I fear aliens have abducted my kiddo and replaced her with a pint sized epicurean.

So...any new foodie milestones on your front?

Edamame and Corn Succotash

• 1 bag frozen organic sweet corn
• 1 bag frozen organic edamame
• 1 small shallot
• 2 tbs butter
• 1 marinated roasted red pepper
• salt and pepper to taste

Completely thaw the corn and edamame. Sautee the shallot in butter. Add corn and edamame and sautee until cooked through. Dice red pepper and add to the pan, cooking for a few more minutes. Salt and pepper to taste. Especially good with pork chops!

Oh The Breakthroughs...

During the past couple of months, I've eased up a bit on my attempts (i.e. begging, bribing, etc...) to get Audrey to try new things. The string of failures was getting to me, and I was starting to tire of what felt a bit like dinner-time drama. Meals should be fun, right?

So I laid off. I still put new things on her plate, but if she turned her nose up, I didn't sweat it. Things felt mellower at mealtime, but I was starting to worry about stunted palettes and carb overload (I'm a worrier...it's my way.)

But as with most things in life, the less I cared, cajoled or stressed the more willing she was to do what I wanted her to do ;-) , and I'm happy to report that this weekend we had a string of major food breakthroughs.

Friday evening we stopped by our local Central Market to pick up some wine for dinner with lovely cousin Erin and boyfriend Ben, and Audrey, starving (this could have contributed to her food adventurousness too I suppose), happily popped a grape tomato that I offered up from our cart into her mouth... and the child hates tomatoes. She then proceeded to eat the entire container and asked me to buy another one for tomorrow. Success.

Then a few aisles over a lady was offering samples of tofu and veggie friend rice, which Audrey happily lapped up as well. What was happening here? I was beginning to think my child's body had been temporarily taken over by the spirit of some gastronome.

It was odd.

Fast forward to dinner, and she looks up from her plate to tell boyfriend Ben that his mashed potatoes are "delicious". Now I realize mashed potatoes aren't exactly a stretch, but these had the peels mixed in, plus a nice dose of sour cream and rosemary. All things that would typically make said potatoes a deal breaker for my daughter, but not on this magical night.

Progress friends...progress.

An Exceptional Dip + Some Pesto

image via martha stewart.com

(Tiff this is for you ;-)

My friend Sharon came to dinner a couple of weeks ago toting along this insanely yummy dip, and now I'm obsessed with it. I like it best with pita chips, but it's also good with veggies... Heck, I'd even put it on a baked potato.

We've got a bunch of basil in the backyard that has to be cut back tomorrow, so I'm planning on making some of the dip, plus a big batch of pesto. The girls have yet to try pesto, so my plan is mix a couple of spoonfuls into some angel hair pasta, give it a groovy name and serve it up this weekend. We'll see how it goes...

I like this simple, straightforward pesto recipe from Martha, as it calls for only one clove of garlic, and I tend to prefer things that are light on the stinkin rose.

Basil Parmesan Dip

• 1 pint organic sour cream
• 1 clove of garlic
• juice from 1 organic lemon
• 4 cups loosely packed fresh basil leaves
• 1/2 cup finely grated Parmesan cheese
• kosher salt + fresh ground pepper to taste

Put garlic and basil in food processor and pulse until chopped.

Add sour cream, lemon juice, and parmesan cheese. Blend until smooth and bright green, salt and pepper to taste.

Classic Basil Pesto -- adapted via Martha Stewart

Makes 1 1/4 cups

• 1/2 cup pine nuts, or walnuts
• 4 cups loosely packed fresh basil leaves
• 1/2 cup finely grated Parmesan cheese
• 1 clove garlic
• Salt and pepper
• 1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Spread nuts on a rimmed baking sheet; toast in oven until golden and fragrant, tossing occasionally, 5 to 8 minutes. Let cool completely.

In a food processor, combine toasted nuts, basil, Parmesan, and garlic; season with salt and pepper. Process until finely chopped.

With machine running, pour olive oil in a steady stream through the feed tube; process until smooth.

Yes, We Still Cook...

a meal I didn't actually cook but thoroughly enjoyed nonetheless!

Seems I’ve been so preoccupied with Audrey starting school (and therefore eating school lunch) that I haven’t had much time to blog about the actual food the girlies are trying and (sometimes) actually eating at home.

So I’m going to go back to my roots for a bit a blog about what we're cooking around here...

(+ I volunteered in A’s school cafeteria on Friday and was so freaked out by the experience that I’m going to have to back off the whole school lunch thing for a while so I can process and plot my next steps… Let’s just say that I’m abandoning my original goal of having her buy lunch at least three days a week. She gets to buy once a week and I’m packing her lunch every other day. And that’s all I’ll say about that…for now ;-)

So onto what we’re eating or better yet, what Audrey’s eating of late. Her new favorite food is, wait for it... chicken satay*, which as you can imagine is quite thrilling. She specifically requests "those chicken curry sticks”… The kid digs the taste of curry. Yay!

On the flip side, at the stellar brunch that lovely cousin Erin and boyfriend Ben made for us yesterday (photo above), I begged her to try Ben’s homemade beignets. I mean seriously what kid doesn’t want to try a homemade sugar covered donut? Mine apparently. No dice, it just wasn’t happening.

Oh well.

Any major food adventures/wins in your world of late?


* Audrey loves the ones from our neighborhood Thai restaurant, but when I make them at home , I always use this recipe

Chicken Satay -- adapted from epicurian.com

• 2 lbs. white meat chicken, cut in 1" strips
• Bamboo satay sticks
• 2 cloves garlic
• 1 tbsp. curry powder
• 1 tsp. coriander powder
• 1 tsp. salt
• 1 tsp. butter
• 3 tbsp. light cream
• 1/2 c. coconut milk

Combine marinade ingredients and add chicken to mixture. Marinate for at least two hours.

Thread chicken pieces on one end of satay sticks. Broil or much better, barbecue and baste with marinade.

The Go-To Meals and Our "System"

I'm rather addicted to Jenny's genius lobotoME notepads... love. them.

For every three or four meals Audrey turns her nose up at, we get an epic, lip smacking win.

She's every cook's dream that one, as when she does like what you've made for dinner, she tells you over and over and over...and says mmmm a lot. It's rather lovely.

When we do have one of these meal successes, I tuck it away into my go-to meal file. These make up roughly 75% of our weekly "meal plan", with the other 25% coming from "new" dishes for the girls to try. My goal is to expand their palettes a bit but not have an epic food battle every single night.

For the new things, the girls have to try one big bite. If they hate it, they don't have to eat the rest, and I try it again in a few weeks. If they hate everything else on their plate, they get one option for an alternative meal -- a bowl of cereal and a piece of fruit. That's it. Perhaps that makes me an indulgent parent, but I can't help it, I want them to eat something, and I want them to have a healthy attitude about food, to be allowed to dislike certain things. I think that's part of the evolution of our taste buds -- it just is what it is.

So do you have a "system"?? What are the go-to meals in your house?

Weekend Food...

Despite a full and fun weekend (or maybe because of it) we didn't cook much of anything beyond some homemade cornbread and some comically cursed brownies (think forgetting the egg, then forgetting to turn on the oven and wondering why after 35 minutes the brownies were totally raw...)

We did have an excellent Sunday Dinner at lovely cousin Erin and boyfriend Ben's house. Not only was it incredibly tasty, but both girls LOVED it...cleaned their plates, ate every. single. bite. and then asked for more. It was a huge, huge win friends.

The Menu:

Chicken Adobo -- recipe below
Simple Parmesan risotto
Sauteed green beans with pine nuts

Chicken Adobo (adapted from Serious Eats)

serves 4

• 6 boneless chicken thighs with no skin
• 1/2 cup soy sauce
• 1/2 cup balsamic vinegar
• 10 whole peppercorns
• 1 whole head garlic
• 2 bay leaves

Separate the cloves of garlic from each other and smash them lightly with the flat side of a knife to easily remove the skins. Add them with the rest of the ingredients—the chicken should be half-submerged—to a heavy pot. Bring to a boil, then turn the heat down to a simmer. Cook, covered, for 15 minutes, then uncover and continue cooking until the chicken is tender, turning the pieces occasionally.

If desired, remove the chicken pieces and reduce the sauce to a thicker consistency, adding the chicken pieces back in near the end to reheat. Remove the bay leaves and serve.

p.s. there's a great Michael Pollen article in NYT magazine this Sunday about the rise of our obsession with cooking shows, but our decline in actual cooking...

Want To Cook Together?

Recently Kristine of the excellent blog Waiting for Kids asked if I wanted to start an online cooking group for moms. I was immediately intrigued by the idea, and after a few e-mails back and forth sharing ideas, we came up with the following approach.

We’d form a group of like-minded folks that want to cook new, interesting things and test them out on their kids (or if they don’t yet have kids, someone’s kids…i.e. nieces, nephews, godchildren, the neighbor's kids -- really any willing tot will do), honestly sharing the results with the rest of the group. It's key that we’re totally candid about how the dish went off with the kiddos…I know it’s tempting (trust me) to only blog out our culinary “hits”, but understanding the misses and why they didn’t work is key.

The group would cook around a specific, pre-determined ingredient or type of dish each week and can use a new recipe, something of our own creation, something from a magazine…no restrictions there, except that it has to be something you haven't made before.

Each member of the group would post their recipe and results on Monday, (that way folks can work the good ones into their weekly meal planning) and (this one is especially important to me) try to use as many local, organic ingredients as possible in the recipe. Also I’d like to try and focus half of the recipes on vegetarian options since there are so many good reasons, especially environmental, to keep our meat consumption limited.

Now granted every kid has different tastes, so there are no "one size fits all" recipes, but my hope is that a few recipes will surface each week that feel like sure fire winners, and at the end of the experiment, we can create a compilation of the “kid-approved” ones. My dream is to cobble together a little cookbook that we could sell online and donate any profits to the groups trying to fix the abysmal school lunch program in America!

I’d like to start on Monday, August 3rd and go for 10 weeks. I’ll link to everyone’s blog who is participating.

Right now, I’m thinking the weekly “plan” could go something like this:

Week one – Vegetarian
Week two – Poultry
Week three – Pork
Week four – Vegetarian
Week five – Dessert
Week six – Seafood
Week seven – Vegetarian
Week eight – Red Meat
Week nine -- Casserole (no ingredient requirement)
Week ten – Vegetarian

So what do you think? Who’s in?

101 Meals...

I've been reading Best Food Writing 2008, I know, I know, major nerd, but the essays and articles are perfection... And it's ideal reading for someone with kiddos, as you can slam out an entire piece in about 10 minutes...

One of my favorite articles in the anthology is Mark Bittman's article from the NYT on 101 quick meals (actually it's 101 simple meals ready in 10 minutes or less, but I'm a smidge skeptical on the 10 minutes or less, as anytime I'm trying to whip-up something to eat, I've got kiddos underfoot and that inevitably adds a good 15 minutes to the whole enterprise...)

So let's just call it 101 meals ready in 30 minutes or less and call it a day, deal?

Virtually all of Bittman's meals look great to me, and as they're intended for quick summer eating, they also require minimal oven use, but there are only a few guaranteed to be out-of-the-gate hits with Audrey, so I'll start with those and ease her in to a few more.

Next stop tuna...yes, my child doesn't like tuna...sigh.

Four meals Audrey is sure to like from Summer Express: 101 Simple Meals Ready in 10 (30) Minutes or Less ;-)

• Fried egg “saltimbocca”: Lay slices of prosciutto or ham in a buttered skillet. Fry eggs on top of ham; top with grated Parmesan.
  
• Make a thin plain omelet with two or three eggs. Sauté cubes of bacon or pancetta or strips of prosciutto until crisp. Cut up the omelet and use it and the meat to garnish a green salad dressed with olive oil and balsamic vinegar. (sans salad, unfortunately)
  
• So-called Fettuccine Alfredo: Heat several tablespoons of butter and about half a cup of cream in a large skillet just until the cream starts to simmer. Add slightly undercooked fresh pasta to the skillet, along with plenty of grated Parmesan. Cook over low heat, tossing, until pasta is tender and hot.
  
• Hot dogs on buns — with beans!

Friends, We Have A Win...

And, it's a vegetable!

We roasted a big batch of cauliflower last night, and it was a huge, huge hit with Audrey.

Success.

The cauliflower was incredibly tasty on its own, just tossed with a bit of olive oil and sea salt and roasted at about 425 for 20 minutes or so, but the bar was raised significantly when we dipped it in the "magic sauce" that I originally whipped up for our skirt steak. (I also ended up dumping a bunch on my baked potato. By the end of dinner my entire plate was green -- it's that good.)

Our friend Ben, made this sauce for one of our Sunday dinners, and it has since been one of our faves. It's sort of the love child between a chimichurri and cilantro salsa + you really can't mess it up, it's totally improvisational...a beautiful thing!

Magic Sauce

(This is a very inexact creation, experiment a bit with the following ingredients, but a food processor is key.)

• Small bunch of cilantro, stems cut off
• Small bunch of parsley, stems cut off
• 1-4 cloves of garlic depending on your preference
• 3 poblano peppers OR if you want a mild sauce, 1/2 a green bell pepper
• Juice of one small lime
• Olive oil (but I was completely out last night so I used a bit of walnut oil instead... I know, I know, how does one run out of olive oil??)
• Sea salt, Fresh cracked pepper and Spike to taste

Chop the cilantro, parsley, garlic and peppers and lime juice in a food processor, slowly add in about 1/8 cup of oil and pulse for a few more seconds.

Add in salt, pepper and spike, pulse again, taste and add any additional seasoning.

Five Failures, One Success and A Really Good Meal

Sunday dinner with my lovely cousin and her boyfriend Ben has become a bit of a ritual. They’re avid cooks and equally passionate about tackling new recipes and eating local/sustainable, so it’s especially fun to cook and eat together.

It was a team effort, with Bryan grilling the sausages for my pasta as well as some lemons for Erin’s salad, which was a great combo of arugula, pine nuts, shaved Campo De Montalban (we’re loving that stuff) and a simple dressing of olive oil, a little champagne vinegar, some lemon juice, salt, pepper and a pinch of sugar.

For dessert I made a strawberry rhubarb crumble -- it was my first time to cook with rhubarb, so I was a smidge nervous, but I have to say it was incredibly easy and turned out pretty freakin yummy (I started with this recipe from Smitten Kitchen and then added some brown sugar and oats for the crumble…) Next time I think I’ll go wild and omit the strawberries; I’m living on the edge here people, completely surrendering to the perfect tartness that is rhubarb.



In Audrey news, she tried five new foods this weekend with surprisingly little resistance.

Her foodie adventures and reactions as follows:

• A bit of grilled lemon (above) -- Hated it.
• Homemade hummus on some baked pita – Hated it.
• A piece of drunken goat cheese – Hated it.
• A bit of local mozzarella from Mozzarella Company -- I think she would have normally liked it, but it came out of a tomato mozzarella salad, so it was infused with some olive oil, basil, tomato and a bit of vinegar, thus – Hated it.
• A bit of rhubarb crisp w/ice cream (I'm determined that she'll love fruit crisp) – Hated it.
• A bowl of wheat fettuccini topped with shaved parmesan and mild Italian sausage – Loved it, but this wasn’t a stretch for her at all, so I’m not sure it counts.

Tomorrow, I’ll share a few recipes!

A Set Back

I had this grand scheme last night.

Here was my thinking: I could magically displace any squeamishness Audrey has about the core ingredients of a particular dish (i.e. warm fruit), and she would happily lap it up with abandon, if she made said dish herself.

+ I wanted something sweet, and I’ve recently instituted a rule that we can only eat sweets if we make them ourselves -- from scratch (in an attempt to both eat fewer sweets and curb our serious addiction to boxed Ghirardelli double chocolate brownie mix...)

So while Millie and Bryan were happily ensconced in her room playing some combination of princess and the hokey pokey (don’t ask), Audrey and I set out to make berry crumble.

We sort of improvised our way through it, forgoing a formal recipe, and true to plan, I had her do almost all of the work while I guided her through the process. I also took this time to tell her about the blog… how I wanted to cook together more and for her try new foods and then write about them so we could remember it all when we’re older.

She was way into it, and I was positive she would love the crumble; you can see where this is going, no?

We let it cool, made some lightly sweetened loosely whipped cream to pile on top, and she dove in. Friends, it was way, way worse that the great guacamole debacle. She completely freaked out. It was epic: the gagging, the crying, the pleading for water… From her totally overblown reaction, you would have thought I’d just fed her the contents of her sister’s diaper.

“Don’t worry mom”, she managed to say after recovering from her meltdown extraordinaire. “You can just say I didn’t like it on the blog…”

She didn’t like it.

But I did… A lot.

Berry Crumble

• One cup of organic blueberries
• One cup of organic raspberries
• ½ tsp of fresh lemon juice
• 1 tbsp of sugar in the raw
• 1 tbsp whole wheat flour
• ½ cup oatmeal (not quick oats)
• ½ cup all purpose flour
• ½ tsp cinnamon
• ½ cup brown sugar
• ¼ cup crushed pecans or walnuts
• ½ stick of butter chilled and diced into cubes

Pre-heat oven to 350.

In one bowl mix berries, lemon juice, sugar in the raw and whole wheat flour gently with a wooden spoon or spatula, evenly distribute berry mixture into 4 ramekins.

In another bowl mix together oatmeal, all-purpose flour, cinnamon, brown sugar and nuts, add in chilled butter cubes and crumble together with fingers, cover the berries in each ramekin with the crumble mixture.

Place ramekins on a cookie sheet and bake for approx 30 minutes or until bubbly, let cool and serve with vanilla ice cream or lightly sweetened, loosely whipped cream.

A Win

image via zabars

I've somehow convinced Audrey to try a bite of something new every single day. This wasn’t an easy feat. Let's just say Audrey is squeamish.

She gags merely looking at certain foods (that aren't, by the way, particularly gross.) She clamps her nostrils shut tight with her fingers when we walk through the seafood, olive or cheese section of Whole Foods. She’s a bit dramatic that one.

At any rate, I’ve cajoled her to expand her taste buds a bit. Here’s pretty much how it goes down: I come up with something I want her to try (usually a bit of what I’m eating for lunch or dinner, like a small arugula leaf lightly coated with vinaigrette or a smidge of an asparagus spear roasted in olive oil and sprinkled with sea salt), she resists, wiggles around, clamps her hand over her mouth and shakes her head vehemently. I remind her of our agreement…blah, blah, something new every single day, blah, beg her, tell her how good it’s going to be -- how much she’ll love it…And then I bribe her with a piece of chocolate after dinner. That does the trick, and she quickly puts the item in her mouth, chews it up and immediately starts crying that she HATES it.

We’ve never had a “win.”

Yesterday’s attempt was by far the worst. I gave her a smidge of guacamole with feta cheese on the end of a homemade tortilla chip, which I was convinced she would love, as (not to brag) my guacamole is pretty kickin'. But no such luck. It was an epic disaster; the minute it hit her mouth, she gagged, then screamed, then spit it in the sink. I was pretty bummed.

A few minutes later, I went back into the kitchen to find Audrey perched at the island, eating the entire block of Campo De Montalban that I'd put out as a little pre-dinner snack… It's a Manchego-like semi-hard goat/cow/sheep milk cheese that is mild and nutty but definitely not the bland string cheese sticks that she normally gravitates to.

A Win at last! Almost made up for the guacamole. Almost...