My kids are adventurous eaters -- afraid we are going to lose that

[Anonymous]

How lazy are you? All you can make is grilled cheese, PBJ, and Mac n cheese? You have to order out to introduce your kids to real foods with, like, vegetables and stuff? Why don’t you learn how to cook then? Moron

[Anonymous]

I find this very interesting because these past two weeks that we've been home, we have been cooking a LOT more than usual, which has provided us the opportunity to give our children different foods than what we typically have eaten during the week.

My point being - you're cooking at home more, be adventurous in what you are cooking.

[Anonymous]

Cook your grilled cheese sandwiches with different cheeses.

[Anonymous]

Spices and sauces can elevate basic stuff without getting to expensive or complicated. Curry paste, hoisin, fish sauce, and chili garlic sauce can all be ordered from amazon. I can usually find them in our local Safeway, too.

With a can of chickpeas and a few basic veggies like carrots and red peppers (frozen if you must), a can of coconut milk and a jar of Thai Kitchen red curry paste (fairly common, and not overly spicy), you can make a delicious curry to throw over rice.

You can make a Thai peanut sauce for noodles and veggies, if you have some fish sauce and peanut butter. Whole wheat linguini can easily sub for soba in noodle dishes, and is easier to find on shelves than regular pasta these days.

Look for interesting dips and sauces that will work for veggies. Tzatziki was always a favorite in our house, but Greek yogurt with a packet of dried salad dressing mix might also work in a pinch.

If you can get an order from Trader Joe’s or H Mart, frozen dumplings and edamame are a super-easy meal. Look for a dumpling sauce, or just mix hoisin and soy for dipping. TJ’s sweet chili sauce is a good balance of sweet, tart, and spicy. Thin with a little water if it’s too spicy or thick.

If you have ground beef, look up a recipe for “cheater”’ Korean beef bowls. It’s super-easy to make bulgogi-flavored ground beef to serve over rice with whatever veggies you have handy.
Same with ground chicken or pork for “Chinese” lettuce wraps. they often don’t require anything fancier than ground meat, or even crumbled tofu, and some pantry spices/sauces.

You can also make basic everyday staples more interesting. Use darker multi-grain bread and strongly flavored cheeses for grilled cheese, or add thinly sliced apples and ham to your usual cheddar. Add a dab of Tabasco to boxed Mac & cheese, and throw in peas or broccoli and diced ham.

Add an herbed goat cheese like Boursin to scrambled eggs for a kind of French omelette (most supermarkets carry it with the deli cheeses). Or even a little shredded pepper jack will give a bit more flavor to scrambled eggs or quesadillas. look for goat cheese or Gorgonzola crumbles in the deli section to add to salads, eggs, even sandwiches, or tossed into hot pasta.

you don’t need to kill yourself to exactly replicate the dishes they liked in restaurants, just take the flavors and textures your kids have enjoyed and incorporate them into versions of stuff you’d make anyway. find a recipe that sounds good and just steal the sauce to use with chicken fingers or fish sticks, or use the same combination of spices in a similar, but easier, dish (like the ground-beef “bulgogi”).

TL/DR: Use pantry staples like spices, and look for strongly-flavored ingredients to make bland basics more interesting. If they’re not averse to trying new things, they should respond just as well to a wider variety of flavors and textures in their everyday stuff as they did to fancy restaurant dishes.

They may still go through a buttered noodle phase—most kids do—but at least you’ll have made an effort to keep things interesting for all of you.

[Anonymous]

Long-winded PP here: sorry for the novel. I guess I’m hungrier than I thought!

[Anonymous]

Learn to cook.

[Anonymous]

I’m blown away by dumb asses like this honestly. Your kids aren’t “adventurous eaters” you just had them order sushi. GTFO yourself. My kids eat any vegetable and fruit and food because I cook every day and taught them too. I’m not bragging about it. They do it because it’s what they’re given just like your children. It’s not an accomplishment. But seriously can’t you cook anything? The menu you listed is ridiculous. Learn if not. I’d be far more worried about failing to teach my children basic life skills than perfecting their Unami palate.

[Anonymous]

TL;DR: “I’m afraid my little cosmopolitan gourmands will lose their taste for innovative world cuisines and develop more pedestrian preferences,” says OP, as she slings boxed mac and cheese for the fourth time in as many days.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How lazy are you? All you can make is grilled cheese, PBJ, and Mac n cheese? You have to order out to introduce your kids to real foods with, like, vegetables and stuff? Why don’t you learn how to cook then? Moron

Before I would write such an inflammatory post and call someone a moron, I’d at least read what the person had written.

I cook plenty and have cooked more during the current crisis. My main problem now is that I don’t have the ingredients to cook much beyond the very basics. I have no meat and very few vegetables. I have limited myself to food delivery because of virus concerns and, at the moment, what I have been able to get online has been limited.

[Anonymous]

Lol

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, your kids will be fine. I was the pickiest eater ever until about age 10...and now I eat pretty much any cuisine.

This is a wake up call, though, to expand your cooking repertoire and keep a broader variety of ingredients on-hand once we resume something closer to normal life. I'm Asian-American, so my spice cabinet is more varied than average, I'm guessing...but I tend to have the spices available for a pretty broad variety of cuisines. I generally avoid more complicated dishes of cuisines I'm less familiar with, but I try to mimic the spice profiles. It's an easy way to create variety without needing a lot of exotic ingredients.

Stocking up a little is a good idea and it might give me a few more options. But, I'm in pretty decent shape with spices. I don't have any meat (other then frozen beyond meat "sausage") and I have very few vegetables. That makes it hard to do much and my attempts at resupply have so far been unsuccessful.

Before we ran low, I was doing a decent job of making real meals some of the time. I made a Paella and Japanese curry soup, for example. I can make chili and the like, and I am supposed to get some tofu soon, so that will open up a few other options.

But, since I've got enough food overall, including protein with beans, cheese and hopefully tofu, I'm not inclined to take the added risk of shopping.

OP, you don’t need meat or a lot of ingredients to make “adventurous” food. I’m East Asian and we don’t have a lot of meat and ate the same vegetables often. I don’t know what you have, but here are some dishes that require very few ingredients:

-fresh rice with butter, soy, sesame, or rice with PB. Use leftover rice for rice balls with any filling or fried rice.
-any Asian or pasta noodle in a peanut sauce, or broth, or cooked and then pan fried
-any broth with spices and whatever you have in the fridge and freezer - vegetables, wontons, dumplings, frozen seafood, coconut milk

The point is, your take on “adventurous” or “ethnic” food is pretty privileged and insulting for those of us who grew up with those foods. My mom often made a huge pot of miso soup or stew and we would eat that with rice for 2-3 days. And now you’re here whining about how you’ve made paella, but good thing you’ve got tofu coming, so your kids can continue to cultivate their palate!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:FIRST

WORLD

PROBLEM

IS

A

PROBLEM

NONETHELESS

It’s not a problem though. If your kids stop being so adventurous with their food, is it really a problem? They’ll just be like the majority of kids.

I'd prefer my kids not regress to have the palate of the majority of kids, so yes it is a problem.

It is better for them for health and other reasons to remain willing to eat a wide variety of foods. It is better for me if they do it as well because it would enable me to continue to go to interesting restaurants.

Is this the biggest problem facing the world today? Of course not, and I never said or implied it was. In fact, my OP was very clear that it was not the biggest problem that I personally was facing. But it is a problem nonetheless and one that DCUM might actually have some useful thoughts about. I would not say the same about my bigger problems so I didn't post about them.

The horror! Your kids might be like other kids! You may not be able to go to interesting restaurants with them! LOL.

[Anonymous]

^^^^

Yeah, she doesn’t want her kids eating like actually “ethnic” people. She wants them to eat like rich Americans.

[Anonymous]

Op, taking your kids to pho and Indian food doesn’t make them gourmands. Teach them how to make really amazing scrambled eggs. Watch the cooking shows. There are about a 1000000 out there. Chefs table is great. It’s all about making do with what you have. Plant a garden. Learn about local ingredients. And FFS order some groceries or send someone to the store. Every source on the subject has said it is fine.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:^^^^

Yeah, she doesn’t want her kids eating like actually “ethnic” people. She wants them to eat like rich Americans.

I'd love to hear the explanation for this piece of DCUM logical brilliance.

So going to restaurants owned and operated by immigrants from around that world that, in many cases, cater mostly to their community is "eat[ing] like rich Americans?"

How then would you suggest someone actually eat like people from various communities around the world?

Short of hopping on a plane to visit Yemen, for example, going to Marib seems like the next best option. But, please enlighten me.