The FDA has put out a warning that people should not eat any foods containing pistachios. They are investigating whether pistachios are linked to a possible salmonella contamination.

For more on the story, check it out here.

My daughter just had her 2-year-old checkup with the doc on Friday and he gave the go-ahead to let the peanut butter and fish flow. Not together, of course, but you know what I mean.

I never quite understood the difference what the magical age of 24 months as opposed to 23 months would make on eating fish or peanut butter. Either way, I stuck to the doc’s orders. My niece was allergic to peanut butter as a baby so I figured why chance it.

After a hellish doctor visit and 45 minutes of crying later, we found ourselves at the must go to McKinney and Doyle restaurant in Pawling for lunch. When we ordered, the waitress suggested macaroni and cheese or peanut butter and jelly for the lil one. Of course, I jumped on the PB&J, excited that she would get to enjoy for the first time, a classic.

I was certain she would love it. In moments, the waitress plopped the plate in front of her, a peanut butter and  jelly sandwich dripping with said ingredients, in quarters with the crusts cut off. Who wouldn’t want it?

Zyla grabbed a piece, took a bite and in an instant all my hopes of watching her enjoy a new flavor in her mouth, not to mention reliving a childhood and college staple, were dashed.

“I don’t like it,” she said staring straight into my eyes and with that tossed the poor little crustless quarter back on the plate.

I couldn’t believe it. My daughter who’s father makes quadruple-decker PB& J sandwiches. For shame. Who doesn’t like PB&J? Certainly not my co-worker who pretty much eats a PB&J sandwich or two every day for lunch.

But no, Zyla wouldn’t even give it a second chance. There was only one thing left to do—eat it myself. But not even that (she’s at the age where she wants to do everything mommy does) could tempt her.

Incidentally, she wouldn’t try the fish I ordered either.

We’ll give the peanut butter—and fish—another try in the near future. But for now, I guess the kid doesn’t know what she’s missing.

My work schedule has been eccentric over the years, but I still manage to gather the troops most nights for a sit-down dinner.

The downside is we end up eating closer to 9 p.m. than anything else. I used to tell the babes that we subscribed to the European model and let them graze until I got home and could make dinner. Ah, the stories we tell our children!

Recently, we’ve been stretching dinner out even later. My youngest, unlike her siblings, actually has some major after-school activities and she doesn’t get back from them until 9 or 9:30 p.m. Thankfully, her sporting season is over now, but she’s substituted driver’s education and we still see her closer to 9 p.m. when we all sit down for food before going off to our usual night-time activities.

So it was with a sense of unreality that we all sat down to dinner at 6:30 p.m. one day earlier this week.

First there were the vampire jokes (The Light! It Burns!!!). Then there was the quietness — no phone calls from people who refuse to remember we eat late and call us at 9 p.m. Then there was the sense of eating lunch instead of dinner. And there was the unexpected free time when the food was gone and it was hours before everybody’s usual bedtime.

With the days getting longer, we’ll probably be seeing more of each other in the daylight even with our usual dinner time, and the traditional daylight jokes will be trotted out and tried one more time. For us, it’s one of the rituals of summertime. Other families may change their winter plastic tablecloths for summer ones or use brightly colored plastic plates. We hone our vampire jokes.

One of the few things my youngest will eat in any form is chicken nuggets.

Or so I thought.

For years, her default meal at fast-food restaurants and our local fish place was chicken nuggets; when I do my weekly grocery shopping, I usually pick up a package of frozen nuggets to have in the house for after-school or those days my husband and I have things to do at dinner time and the kids are on their own.

This past Sunday, the usual nuggets I buy, which have a gluten-free coating, weren’t where I could find them, so I picked up a box of the old-fashioned nuggets we used when our youngest was still in single digits. That night, I had my usual baked/fried chicken meal, so the nuggets weren’t out of their box until lunch on Monday.

I made 6 of the old-fashioned nuggets. My youngest ate three of them, then stopped.

“These taste like fast-food nuggets,” she said.

“And?”

“Well, we had real chicken for dinner last night .. and we don’t usually get this kind any more … and I don’t like them.”

I believe she’s developing a palate.

Supercalafragilistic spinach. Mysterious mushrooms. Zany zucchini. This is how some scientists think kids will eat their vegetables, by renaming them.

A study recently published in Live Science showed that when veggies were given “cool” names, like X-Ray Vision Carrots kids preferred them to say, plain old carrots. Other studies found that adults were also easily swayed by the food name game.

I found this thinking similar to putting a bar of soap in a pretty package. It’s all in the presentation.

Check out the article here.