I’m sure the last thing you want after over-indulging this holiday season is another cookie recipe, but this proved so delicious and so wonderfully easy to make with kids, I thought I’d toss it out there so you can make one last batch before swearing off sweets in your 2009 diet.

From Gale Gand, buttermilk as the secret ingredient. Click here for details.

Enjoy!

Photo by The Associated Press

We got a jump start on the holiday cheer last weekend when we had a birthday brunch for me and my sister. There was tons of food, starting with cheeses, lox, bagels, muffins, scones, souffles and roasted corn chowder. We later moved on to roast beef, green beans, spinach salad and roasted potatoes. And topped off the day with two kinds of cake—chocolate mousse and hazelnut chocolate.

Everything was exquisite except for one thing: Zyla maybe ate a piece of bread that day. At night, she shared a bowl of cereal with her grandmother to make up for her day of fasting. As I mentioned earlier, she was ill two weeks ago and hasn’t gotten her appetite back. Before that, she ate it all. Now, the only thing that seems to interest her is cheese, crackers and wonton soup. Oh, and her milk. Each morning and afternoon, she enters into a state of bliss when she drinks her milk, a roughly two-minute long indulgence that no one dare interrupt.

I’m wondering is she still sick or just growing older and pickier? She’s turning 21 months on the 21st of this month. Hmm, do all those 21’s mean anything? But I digress.

I will continue to try and feed her the good stuff. I’m not too worried about it because I know a lot of toddlers are fussy eaters, right? Eventually she’s going to get hungry.

Let’s hope on Christmas she’ll go for the lasagna and the rest of the still undetermined feast.

I have to admit, my children generally eat pretty healthy.

Yes, we give them animal crackers. They get chocolate sometimes, but it’s dark chocolate. And the milk they drink is organic.

The problem is greens. In the past, we used to be able to get our children to eat more greens.

Both were really into peas at various points, but that seems to have faded.

My four-year-old was really into olives and even ate asparagus, but since he emerged from his extremely picky stage, he hasn’t accepted them back into his diet.

We’ve gotten lucky that he will eat raw red cabbage and carrots. But they’re not green now, are they?

I worry sometimes that we rely on grains, dairy and meat (and sometimes chicken) for the overwhelming majority of their calories. Both our little guys are huge carnivores. And the bread they eat is whole wheat, multi-grain or bakery-made; no Wonder bread here. Their cereal is either Cheerios or Honey Bunches of Oats.

Yes, they do drink juice and yes, they do eat certain fruits. Bananas, grapes, blueberries; Markus will eat raisins, though Rafael doesn’t like them anymore. But that brings me back to my original point: how is it that my children avoid virtually all greens (the grapes they prefer are red).

Trader Joe’s stores sell long-cut French green beans that are — I think — flash-frozen (when we defrost them, they are crisp, so I don’t think they were sitting around for long before freezing).

That seems to be the one in with Rafael, the four-year-old. He’ll eat them. And if — and only if — there’s peanut butter on it, he’ll also eat celery. Unfortunately, celery has virtually no redeeming nutritional value. It’s basically water with a little bit of fiber. And he already gets lots of fiber from all the grains he eats.

He always wants to try salad, but he’ll take a bite of the lettuce, wrinkle his nose and spit it out onto his plate. We keep letting him try it, in the hopes that one day, some day, he’ll actually eat it.

So this is the plan: walk around the supermarket produce department with Rafael and let him pick out a couple of greens he thinks he’d like to try. If he picks it out, maybe he’ll actually try it.

Stay tuned.

Photo via SXC.hu.

The Wall Street Journal just had a short story about organic frozen kids’ meals. Mixed reviews from their tween and teen testers. Check it out here.  (Personally, I want the whole Jetsons experience of pressing a button on my fridge and making a tasty, nutritious meal for the kids fly right onto the table.) 

At a recent visit with our children’s pediatrician for their annual check up, Grandma got an A+. Apparently, in the first month my mom spent with us, my 5-year-old son Krishna had gained 2 lbs. That might sound real easy for those of us with slow metabolic rates, but it’s not so simple when it comes to my fussy eater.

Her trick: Don’t take no for an answer. The doctor might tell you that they’ll eat when they’re hungry, and that as along as they are active, you’ve nothing to worry about.

But some kids NEVER get hungry. And the reason they eat, I have come to realize, is out of pity for their parents!

Now that the kids are home on their summer break, Grandma is on their case 24/7, and it seems to be working! Knock on wood!!!

Mothers, any tricks or tips ?

I’m always looking for the healthiest food I can get my little guys to eat.

So when I saw this list of The 11 Best Foods You Aren’t Eating on the New York Times’ health blog, I quickly looked it over to see if there was anything my boys were already eating and if there was anything I might be able to get them to eat.

This list was specifically common foods you could find in just about any market, anywhere, anytime, which accounts for the canned pumpkin and frozen blueberries.

I was pleased to see that I eat quite a few items on the list at least every now and again (beets, cabbage, cinnamon, pumpkin seeds, turmeric, blueberries and canned pumpkin (at Thanksgiving, at least, in pie form, does that count?).

Dried plums — a prune by any other name — you couldn’t pay me enough to eat. We tried to convince my older boy that prune juice was great. Problem was, I couldn’t bring myself to even smell it, never mind drink it. I’ll never try to make my kids eat prunes. It really ticks me off, actually, that the produce industry has conspired to rename them dried plums so as to take away the stigma. Hey – raisins don’t have a stigma and we don’t have to call them dried grapes! For the record, I like plums a great deal. And grapes and raisins.

For the full details on exactly what about each of these foods makes them good, check out the above link, but here’s the basics:

1. Beets. Best fresh and raw.
2. Cabbage. Eat it raw. We put it on salad all the time and Rafael has been known to eat a bowl of the stuff. Woo-hoo!
3. Swiss chard. Recommended: chopped and sauteed in olive oil.
4. Cinnamon. A serving suggestion is to sprinkle it on oatmeal. I’m going to try this.
5. Pomegranate juice. Rafael loves apple juice, and Markus isn’t very picky about his juice. This could work. Do they sell it in juice boxes? (Environmentally unsound, I know. But really easy when we’re at the park.)
6. Prunes. ‘Nuff said. Suggested to wrap them in prosciutto and bake them. Oh, please.
7. Pumpkin seeds. I might be able to get the little guys to try this. Markus might be a bit young to eat these, but Rafael should do well.
8. Sardines. We had these all the time when I was growing up. But they’re such fishy fish. I do love fish, though, and these are all but mercury-free. Don’t know that I can get the little guys to eat it, but it’s worth a shot. Suggested: choose those packed in olive or sardine oil.
9. Turmeric. Serving suggestion: “Mix with scrambled eggs or in any vegetable dish.”
10. Frozen blueberries. Sure, fresh is always better, but if they’re frozen you can eat them all year ‘round. Rafael likes these. I think I can get Markus to eat them.
11. Canned pumpkin. Mmmm. Pumpkin pie. I doubt that’s exactly what they had in mind, but still.

Photos via sxc.com

Not too long ago I read an article in The Financial Times about a 6-year-old foodie who eats, if memory serves, oysters, foie gras and foods that most children wouldn’t even go near.

Today in the New York Times there is a similar article, “Down with Picky Eating — A Parent’s Tale from Beijing.” It’s a fun read about two children, ages 13 and 9, who were  born and raised in China (though judging by the picture they don’t appear to be of Chinese descent) and dine on snails, Tibetan yak jerky, scorpions and cow lung and scoff at banana-flavored granola bars. “Fussiness,” the writer Matthew Forney writes, “never enters the picture.”

It’s an interesting take on how environment shapes our dietary habits.

Our 2-year-old niece was visiting from California with my brother-in-law and sister-in-law last month and it was fascinating to get a glimpse of what may be in store for us, especially when it comes to mealtime. Our niece is a petite little thing, currently she only weighs 2 more pounds than JD, who’s 10 months old!

Before they got here, my sister-in-law e-mailed me a list of requests to get at the grocery store, including a gallon of milk. Also included were what I would consider kids staples—bananas and kiwis, Dora fruit snacks, yogurt, mac and cheese, natural peanut butter and jelly, etc. What was surprising was mealtime itself. The kid must have subsisted on air because I rarely saw her eat anything off the plate. After toying with her food for a little while, with maybe a nibble here or there, my sister-in-law would coax my niece to eat a few bites, but that was all. She did drink a lot of milk, though. That gallon was almost finished by the end of the week!

The only time I saw my niece eat almost a whole meal was the night of “Bite and run,” which is pretty much exactly what it sounds like. As my niece ran around the first floor she would pause for a spoonful of yogurt as she passed through the kitchen. Of course, she probably ran off any calories so I’m guessing that meal was close to a wash!

Meanwhile, JD is still pretty receptive to everything we’ve put in front of him. I definitely appreciate the captive audience at meal time. However, I’m starting to see a preference for sweet—fruit is met with big smiles and hand clapping while veggies and proteins, not so much. And I tried giving a few bites of american cheese and cottage cheese the other day and got gags and grimaces in return. But I’m not discouraged yet. I figure I have a little more time before I have a picky eater on my hands. And if I believe the experts, I have only 6 more tries before the new foods become staples.

To listen to my three offspring, the mere whiff of a mushroom anywhere near the spaghetti sauce is cause for concern.

The mushrooms might (horrors!) end up in with the tomatoes and peppers and onions and whatnot. That would make the entire dish inedible, contaminated by fungus (you know, mom, the stuff that grows in the school showers) and therefore deadly.

I’ve tried the reverse-psychology bit. “You know, you’re not allowed to eat any mushroom you find in this dish—you have to give them to me or your dad” so far hasn’t borne any fruit. I do, however, get all the mushrooms, which is a win for me.

My oldest says she doesn’t like the texture of mushrooms. This one eats sushi and has no trouble with eel or octopus, by the way. She doesn’t like shrimp for the same reason, which gets an eyebrow raise from my son, who also won’t eat mushrooms but will eat shrimp. The youngest—won’t eat any of the above, of course: not sushi, not mushrooms, not shrimp.

I’d probably have more coin with insisting the pack eat mushrooms if I didn’t know where such an aversion came from. I won’t eat pepperoni on my pizza and won’t even eat a piece if the pepperoni has been removed. It contaminates the cheese, frankly.

Mushrooms, anyone?

Journal News file photo: Broad portobello (top), tiny enokis (right), tan creminis (right), umbrella-shaped stittake (bottom left), funnel-shaped chanterelle (center) and white button mushrooms (left).

Toronto’s Globe and Mail has a good story about going back to basics to get your kids to eat more nutritiously. No magic bullet. Involve them in helping serve the family lots of tasty nutritious food — and keep at it.