Category Archives: food issues

March 25, 2013 · 1:14 pm

Happy Meal

For those of you who’ve followed the blog for a while, you know that I live with the pickiest eater on the planet (a.k.a. Dylan).  If you’re new to the blog, just click on “food issues” or “sensory processing disorder” in the category cloud (on the bottom left) to catch up.  (It could take a while.  Maybe you want to grab a snack.)

If there’s one thing I’ve learned along this exhausting food journey with Dylan, it’s that there’s only person who’s going to decide if Dylan eats new food, and that person is Dylan (i.e. not me).  That’s how he came to eat nibble celery, and it’s how he finally ate spaghetti (but not penne, never penne).  What I want more than anything for Dylan is for food to be a source of fun and joy.  I want every meal he eats to be happy.  I want him to have happy meals, always.

Speaking of which, on Friday evening, Dylan declared that he was going to eat a McDonald’s hamburger on Saturday afternoon and that after he ate the hamburger he was going to buy a bat cave (as a reward) at the toy store.

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Okee-dokie.

My kids, like most kids, love junk food.  Cake, cookies, cotton candy, movie theater popcorn, donuts, candy, etc.  For all of their picky eating, they’ll eat just about anything filled with sugar, fat, salt, and food coloring.  Last weekend at the carnival, Dylan ate salty, greasy popcorn and Riley slurped a blue raspberry snow cone.  By the time he finished, his entire face, including his teeth, were stained blue.  It was gross, but it was okay, because at home we eat wholesome (mostly) food, and we don’t eat fast food.

I grew up eating fast food occasionally.  (Didn’t we all?)  I especially loved McDonald’s breakfast.  Hotcakes with butter and syrup and a brick of Hash browns served up in a devastating-for-the-environment Styrofoam container.  I also remember having a birthday at McDonald’s.  Maybe it was my sister’s party, actually.  In any case, it was someone’s birthday and we ate happy meals and there was a Ronald McDonald cake and there were disposable metal ashtrays on all the tables.

Now, though, I have some pretty strong feelings about how food and disease are linked, how we are what we eat and all that stuff, and how McDonald’s hamburgers supposedly don’t decompose, so I don’t hit the drive-thru much…ever.  That said, the best way to describe my desperate desire for Dylan to broaden his diet is this:  If Dylan asks a McDonald’s hamburger, I’ll find a 24-hour drive-thru in the middle of the night.

On Saturday afternoon, Mike took Dylan to McDonald’s for a happy meal.  I didn’t go with them because Dylan + new food + me (Anxiety Mama) = nothing good.  In other words, it was best if I stayed home and waited nervously by my phone for text messages, pictures, and videos.

I won’t drag this out and make you wonder, Did he eat it?  He didn’t.

mcdonalds

Not lovin’ it.

But, he did taste the hamburger before he spit it out, and that’s better than running away from the table screaming.  (FYI: Riley didn’t like it either.  In fact, he wouldn’t even taste it.)  Was the happy meal a happy meal?  No.  Yes.  Maybe.  Of course, I wish Dylan had eaten the hamburger, because eating any new food is progress, but I must admit that I’m happy he didn’t like it.  (Sorry Mickey D’s).

Do your kids like fast food?

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Filed under Anxious Mama, food issues, sensory processing disorder, Uncategorized

January 15, 2013 · 10:32 am

Spaghetti

Spaghetti has been a big deal in my life.

Editor’s note:  That sentence sounds as silly to me as it probably does to you!

Remember the song “On Top Of Spaghetti” by Tom Glazer?

On top of spaghetti,

All covered with cheese,

I lost my poor meatball,

When somebody sneezed.

I’m 37 years old and I still sing this song in my head.  Occasionally.  You?

My mom makes really good spaghetti and meatballs.  I’m talking yummy, hearty, fill-up-your-plate-twice good.  It’s so good that when I went through a (very) brief vegetarian stage as a teenager, it was my mom’s spaghetti that, in the end, kept me a carnivore. Twenty plus years later, I don’t eat much red meat, but I make some exceptions, most notably my father-in-law’s “fill-in-the-Jewish-holiday” brisket.  I don’t live near my mom now, but I’d make an exception for her spaghetti and meatballs anytime.

My childhood memory of spaghetti isn’t just culinary.  Whenever my mom made spaghetti for dinner, my parents fought. Spaghetti=fight.  It never made any sense to me, but now that I’m a Mama, I have some theories.  Maybe my sister and I drove my mom batty while she was cooking, and by the time dinner was ready all she wanted was to be locked in a closet alone (been there).  Maybe she was exhausted and felt unappreciated (been there, too).  Maybe my parents were in that phase of “marrhood” (marriage+parenthood=marrhood) (yes, I just made that up) where everything is hard, there’s never enough time, and there’s always something to do…for someone else.

Side note: Mike and I went through a period once where we fought every time we went out to dinner.  I grew to fear the nights we had a babysitter, and there’s something seriously wrong with that.  Babysitter=fight?  No way.  It was marrhood.   Eventually, it passed. 

Maybe my memory is playing tricks on me.  Maybe there was one spaghetti fight and my mind has altered the memory over time.  Maybe I should ask my mom about it.  (Mom, are you reading this?  Call me.)

After all these years, spaghetti is still a big deal.  With Dylan’s sensory issues, especially related to food, our “strategery” has been something akin to throwing spaghetti against the wall to see what sticks.  In the name of trying new food, we’ve done it all (at the very least, a lot).

  • Color-themed menus – read “Gut Check” here.
  • Picnics – read “Smile, Laugh, Quack, Sneeze.” here.
  • Taste tests – read “Pancake Party” here.
  • Meal decorations (i.e. cocktail umbrellas stuck in turkey burgers) – read “Fortunate Friday” here.
  • Rewards – read “Prepositions” here.
  • Therapy – read “Outsourcing” here.
  • Tough love – read “Fear and love and food” here.
  • Cooking together – read “Choice. Words.” here.
  • Applied behavior analysis – read “Trying” here and “The Couch (Or Blame) (Or Hands)” here.
  • Dinner logs – read “New” here.

The tricky thing about throwing spaghetti against the wall (in my house, anyway) is that it only ever sticks if Dylan wants it to.  Recently, out of the blue, Dylan told me he wanted to eat – you guessed it – spaghetti.  Of course, I wished he wanted to try chicken, hummus, or eggs, but spaghetti was pretty exciting.  He eats a few other pastas, like elbows and ziti…but not penne because the ridges on penne are scary.  FYI: the ridges on potato chips aren’t scary.  At all.  Spaghetti would be another carb on a long list of carbs he likes to eat, but it would be a new food (a good thing) and a game changer for eating out (a great thing).  It’s much easier to find spaghetti on a menu than it is to find elbows.

I’m pleased to report that spaghetti – with no oil, no sauce, and a lot of Parmesan cheese – has officially been consumed and L-O-V-E-D by Dylan (Riley, too).  Even better, Dylan ate spaghetti in a restaurant!  In case you’re wondering, the preparation of spaghetti at home was quick and easy and didn’t cause a fight.  In fact, it was just the opposite.  I had the priceless opportunity to teach my boys how to do “spaghetti kisses.”

ladyandthetramp

Is there a particular food that means a lot to you?

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Filed under cooking, eating out, food, food issues, sensory processing disorder