Menu Monday

Monday: Kale cups, cucumber sticks and yogurt dip

Tuesday: Veggie balls, spaghetti sauce on pasta

Wednesday: Singapore noodles

Thursday: Half-pita stuffed with lentil-rice balls and shredded veggies of their choice; cucumber raita

Friday: Potato-crust quiche. Loosely based on Alanna’s recipe, though I just can’t see myself de-kerneling a cob of corn, and certainly not ‘milking’ it. (This from a woman who happily minces kale stems to use in salads, makes her own bread crumbs, and whose favourite pizza takes about two hours to make. Funny what crosses the “much too fiddly for me!” line…)

Jazz likes kiwi!

She didn’t before. She didn’t, oh, a month ago. This wasn’t one of those on-again, off-again dislikes, either. This was a long-term, 100% consistent dislike.

Our morning snack is nearly always fruit. Sometimes it’s one piece of fruit: half an apple, a banana. Most often, it’s several kinds, chopped into bite-sized pieces and tossed into a small container (one for each child) which we tote along with us on our outings. Kiwi often features.

When the other children would have six or eight little pieces of kiwi in their snack box, Jazz would have one. Just one. And with that one piece would come, not ever day, but often enough, the little pep talk:

“You didn’t like kiwi last time, but you eat it anyway. Right now your tongue and tummy don’t like kiwi very much. If you keep trying, one day your tummy and your tongue will say ‘Yum!! Kiwi! We LOVE kiwi!’ They will, and won’t that be nice? That will be one more thing to make you happy!”

Not every day because really, she knows she’s expected to at least attempt everything in there, and I don’t want to make a huge big deal over it. But often enough that the message is heard, reinforced, and remembered.

About a month ago, I noticed that she was eating that one piece of kiwi without any comment at all. Without any dire faces, any grimaces. Without, it seemed, even noticing it was there. So about a month ago, I started putting two or three pieces in her box.

They all got eaten. They were perhaps, left for last, but they got eaten. And then one day, they weren’t left for last. So the next time, I gave her the same size helping as everyone else.

She ate them all.

“Hey, Jazz! Look at that! You ate your whole snack!”

She looks into her empty container. “Yeah, I ate all my snack!”

“You ate all the bananas, and all the nectarines, and all the kiwi!” I beam at her.

She hasn’t quite seen where we’re going with this, but she’s happy with the attention and beams back. “I ate it all!”

“You did! Even the kiwi! You know what? I think your tummy and your tongue like kiwi now! I think they saw that kiwi coming, and they said ‘YUMMY! We love kiwi!'”

She looks into her empty container, eyebrows raised in surprised. You can see the thought bubble: “Well, damn! Mary’s right! I did like that kiwi!” She looks back up at me, and her face breaks into an ever bigger grin. “My tummy likes kiwi! I think it’s yummy!”

“Yes, you do. Isn’t that great?”

“I like kiwi!” She’s still a little wonderstruck, but she also knows it’s true.

I love it when this happens.