Did We Get Our Kids to Eat?

Emily:

As I have said, I am skeptical about this whole enterprise. However: my kid often eats almost none of his lunch, so I guess it cannot get worse. He was extremely excited about the book, took it up to his room, and began marking off all the items he wanted to have. In a number of cases, what he wanted was impossible (i.e. included nuts, or ingredients I refused to get), although I will say he showed some flexibility with substitutions. We ended up with a list of five lunches.

Katie:

I want to say up front that the problem in my house is not the kids. For a 2- and a 3-year-old, they aren’t particularly picky about food (at least one of them gladly ate some chicken hearts Emily cooked!). The problem is me. I hate packing lunches — probably more than any other parenting duty I can think of.

Emily:

Before and after photos below. He requested sushi, which I know he doesn’t eat. However, he did eat some of it, reporting that he “didn’t like it but ate some anyway.” That felt like a bit of a win. The other win was the fruit, which actually got eaten. This will prove to be an enduring note: stuff on sticks is fun. This was an easy lunch to put together, other than having to remember to buy the sushi.

Katie:

Day 1 was a big mommy fail!

Emily:

You can see my pajama pants in this photo, and I’m realizing that these were maternity pants from Penelope’s birth. Still going strong 11 years in.

Katie:

I was feeling a bit gun-shy after the previous lunch, so we stuck to basic foods again, but with a different snack and a new theme for both lunches: Halloween. It took forever to cut the carrot slices into little jack-o’-lanterns, but I chuckled to myself the whole time I was working on it. And it was also a handy escape from dealing with the post-dinner/pre-bedtime-routine chaos hour, which my husband had to handle on his own.

Emily:

This was a sort of attempt to replicate one of the pictures in the book (although with bacon instead of eggs). We learned Finn doesn’t like chicken sausage, but the rest was good. I enjoyed attempting to stack the jam pancake sandwiches. You can see here I’ve really gotten into the idea of sticks in things.

Katie:

I tried not to resort to sandwiches and ended up with this cucumber caterpillar creature, a “worm” in quinoa dirt, and some flower apples and grapes for the “bugs” to munch. I. normally likes quinoa but did not like it after the comparison with dirt was made. Flower apples were a hit with both, and I was happy to eat the remaining apple bits.

Emily:

This is probably the biggest fail. I thought he would like it (contains sausage and mozzarella! Has sticks!), but he reported he didn’t like the crackers (or apparently anything else). This came back pretty much completely uneaten, other than the mini cupcakes. No one in my house has ever turned down a mini cupcake.

Katie:

A. was home sick and I. was upset about leaving her behind. In the morning jumble, I did not get a picture of I.’s lunch, which, I can assure you, was a masterpiece.

Emily:

I forgot to take a before picture here, but this was probably the biggest win, since it came after the challenge period. There was actually a Day 5 of the challenge, but I do not feel I can post and take credit for it because our amazing babysitter made it. That meal involved a sandwich shaped like a cake with pepper candles, chocolate-dipped pretzels, and mini cupcakes (this is all straight out of the book). Finn ate it, but, again, it feels like cheating since my only contribution was thanking our nanny profusely and hoping desperately she doesn’t leave us.

Katie:

A. was sick again and was only interested in eating candy eyeballs without any real food attached. I. was down for a grand finale school lunch, though, and wanted to help create it. My inner lunch artist screamed “no,” but my more mature side agreed — and we ended up with a lunch that looked exactly as I. wanted. She had fun, ate the whole thing, and I only tweaked the placement of a few things after she stopped paying attention.

Emily:

First, Katie, I feel you really won this round. The pancakes are a masterpiece.

Katie:

I’m reminded a bit of that scene in Julia where Julia Child, who has just extolled the virtues of cooking an elaborate meal as a route to joy and sense mastery, is confronted by a skeptical Betty Friedan. In the case of the lunch boxes, I think Julia Child was onto something — at least for me. Making meal prep a more interesting challenge helped me resent it a bit less. Sure, I probably still would have rather been doing some other project. But given that lunches have to get made, doing it this way adds fun. And the kids liked it too.