tofu is tofu

Picky kids. Peeved parents. Blah blah blah. I share the grief of food struggles but I'm not gonna' write a word about how to get your kids to eat better/more/politely. Mostly because I don't know how. But, as I made dinner the other night I was thinking about the amusing food lies parents, myself included, tell kids. My personal favorite "no crackers, dinner will be ready in 2 minutes" (uttered as water is just about to boil). Mainly I was thinking of all those "sneaky" foods that parents are currently being urged to prepare. Personally I'm not into the effort but occasionally I step up and try to stick a few extra nutrients in. But what I do enjoy is dreaming up answers (and watching others do the same) when confronted with questions regarding the contents of say, a given muffin; Nooooooo, no, those chunks are NOT sweet potatoes. What are they? This is how stay at home mothers (theoretically the ones with time to sneak potatoes into muffins) keep their minds limber. Given that I'm too lazy make purees and sneak stuff in, I don't often have to lie about individually suspicious ingredients. Mostly I lie about what something actually is. Here are some of my favorite fibs and fool-ups (mine and others) -

• All juice is concentrated and needs to be diluted.


• Quinoa is couscous. Bulgar is couscous. Every grainy side dish type thing is couscous. Because they like couscous.


• For my niece there was only "chicken". Thanks to her we never had "turkey", not even at Thanksgiving.


• At our house chicken is chicken but pork and beef are "meat"


• In a story that is now family lore, my nephew once demanded "fruit". After many offers of everything from oranges to kumquats, it turned out that "fruit" was cherries.


• Frozen yogurt is ice cream (actually I think that's kind of true).


• Yogurt is pudding.


• Gnocchi is pasta.

Most of these don't make any logical sense. Why would a kid eat something called "couscous" but not "quinoa"? But if you have kids you know it's all about the positioning of the food, not what the food actually is. No matter how yummy something might actually be if your kid thinks the name sounds suspicious (i.e. potentially healthy) it's all over before they'll even try a bite.

Now, even though I'm too lazy to be "sneaky" doesn't mean I don't want my picky kids to eat better. I also want us to eat less meat. But I don't want us to eat pasta every night (though I can think of one person in our house who'd be totally cool with that). So, maybe you can guess where I'm going with this...TOFU!

Some months ago I found a recipe for tofu and thought maybe maybe maybe I could get the kids to eat it. It was a) fried and b) had sugar in the marinade, so I had reason be hopeful. So I bought a block 'o tofu and made sesame tofu sticks. And put them on the polar bear plate and the tiger plate, put those plates in front of their respective owners and waited. Naturally I was asked "what's for dinner". (Do all kids do this even when the food is on the plate in front of them?) But what was for dinner? Was it "chicken"? "Meat"? I couldn't believe I hadn't thought up an answer the whole damn time I was cooking. So you know what I said? "It's tofu". And you know what else? They ATE IT!!!!!* But I still lie plenty. Though it is good to know you can sometimes get away with the truth.

(*Okay, I admit I brag a little about the fact they will eat tofu but I figure I've earned the right to tout this triumph in the face of innumerable food failures past and present. Molly's food hang-ups could fill a long and very depressing book. She only drinks apple juice, eats exactly the same thing for breakfast every day, won't eat pasta with any kind of sauce, won't eat most meat, won't eat apples with skin, won't eat eggs...the list goes on and on. )