parenting

It’s taken about a year for me to get those pancakes down. They are legitimately very difficult to make. And I consider myself a pretty good cook.

Carbs are something our oldest loves too. If they could eat bowtie pasta (butterflies) for every meal of every day they would be very happy, and probably extremely constipated.

Do you put some kind of sauce on the spaghetti? If so, try adding a tablespoon or two of flaxseed to the sauce. Doesn’t really change the flavor, but it might change the texture slightly. Or even try adding it directly to the noodles themselves.

Other some other of our carb/fiber combos are:

• PBJ - Warm some whole grain bread (we use Killer Dave’s Goodseed), butter it (this just helps the whole grain become softer), add peanut butter (we use Smucker’s natural peanut butter creamy), use thawed frozen raspberries for jelly, bananas optional
• Pita bread with tzatziki - Either make your own whole wheat pita/flatbread or just buy some (it’s not as hard to make flatbreads as you think, but it does take an afternoon), lightly fry in a pan over medium heat with a little olive oil (optional). The tzatziki is just sour cream /greek yogurt (you can make non-dairy sour cream by blending tofu and a couple tablespoons of lemon juice, or buy some, we’ve used Tofutti Sour Cream before) and shredded cucumber, add salt, herbs and oil to taste. Have your kid add the dill.
• Blended sweet potatoes - Sweet potatoes are the GOAT food. Cook a whole sweet potato in either the oven or microwave. The skin should come right off when it’s done. Smash it in a bowl or blend it. Add oatmeal, quinoa, or flaxseed or some other grain of your choice if you want to thicken it. Cinnamon, fake vanilla, and/or all spice are good sweeteners without actually adding sugar.

I got some more but those are just off the top of my head. DM me if you need help.

We also have had success with a no-thank-you-bowl. We fill the plate with foods that our kid knows are “safe,” and usually add one food that’s more unfamiliar. They can put any food they want in the no-thank-you-bowl. It just goes in the fridge and comes out for the next meal. Cuts down on food waste too. They can of course take anything out of the bowl whenever they want. We started putting out just the no-thank-you-bowl and one safe food for snack time, and they’ll normally eat the safe food and attempt to eat something else from the bowl. Well eat stuff out of the bowl too periodically.