Kids Cuisine

It is a rare thing to feed a dish to my whole family and have them unanimously love it. One daughter likes to declare, “I don’t like this! I want something else!” even when given an old favorite.

Another daughter doesn’t want to touch anything but cookies, crackers, and generally bad foods. My husband was perfectly content to eat pizza and burgers when we first met (and all meals definitely required red meat). My son is the one who is easy to please. Any given dinner has a hold-out.

One night, I was looking at limited choices. I decided to throw together something from whatever sounded appetizing in my pantry - Near East brand’s Roasted Garlic and Olive Oil vermicelli - and whatever was semi-healthy in my refrigerator - broccoli. I had yet to actually convince either girl to eat broccoli.

Now, my older daughter loves spaghetti, but she is very particular about her pasta. Other pasta shapes won’t do, it must be spaghetti noodles. It can’t contain meat, or basically any ingredient besides tomato. It can’t have a different sauce (unless it happens to be mac and cheese). So I predicted a picked-at, scowled-at meal that night.

At first, she did glare down at the dish in front of her. She spotted green-tinted pasta and deemed it inedible. Then, I informed her that the spaghetti sauce was magic, so it was invisible. And that wasn’t broccoli, but miniature trees.

She loved the idea, and gobbled up her dinner. She even announced that she loves invisible spaghetti, and it’s her favorite dinner. She and her sister even nibbled at the trees tentatively (I’ll take it!).

I was thrilled to look around me and see everyone eating happily. No complaints. No whining. No fights and debates. This was one meal that pleased five people, at least three of whom are pretty picky. Best of all, it was a cheap and fast meal to throw together for the family.