Dinner battle

Dinners are a pain in the rear. I've been through the "fine, have a hot dog" phase and have now slipped back into "homemade dinners are where it's at"... we'll see how long it takes before I throw in the towel.

During the holidays I did not cook at all. Lucky me! I took care of breakfasts and lunches but someone else always prepared the dinners. Yum.

Monday, our first full day back, we had spring rolls and carrot sticks for dinner. Whee. Kids were not impressed with that, and I think they both ended up eating cereal before bed.

Tuesday I fared a bit better, whipping up a turkey hash with the *ahem* endless turkey that my mom sent back with us. :) Basically turkey mixed with green and red peppers and celery all cooked together in gravy with a side of rice. They both picked at it.

Wednesday I made chinese fried rice (rice, corn, carrots, peas & egg with soya sauce) with raw carrot sticks. Lukasz took one look at this and exclaimed "I LIKE this!" and ate his entire bowl. Lily did not fare as well. She wanted everything separate, not all mixed together. But the three of us together did eat five whole raw carrots.

On Wednesday I also made a beef stew, but refrigerated it overnight so everything could mix and absorb more flavours before this evening when I cooked up some potatoes to toss in.

Add a side of buttered fresh bread and voila! the perfect winter meal.

I think Lukasz picked three carrots out of it, Lily ate most of the beef out of hers, and a carrot and a potato or two. Of course they ate all of their bread and drank all of their milk.

I try not to feel irritated and frustrated when they don't eat a good dinner. They know that (usually) that is all there is to eat for the rest of the day, and it stays out so they can have some whenever they feel hungry enough. They eat big breakfasts and lunches, so it's actually a healthy strategy to eat a smaller dinner, but dinner is the meal I put the most effort into, perhaps wrongly so. But would they have eaten more stew at lunch? I doubt it.

I was a really picky eater as a kid and teenager, still am to some degree... I guess it's biting me in the rear now... L&L sure didn't get their eating habits from their dad, he eats everything. Which is good, considering the amount of leftovers I inevitably have.