Kid Food, Revisited

Reflections on picky eating and a week of meals

Earlier this year I wrote my opus on “Kid Food.” In retrospect, that post is what kicked off my dedication to radical eating — even if, at the time, I didn’t have that term in mind. “Kid Food” was probably the first time I put down in writing my philosophy on being connected to where our food comes from and what goes in to getting it onto the table. It’s my hope that Kiddo and the Warthog recognize and appreciate this from an early age¹.

Kiddo was a little past two when I wrote that. Still young, impressionable, and open-minded in her eating. At nearly three now, she’s aged — no longer filled with innocence and the eat anything, at any time openness she once had². More often than not, at meal times, she’s recalcitrant — if it’s not a carbohydrate, she’s not interested. The major sources of her calories come from baked goods³, from honey sticks, from cheesy tortillas and cheesy pastas, from mangoes, apples, peaches, blackberries, raspberries, strawberries, and grapes. She eats, like the cliche of a toddler, sparingly and with discretion.

Except, of course, when she doesn’t.

Sometimes, she’ll put down four scrambled eggs. A quarter pound of ground bison. Three strips of bacon, a cup of cottage cheese, and a piece of salmon sashimi. Her appetite varies from day-to-day, even hour to hour. The other night, she refused to eat anything for dinner — and then, as we were putting her to bed, wailed that she was hungry; she ate a cheese quesadilla, a date bar, a cheese stick, and a glass of water⁴ while lying in bed.

I was perhaps looking at kid food with rose-tinted glasses when I wrote that initial post. Feeding kids a wide and varied diet doesn’t always mean that a wide and varied diet is eaten. What is loved one day is suddenly despised; when we give something she had no interest in to the dog, we find ourselves face to face with a tantrum: I wanted that!

Each day is a new trial, a new tribulation. Often, her just eating anything with nutritional value is a win. I take some solace in the fact that kids, as machines made for growth, can use almost anything as fuel for their growing bodies. I subscribe to the idea that for kids, all nutrients are macronutrients — it’s the calories that matter most. Whether this is true or not is besides the point; it’s what I tell myself when Kiddo is on her fifth mango jerky and second spoonful of cookie dough of the night.

Kid food, it turns out, is about more than just exposure and lofty intentions. It’s also about recognizing that our goals as parents — to raise good eaters, thoughtful eaters, radical eaters — are secondary to the ultimate goal of raising healthy kids. Despite what you might read on the internet, eating processed food won’t ruin your kids taste buds for life. In fact, just last night, despite having eaten her weight in peanut butter cups and popcorn while protesting bedtime, Kiddo asked if she could have broccoli for lunch today⁵.

Kids, man.

Since I know at least a handful of you are parents, I thought I might show you how Kiddo eats during the week. Despite the challenges, our standard routine is to make one dinner, which we all eat. The only modifications, in an ideal world, are separating the components for Kiddo⁶. Often, she eats a little of this, a little of that, and is done — off to special treats of a few chocolate chips or a marshmallow. Sometimes she asks for seconds; other times, she only wants blackberries. Whatever remains the next day is packed up for her lunch.

Below is what she had for lunch on a random week last month. I wish I did a better job curating her meals, to make her diet look more diversified, more seasonal — but this is reality. Mrs. CWD was away for work for most of this week, and, to a certain extent, I was just trying to make sure she ate. For context, I’ve also included what we ate the night before, so you can see how the meal came together.

Let’s see how she did — if you have any suggestions and secret tricks for feeding toddlers⁷, please leave them in the comments.

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Meal 1: Bacon, Sourdough, Strawberries, and Cheddar

What we ate: Breakfast for dinner sandwiches on homemade sourdough, local bacon, local eggs, and local cheese.

This was probably the winning meal of the week. Kiddo ate all the bacon, all the strawberries, most of the cheese, and most of the sourdough. Big lunch!

Meal 2: Avocado, Cheesy Pasta, Mango, Cheddar

What we ate: Pasta with homegrown garden vegetables and tinned fish.

Kiddo crushed the mango and cheddar, half the pasta, and barely touched the avocado. This was a little surprising, since cheesy pasta is one of her absolute favorite meals — and she had seconds of it the night before. Just another reminder that toddlers are fickle.

Meal 3: Hardboiled Egg, Buckwheat Noodles, Cheddar, Strawberries

What we ate: Soba noodle bowls with stir fried veggies, hard boiled egg, and ground bison.

This was mostly a hit — she ate almost all the egg, most of the noodles, and all the cheese and strawberries.

Meal 4: Apples, Buckwheat Noodles, Corn & Broccoli, Ground Bison

What we ate: Soba noodle bowls with stir fried veggies, hard boiled egg, and ground bison.

First day this week without cheese, and Kiddo didn’t seemed phased. She ate, unsurprisingly, all the apples, most of the noodles and bison, but barely touched the corn and broccoli. I think this is my fault, since I put them together in one section — and if there’s one thing Kiddo hates, it’s when her food co-mingles.

Meal 5: Salmon, Cottage Cheese, Grapes, Sweet Potato

What we ate: Salmon with roasted sweet potatoes and broccoli.

A few bites of salmon, half the cottage cheese, all the grapes, a few bites of sweet potato. A perfectly mediocre way to end the week!

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So there’s the week of kid food. When I took these photos, the Warthog had not yet transitioned into majority solids — he was still eating mostly breast milk. Just a few weeks later, he’s crushing solids and eats a lot of the same stuff as Kiddo. It’s fun to watch him grow.

With that, I’ll leave you to your Fridays. Enjoy the foliage⁸, get outside, remember to get some candy for the neighborhood kids next week. If you remember, labels your leftovers with painter’s tape⁹.

Whatever you do, take a deep breath: you deserve it.

1. I was had almost the same conversation twice this week about how our generation — and I’m going to make this a catch all of everyone born after 1980… sorry to my readers who are better aged! — is not only detached from our food sources, but from nature in general. When you walk through the woods, can you identify what is an oak, whether it’s white or red? Can you tell a sugar maple from a Norway maple? Could you find holly and mistletoe to make your own wreaths? This type of knowledge, of comfort with the natural world, goes hand and hand with being connected to what you eat. If nature is an abstraction, of course it’s unfathomable to expect it to provide anything for you!

2. The Warthog, on the other hand, is picky insofar as he only likes salty protein and bread. The boy loves bacon, loves bison, loves steak, loves mussels. He tolerates bread. Not one for fruits or vegetables.

3. We do make these from scratch, if it’s any consolation.

4. Then called down, almost immediately after we kissed her goodnight, letting us know she “had to go potty!”

5. And to say nothing of Uncle CWD, whose primary source of calories from the age of eight to ten was Dove Chocolate Ice Cream Bars, of which he’d eat about four a day. He turned out okay — we think.

6. As I alluded to in the original post, she doesn’t like her food commingled. Meatballs are loved; put them in sauce and they won’t be touched.

7. I know Dahlia at

I'm Always in the Kitchen

might have something to say here!

8. Though if we’re being honest, we might be a little past peak this far up in New England.

9. In all seriousness, this is a terrific kitchen “hack.” Our fridge, previously infamous for spotty leftovers of unknown age, now is semi-coherent, with Tupperware containers stuck with the date. Anything older than a week gets given to Doggie, composted, or tossed.