A Spoonful of Sugar

I have some seriously picky eaters at home, even though I know that each of you is saying ‘Lady, you haven’t met picky until you meet my Tommy’. You are probably right. I don’t have the monopoly on picky, yet all the same, I need to live with my own set of challenges. My eldest won’t eat anything that has sauce or cooked vegetables on it. My second won’t eat anything without sauce on it, and cooked vegetables are a must at every meal. My third will eat anything as long as it is white and its only ingredients are milk or cheese, no vegetables or sauce (unless it’s cheese sauce) allowed. And my baby, at this point, will eat anything as long as he can feed himself, the table, the floor and the walls in the process…it’s all so frustrating.

It is hardly surprising that as I walked through the supermarket yesterday, there was all the amazing Israeli winter produce on display. I developed a serious frown. The colors were amazing, the different opportunities for fast homemade vegetable dishes were numerous and the fruit looked like jewels beckoning to be touched. Yet, all I could think of was: Number One won’t eat this and Number Three won’t eat that. And then my eyes honed in on the strawberries. G-d, I love strawberries, and so does ‘the papa’ as do Numbers One and Two. Three won’t eat them as they are not white, and Four may be sensitive to them. But hell, four out of six ain’t bad.

In the hopes of convincing the people to eat more fruit, I have tried plain strawberries, I have served strawberries with cream, Eaton mess, strawberries with balsamic vinegar… and finally, yesterday, I hit on strawberries-sprinkled-ever-so-lightly-with-homemade-vanilla-sugar, and I got them! Score one to mommy…and I’m just 1,072 points away from my challenger. Until Number Three said well if they were in a cupcake, perhaps she would try them, because, as she pointed out, pink is really just red with loads of white added in.

Logically I know that adding sugar butter, flour and egg to the strawberries isn’t the solution to Number Three’s aversion to anything that isn’t white. Desperate times, and all that…



So, yesterday, we had a strawberry cup cake baking party. The kids loved the pink cake, and they loved making strawberry icing and – score two – I actually had them waiting in anticipation for the icing to harden. Once they had tasted them, I had them asking for seconds, and could they take them to school the next day (score three and four). The crowd in the background was cheering for the underdog: ‘Well Done Mommy!’

It just goes to show a spoon full of sugar helps the fruit go down. Mary Poppins and my kids have nothing on me!