Protein Pals

"MDR" asked about how to encourage her Aqila to eat proteins on How to Handle Picky Eaters.
My reply to her comment was too long, so I decided to make it a post. heh heh.

My 8 year old Ihsan has problems eating meat as well. I guess he doesn't really like the texture. he finds them stringy and it sticks in between his teeth. But he's okay with processed meat, i.e. sausages, meat/fishballs, nuggets and such. He's also okay with bolognaise sauce or currypuff fillings. He's favourite, though, is crispy fried fish, so I try to have some fish at least once a week.

If your child is refusing meat-based protein in any form, perhaps you can use this reminder : BED.
I'm not saying send them to bed without their supper, remind yourself of these other source of proteins: Beans, Eggs and Dairy.


Beans
Beans and nuts, are essentially seeds, therefore they are packed with nutrients, especially protein.
Since most kids sees anything green as 'vegetables', you might want to do some creative 'hiding' of these in your dishes. You can mash peas and use them as fillings or make cream of pea soup (and call it green vomit for the kid who loves anything gross) or make thicker soup and use as a sauce for pasta. Other 'more stringy' beans can be sliced really thinly or small and mixed into fried rice or porridges.
Lentils and chickpeas are more pleasing and can be made into bite sized snacks (like masala vade or simply kacang rebus). Other beans like red/black beans, mung beans (kacang hijau) can be made into sweet porridges or fillings for buns or desserts (oh man.. now I crave for a sanggupal)
Nuts are usually easier to serve to children, since they are crunchy. They can be served as snacks or sprinkled on desserts. My kids must have peanuts with their nasi lemak. The best kind of nut, is actually Almonds, and these are best eaten raw, a handful a day. Almonds contain essential oils that are good for the heart, according to Dr.Oz.
The most versatile bean, however, must be the soya bean. This 'magic bean' comes in a variety of forms - Tauhu (tofu), tempe, taufoo fah, soya bean milk, and can be served in variety of ways. You can even hide mashed up tofu in your cucur (fritters), and kids wont be able to detect it.

Eggs
Eggs, like beans and nuts, are really seeds, but for hens (or ducks, if you like duck eggs). You can prepare them in any way and mix them into almost any dish.
Hard Boiled - on its own, or sliced with a dash of ketchup/soy sauce, mashed and mixed with mayo+cheese and made into a sandwiched, diced and put into potato salad.
Soft boiled - on it's own or with a dash of soy sauce and pepper eaten with toast (yum!), served on mee goreng.
Fried - sunny side up (mata kerbau), lembik, keras, up to you.
Ommelette - plain or filled. Make it extra thick and load it up with vegetables and meat to make a frittata.
Scrambled - plain or french (addd milk, sugar, salt and pepper, cook under low heat stirring constantly).
As a coating - make french toast, or dip your vegies and met in them before dredging in bread crumbs.
As an ingredient - drizzle into boiling porridge or soup to make 'egg drops'(or strings).
As dessert - cakes, custards, pavlova, bread pudding, jala mas, bunga tanjung.. all use eggs!
Make sure your child is old enough (2+) and have not developed any allergies to eggs, though.

Dairy
Milk (cow's , goat's or even camel's) contain lots and lots of protein. You can serve them straight, or give it to your child in the form of cheese, yogurt, or sour
/thick/whip cream. Again, it's very versatile. Serve them in a cream sauce, or mix with juices, add cream cheese to make moist cakes, serve as a topping for your muffins (in which you would hide carrots, as in this recipe), or simply make cheese sandwiches.

So basically, once you remember the different ways in which you can add protein to your child's diet, you meed not worry that your child would be lacking of it. (Insya-Allah).

Hope that this helped!

p/s let's bring up another topic next time.. perhaps something unrelated to food, eh? coz all this talk about eating is making me hungry! :D

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Eat Eat Eat

I don't think I have the right to write a post here in any way. Alhamdullilah my kids are not picky eater. Except for Jack, who is three. He doesn't take as much raw veges as his older siblings. But he slowly taking in perhaps a bit of raw carrots.

And because of this "relatively" easier eating session, I don't remember much of how they eat. Maybe some pointers though...



Play

When they can sit up right and take solid food, I let them eat by themselves. However I am still the main feeder. He has his own bowl filled with veges mostly. I let him suck the carrots and broccolis. I think this is perhaps the main reason that they are very receptive to the greens (or orange?).

At one time, my daughter, Sya, only want to eat the spinach (slightly blanched with onion and garlic), I had to hide them. And leave it as a treat.

I also allow them to spoon themselves their own porridge. Yes it is a total mess. And I am worn out. Working and no maid. Eating can be a chore in certain sense. But I find it fun, because eating is also bonding time for us.

Mess

So they make mess when they were little and just learning. A whole blob of them. To minimise the agony, I got myself a medium-sized linoleum and place it under their high chair. And Alhamdullilah, most of the time the stain doesn't get beyond the linoleum. The only thing I have to clean then is the linoleum and not the floor. Thus the battle is controlled.

OK sometimes they protest

Then I compromise and say only 10 suaps and you can be done with it. Then they would negotiate and we would come down to perhaps five suaps.

They love what they cook

Sya loves helping me in the kitchen and Haziq loves to ambush so that he can steal things. Even Jack cooks. I allow him to sprinkle salt and sugar. Put onions and garlics and even occasional cooking.

But you know what, I just remembered, most of the time I suap my kids even though they have their own plate. I enjoy doing that and they eat a lot when I do. I guess I am spoiling them too much. I think I stopped suaping Haziq when he is seven. I am breeding spoonfed kids, oh no.

But now, dinner is such a pleasure. Everyone can sit down and eat together and now only Jack makes the most mess. :D

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Handling Picky Eaters (Diary of an imperfect mum)

Elisa is a well of experience. But what happens if you were a working mum thrust into mummy-hood or a first time mum? You would probably be like me, learning from your mistake, pre-conceived notions and acknowledging exceptions. Although true when said ‘what you eat and drink is the main source of nourishment for your baby’, I took a step further in that saying. I injected only the best cut of salmon (Omega-3), snacks on salads and fruits (fibre and vitamin c) and exercise (yoga and swimming), like a freak of nature that I completely turn away whenever a craving comes on. Everyone around me had to remind me its ok to eat spicy food, indulge in nasi lemak and yet still…I hold on that Im responsible for what Im feeding baby in womb – it’s a deciding factor for his future.

After birth, I left him with the care of a maid and I think somewhere between that and my parents - he grew really fussy. Again the paranoid kicks in; I wake up every day at 5am to process his vegetables, cod fish, congee, brown rice, tea snacks…so the maid just need to feed. Yet most days, he refuses. Where do I go wrong, yes that’s my million dollar question too.

I hang up my shoes and move here when he’s 30months and I started serious cooking. I had to reassess myself, outlook in things, understand him and work from there. I felt the overwhelm guilt and sadness, when I look at his bulging greedy eyes as he contemplate the candy offered to him by a shopkeeper – it was his first. From then on, I learnt to say ok to candies and chips in moderation and as treats.

Now at 3+, he loves eggs and mac&cheese (I don’t know which is 1st on his list) and if he can get away with it, has it everyday. He could eat a whole pack of cheese in one seating. He loves meatballs (coz he get to prepare), plain white rice with kicap (black soya sauce), fillet fish and anything zuppa. He chews 10000 times then spits when it comes to chicken – making it look like I’m feeding him old leather. And carrots, he eats them on good days. But none of the leafy vegetables. What he doesn’t know is that he has been eating everything.




• Don’t lie. I never ever lie to him under any circumstances, not even when I want to feed him nutrition. I change names – Spinach becomes green leaves that all Parasaurolophus (dinosaur) eats, raisins are bird seeds, mashed potato is Yellow Snow mountain, tofu is butterflies…etc..

• Decorate. Take 5mins to cut the carrots using cookie cutters, cheese hair, peas eyes or car/dinosaur/trees shape sandwich. Or I make kuah kicap (black sauce soup) and add peas as garnishing, tell him it’s a fishing game.

• Dips & Fruits. Harris like cheese so I oblige by doing apples dip in cottage cheese. Or toasted bread dip in guacamole (avocado has tons of nutrition) Or do my own DIY fruity ice-cream/lollipops with yoghurt. Or smoothie of fruit, honey and milk. When he has a bad throat, I say “lets eat ice cream” which is really yoghurt and hes none the wiser.

• Hide/Camouflage. Be inventive. Spinach hidden in frittata topped with lotsa of cheese and meat. Tomatoes in pasta sauce and process carrot and make it into your normal clear soup except its now orangey and add home made fishballs or celery (etc) and the whole family can have it. Imagine the nutrition in that one soup alone.

• Substitute Sweet. Bake your own cake. You control the amount of sugar. Learn to make carrot muffins, its easy (I will post the recipe). You can freeze them and have it as treats or tea on another occasion.

• Packaging. If he wants to eat on his playset kitchen cutleries (harris has his own), let him. If he want to eat on a safari themed plate, amuse him. Ive placed rice on muffin tray coz for a whole week that was his thrill.

• Cook Together. Kids love being involved even if it means (you) cleaning the kitchen twice longer afterwards. This experience allows him to understand and in his own ways acknowledge his fears

Meal times really need not be hassled and harassed. I understand most of you have two or three other mouths to feed. It hasn’t been easy for me either, take it from me from the evolution of paranoid mum to be, protective mum and now here. Still on the road to discovery but the above has worked for me, and perhaps in given time, it will for you. To my paranoid self, Ive learned that it is my job to buy the right food, prepare it nutritiously (steam not fried. bake not fried) and serve creatively. The rest is up to Harris. Fall short of opening his mouth and shoving it in of course.

You know my story, tell me yours. Would love to hear your creative ways.

Recommended reading : Dr Miriam Stoppard - First Food

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How to Handle Picky Eaters?

Rotidua's post about her picky eaters inspired me to write this.
I think Rotidua is not alone in her dillema, right?
Come on, don't be shy, spill the beans... !
Okay let me start with mine:

Ilham - he's 10 and he is starting to explore new foods. He is beginning to eat vegetables, but only lettuce and cucumber. He likes curries, and fried fish or chicken, but most of the time it's just that with rice, no vegetables at all. Loves eggs cooked any way, but especially sunny side up with the yolk slightly runny so that he can form a 'lava flow' on his volcanic mound of rice.

Ihsan - is going to be 9 in october and he eats plain white rice, with NOTHING. Not even soy sauce. Sometimes he'd take fried fish. What he likes most is crabs, but I can't afford to have that every day. Would not touch a vegetable with a ten-foot pole. Loves eggs cooked any way but sunny side up.

Anis - is 6 in March and is more adventurous, but again, no veggies. If I make fried rice or meehon with shredded or tiny pieces of vegetables in them, she would painstakingly pick them out and put it aside. She complains about eating rice everyday, but she loves masak lemak (Coconut milk gravy) and crispy fried chicken (especially the skin). Also loves eggs cooked any way but sunny side up.

Izani - is 2 in April. He is my star vegetable eater. He loves the crunchy carrots and cucumber. Likes to try anything or everything, but if he doesnt like it, he just spits it out anywhere, anytime he likes. Does not like fried eggs, but does not mind omelletes or scrambled eggs. Izani is very difficult to feed though. If I try to feed him, he'd say he wants to eat on his own, but when I leave him to eat on his own, he plays with his food (he's 2, whatdya expect?).



If I let my kids have their way, they would choose to eat cake, fries and candy all day.

What I've learned so far with my kids are these ...



Lead by example
If they see you enjoying various types of food, they will eventually (hopefully) will want to try them too. Try to make a show of how yummy certain foods are. If you're shy, you can even restrict passionate gastronomic responses to the privacy of your own home. But you'll soon see that your kids will start to like foods that they see you like.
This 'education' can start as early as while they're still in your tummy! I found that because I ate a lot of salads when I was pregnant with Izani, he was not averse to eating vegetables.
Unfortunately, kids pick up your bad habits too. Like my need to eat everything with something crunchy, be it keropok or twisties.

Introduce new foods gradually
Taste is acquired, so if you want to introduce something new, do it bit by bit, gradually. Have them try it at first, then when they have acquired the taste, you can increase the frequency of that dish, or introduce the ingredients into other dishes. This works with spices as well.

Find out what they like
This is probably the first thing that your mother (or other mothers) would ask your children when they're not eating: "What do you like?". It usually ticks me off when people go out of their way to prepare something my kids like when I am trying to teach them not to be so picky, but I have found that the information I gather here could be useful. How? *points to the next item*

Hide the veggies!
My kids like cucur udang (prawn fritters). So instead of making plain cucur udang, I shred carrots, sweet potatoes, scallions, parsley, etc etc into them. Another good way to hide veggies is inside tomato sauce (for pasta) or cheese (but some kids dont really like cheese) (Not my kids!). Or you can go the extra mile and do what Jerry Se1nfeld's wife did - puree her veggies and put them into brownies and cookies. (Get more ideas here - http://www.deceptivelydelicious.com). I can easily see her ideas modified into some kind of cucur, or masala vade, or kuih talam.

Explain nutrition
I usually would ask them what they would like to eat, but I'd usually veto some of their choices and I would tell them why. "Candy gives you cavities", "Chips are not healthy food", "You need vegetables to make you smart", etc etc. I am hoping that by telling them why, I could at least education them on what is healthy and what is not, and this would guide them on what foods to eat when I am not around to choose it for them.

Keep treats as really special treats
Don't make junk food as part of their diet. Don't put chips or candy in their lunchbox. Make it a once in a while thing, so that they don't develop the habit of eating it all the time and confusing them with regular food. Make sure they know the difference, by saving it as a treat. Make sure they know it's a special treat, and you cannot eat it ALL the time.

I can't say that all of the above are sure fire tips. But I do try and have had a few small successes. I think good eating habits is a learning process, and all we can do as parents is try to teach them and expose them as much as we can.
I remembr when I was younger that I hated vegetables too, but as I grew up, i developed a taste for them and can't have a meal without them (but then again that may be due to age.. can you say 'constipation'?)

Would love to hear your stories on this topic!

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