The tale of my fussyeater continues but every now and then we make a tiny bit of headway with her. A short while ago I wrote this post about the new troubles facing me with school lunches and sadly that hasn’t got any better. Our only option for Little Bean’s school lunch if she can’t take chocolate spread sandwiches is to take plain bread so she said that she wanted to take Brioche. Unfortunately, she has got bored of it already and so has only been eating a yoghurt, a fruit pouch and half a bag of crisps for her lunch which is rubbish.
My latest attempt at trying to encourage her to eat new foods has been the free cookery course for parents and their children which are being held at Little Bean’s school. It’s an initiative which has been put into place I believe by the NHS as part of the Change4Life campaign. It’s free to attend and runs for 6 weeks with each class lasting 90 minutes. I thought that perhaps if I took Little Bean along for cookery lessons then it might encourage her to try new foods if she had made them and it would give me the confidence to let her do more cookery at home too.
Last week we made Tomato Soup and a Fruit Brulee. I attend the class with Little Bean, Beanie Boy and Jelly Bean, it’s not ideal but I have no other choice. My plan had been for Little Bean and I to do the cooking, whilst Beanie Boy played with his figures and hopefully Jelly Bean would sit quietly in his pushchair. Of course, things don’t usually go to plan do they, what I didn’t count on was Beanie Boy being a keen cook. Silly of me really since he loves baking but he really got stuck in with the cooking so I had two chefs on my hands. Thankfully, Jelly Bean has been happy enough (mostly) to sit in his pushchair and watch.
As soon as the lesson started last week Little Bean declared “I’m not tasting anything” and she stuck to her word. She enjoyed doing the cooking but she wasn’t about to eat it all up at the end. We brought our soup home and Beanie Boy eagerly dived in to try a few spoonfuls but Little Bean still said no. I *may* have had a teensy weensy little bit of bribery but it worked because she tried a spoonful of soup and would you believe it, she said that she liked it!!! She followed that up with “but I don’t want anymore” the little tike! Regardless, I was happy that she had even taken that step to trying it, baby steps and all that.
This afternoon we made a Chicken Pie and I was amazed by Little Bean’s skills at cutting up the peppers with a knife, she had really listened to what the teacher had told her and followed his instructions well. She told me once again “I’m not trying any” but all it took was for me to say “that’s fine but you won’t be doing anymore of the cooking because you won’t know if you’ve cooked it correctly” and she tasted a small spoonful and even had a second taste. Yet again, she said that it tasted nice! We worked together to finish off our pie as a team and I was very happy with the results but even more happy that for the second time in a week Little Bean had tried something new. It’s going to be a very long, slow journey but thankfully I’m as stubborn as a donkey so I won’t give in easily.