My pediatrician is the buffest old guy you've ever seen. He has white hair and a white mustache and he's ripped like an action figure. I saw him at the beach on Bermuda Day, and he looked like Admiral Keelhaul from G. I. Joe in the '80s.
My pediatrician follows the Caveman Diet, where you eat small, frequent meals like a forager. He's always got a handful of something on his desk - nuts, soybeans, what-have-you. He says humans aren't programmed to gorge on carbs like we do, and then spend all day sitting. It's hard to argue with a guy in his 60s with abs that shredded (he had his shirt off at the beach; it was insane).
He recommends the forager diet for babies, too. He says Spud - that's what I call my 9-month-old son, Colin - he says Spud should be eating 6-8 small meals a day.
Then Kara (that's my wife) brings home this cookbook she borrowed from the nice British family up the street: Annabel Karmel's First Meals, "Recipes little kids can sink their teeth into." Glassy-eyed little albino on the cover; reminds me of the ice zombies from Game of Thrones.
My first reaction on opening it was "I'll be damned if I'm making Filet of Fish Mornay just for Spud." I do all the cooking around here, and tonight it's chicken 'n' rice.
Then it dawned on me: I should get Spud to eat chicken 'n' rice! If he eats what we eat, then I don't have to cook two meals, one of which calls for its own sauce blanche (Guess which one. That's right: the meal for the guy with no teeth.).
The nice Indian couple across the street say their two boys - ages 4-ish and 6-ish - will eat anything you give them. People are always like "How do you get your kids to eat riata? My kid only eats bowtie pasta, no sauce." Our neighbors say they just started the boys on a wide range of foods early-on, and now the kids eat what their parents eat.
That's what I'm trying to do.
This will ultimately fail. I'm not deluding myself here: At some point Spud is going to develop an irrational hatred of something. I think of all the foods I despised as a kid that are central to my diet today: black beans, broccoli, tomatoes, onions, fish, etc., etc. That's fine; I can't stop Spud from disliking some foods. My hope is that one day he'll come to his senses like I did - likely in his early 20s - and then maybe we can go to decent restaurant together.
I hope it's Jacob's Pickles on the Upper-West Side.
Frank is an out-of-work lawyer turned stay-at-home dad. Follow his adventures in Bermuda at stillvexed.wordpress.com.
