Snack, baby, snack!

For ages now, I’ve been working on getting Bella to reduce the amount of milk she drinks; specifically, milk in bottles. This has been a huge struggle for me, because her comfort items are breasts and bottles, in that order, but both very very important to her. She really doesn’t have a blanket or anything like that, any kind of comfort object. But I really want her to eat more actual food, and less milk. I’m thrilled to report that I’ve finally gotten her 100% off of formula (who would’ve thought a child could LIKE that taste?), but she is still taking bottles (1% milk with a tiny bit of sugar).

Due to this situation, I find myself struggling all the time for exciting ways to tempt her to eat food. It doesn’t help that she is in the midst of the Worst Ever Picky Toddler phase right now. My lil’ one who at 9 months old would slurp curry sauce off of my spoon now refuses… well, pretty much everything. So I put spinach in anything that she will eat: egg drop soup, spaghettio’s, scrambled eggs. I offer a LOT of peas, because she does love peas. And the other day I tried again a tactic I had used when she was a new eater, but not in a long time… the muffin tin snack tray.

There it is. It looks so pretty, doesn’t it? I’ll let you figure out what’s in it; the only thing I think might be a little unrecognizable are the mother’s graham bumpers, which is an organic cereal that is super sweet and delicious, right up her ally.

She didn’t eat much of this. I think she ate the cheerio’s, and that was all. *sigh* I’ll keep trying!

Edited: June 11th, 2009

Spaghetti-o’s…

Tonight I made Bella spaghettio’s, but not like the kind I had growing up! First I sauteed a handful of chopped up spinach and mashed and chopped up roasted carrots in a little butter… then I added a fresh leaf of basil, then threw in the Annie’s “Bernie-O’s.” She loved it and gobbled it up, not even noticing that she was downing spinach and carrots like crazy. Score! I get so excited when I manage something healthy that she will *eat!* Yesterday when I roasted the carrots she would not even taste them, so this was a major coup.

Edited: May 10th, 2009

Egg drop soup

Here’s the recipe for Bella’s favorite egg drop soup. I think we ordered out and got Chinese one night and I discovered her addiction to egg drop soup. She loves eggs in general, but now I make the egg drop soup at home for her and try to boost up the nutrition a little bit by adding spinach.

Bella’s Favorite Egg Drop Soup
15 oz chicken (or no-chicken) broth
2-3 eggs lightly beaten
1/2 cup (or so) finely chopped spinach
spices to taste
Saute’ the chopped spinach in a little butter. Add the broth, bring to a simmer. Remove from heat and add the eggs by drizzling them into the soup in a thin stream. That’s it; the heat of the soup cooks the eggs instantly.
This is excellent with basmati rice, or noodles, or whatever floats your child’s boat. Bella ate two big bowls of this for lunch today. She calls the egg “noodles” and she even picked out a piece of spinach, and said… “Leaf!” Then ate it and said “yum!” (That’s like a miracle around here!)

Edited: April 21st, 2009