Food, glorious food

Kids have such crazy eating habits. When Audrey was a toddler, I used to be so proud of the variety in her diet. She would eat exotic things like feta, pickles, onions, carrots, cherry tomatoes, hummus, mustard, ketchup. Not exclusively mind you . . . and certainly not all at once. These were just the types of things that enhanced her meals. Now that she's almost 6, her diet has reduced drastically to a small pile of boring, processed crap. The only thing on the previous list she still eats are pickles. And even then, she carves out each pickle spear the way a beaver prunes a log . . . leaving a very thin layer of pickle skin on her plate. She does the same thing with apples.

Over the years her tastes had turned so bland (one speck of pepper is deemed "too spicy"), that Curt and I often had to force ourselves to remember to offer her little sister a variety of foods early in life. I distinctly remember ordering spinach cheese pastry puff triangles in a restaurant for Vivian to munch on once. Curt immediately said, "she won't eat that." But to his surprise . . . she did. Oh yeah, she doesn't eat what Audrey eats.

Vivian is starting to graduate into the phase of scrupulous eating herself, however. Now that she's 2 and stretching her wings a bit she has garnered her own version of picky-ness.

But once in awhile they like to surprise us. And for those moments, I'm very grateful.

Vivian ate nearly all of Curt's Donegal Fry at Conor O'Neills last night . . . completely ignoring her kids meal consisting of a pb&j sandwich and french fries. She also devoured a ton of crab from our crab legs at dinner recently. [Oh joy - the kid has expensive taste.]

And Audrey proudly announced earlier this week that she likes salsa and bruschetta now. Wha? Really? Turns out that her class made those items to celebrate Cinco de Mayo. Cool! I'll take that.

Oh! That reminds me . . . I must get that salsa recipe from Audrey's teacher.