If you are a parent of a 2 year old, chances are you've experienced the joys of picky eating. Try as hard as you might to make something healthy taste delicious, your toddler still rejects it, criticizing your culinary skills with the dreaded "it tastes yucky"! It's frustrating, it's infuriating and at times it's devastating because you've worked so hard to make something healthy taste really good, hoping that your child will accept your loving offering and grow healthy and strong.
Living in the city, we get an order of fresh, organic vegetables delivered to our home about every other week. It's my one real luxury. And it helps us eat better. I only find out a few days before what is coming, and for the most part I don't have any say, so I have to make things that are new, and eat things I normally wouldn't pick out. I avoid the overwhelmed feeling I have when I walk into the produce section at the grocery store, but we still enjoy produce. And normally I also get some fruit for my girls to enjoy as well. And we love it!
This past week, however, something strange happened. Instead of the extra order of fruit we normally receive, there were extra vegetables. Extra vegetables?! I was annoyed and disappointed. This was no good. First of all, I have 2 toddlers who eat few if any vegetables on a regular basis. Secondly, I don't even like most vegetables unless well disguised, and being on a diet my disguises are limited. For instance, I probably loathe zucchini as much as my children do, though I can choke it down provided it is only an every-other week event.
But when I got home that day, there were 2 big zucchinis staring out at me from my vegetable drawer. Disaster was looming. The kids won't eat it, I don't like it, and the only way I do like it, my dearest husband doesn't. What was I to do?!
At that point I remembered something an exuberant friend of mine had mentioned a few weeks ago. She had served fried zucchini to her 3 year old, convincing him it was french fries. What the heck! Anything was worth a try at this point. I got out my golden flax seed meal and garbonzo flour (trying not to abandon my dietary principles with actual flour), peeled and cut that zucchini into sticks approximately the size of french fries. Then to complete the masterpiece, I spread catchup on them on the little darlings' plates.
Lo and behold, my oldest gobbled them up and asked for more...and more! I was nearly in shock, and about to dance. It was all I could do to scream "My daughter is eating zucchini!" to the whole world to demonstrate my tremendous mothering talents. However, I was somewhat afraid that if I said the Z word, she would stop gobbling up those "fries"
Quietly I learned an important lesson: sneaky is best when it comes to serving vegetables. From here on out my food motto is "when life hands you zucchini, make french fries!" I will continue to find ways to disguise vegetables in our evening meals. For instance, did you know that a medium summer squash properly blended into 4 potatoes makes for wonderful mashed potatoes? My kids never knew, neither will yours!
Aug 14, 2007
All things work for good
"all things work together for good for those who love God" Romans 8:28
Several months ago, I found myself in the midst of a full blown crisis. My husband was in the hospital. His prognosis was unknown. His recovery time unclear. I was at home, not sleeping with all the anxiety, trying desperately to hold it together for my girls, failing at memorable moments. I was inclined to scream at God, and ask why He was doing this to us. However, I found instead this passage continually coming to mind.
How could this possibly work for good? How could God redeem this situation? How could it be a part of His good plan? I'm sure most people would wonder the same faced with a similar crisis. And yet the thought persisted in me, and I had no choice but to give in to it. All things work together for good...even though it seemed as though we were tied to an enemy, even though recovery seemed much too far off, even though I was living my worst nightmare, I couldn't let go of the thought. I had the sense that some day, I might understand how this applied to what I was living. Someday I might look back with a smile and see how perfect God's plan had been all along. Someday I would know why I had to live through the pain and the sorrow, and I imagined that someday would be a couple decades or more into the future, when the distance between my life then and what I was going through in the present was great enough that it didn't sting to recall the pain anymore.
But I was wrong. Here I am eight months later seeing the good unfold before my eyes. I am blessed in so many ways. For one thing, God didn't let me give up. Comfort was all around me, and He sent messages of hope through those who didn't even know what they were giving me. He lifted me up and carried me along a difficult path that has led to abundant blessings.
I am now living about as close to my dream as I could have imagined. I can walk to work. I like my work. I work with nice people, and they seem to like me. And my husband is doing much better. Though he won't return to his former job, he has a new opportunity that he can also walk to. We're living our urban lifestyle dream. We only need the car for family outings, everything else can be done on foot or by bike. How amazing is that?! A crisis helped us align our lifestyle with our ideals.
There is a deep sense of satisfaction that comes with seeing God's blessings through hardship. I was walking home from work the other day when it hit me like a wave that I had held onto Romans 8:28 for weeks in darkness, and now I was experiencing its truth in the light.
Several months ago, I found myself in the midst of a full blown crisis. My husband was in the hospital. His prognosis was unknown. His recovery time unclear. I was at home, not sleeping with all the anxiety, trying desperately to hold it together for my girls, failing at memorable moments. I was inclined to scream at God, and ask why He was doing this to us. However, I found instead this passage continually coming to mind.
How could this possibly work for good? How could God redeem this situation? How could it be a part of His good plan? I'm sure most people would wonder the same faced with a similar crisis. And yet the thought persisted in me, and I had no choice but to give in to it. All things work together for good...even though it seemed as though we were tied to an enemy, even though recovery seemed much too far off, even though I was living my worst nightmare, I couldn't let go of the thought. I had the sense that some day, I might understand how this applied to what I was living. Someday I might look back with a smile and see how perfect God's plan had been all along. Someday I would know why I had to live through the pain and the sorrow, and I imagined that someday would be a couple decades or more into the future, when the distance between my life then and what I was going through in the present was great enough that it didn't sting to recall the pain anymore.
But I was wrong. Here I am eight months later seeing the good unfold before my eyes. I am blessed in so many ways. For one thing, God didn't let me give up. Comfort was all around me, and He sent messages of hope through those who didn't even know what they were giving me. He lifted me up and carried me along a difficult path that has led to abundant blessings.
I am now living about as close to my dream as I could have imagined. I can walk to work. I like my work. I work with nice people, and they seem to like me. And my husband is doing much better. Though he won't return to his former job, he has a new opportunity that he can also walk to. We're living our urban lifestyle dream. We only need the car for family outings, everything else can be done on foot or by bike. How amazing is that?! A crisis helped us align our lifestyle with our ideals.
There is a deep sense of satisfaction that comes with seeing God's blessings through hardship. I was walking home from work the other day when it hit me like a wave that I had held onto Romans 8:28 for weeks in darkness, and now I was experiencing its truth in the light.
I gave up
You may recall that a month or so ago I was resisting the world of diets. Looking into my shopping cart, you would find a variety of not terribly unhealthy food items that would tempt and tantalize my palette. However, as the weeks passed, something changed: I gave up.
There are many reasons I joined the dieting world I had brushed aside so certainly just weeks before. There was the ever increasing size of clothing I found myself wearing. Faced with a size 18 pair of jeans, I realized I was dangerously close to not being able to shop in "regular" stores. And then there was that pesky scale; either it was broken or the needle was going up and up because I was *gasp* getting heavier. Yes, those were fairly compelling reasons in and of themselves, as was the chest pains plaguing me, that may well have been anxiety, but with a family history of heart disease like mine, who wants to take the chance. But truly, the most compelling reason of all was diabetes. Not that I bare that diagnosis mind you, but the threat of it was there.
I had been borderline diabetic during my last pregnancy. It was not fun poking myself with a needle 4 times a day to double check that I'd eaten correctly. But it was a good lesson: this is your future if you're not careful! And I got to know my body and how I responded to high blood sugar, I got to the point that I could tell by how I felt if my sugar was too high. So there I was one day, fat and puffy (it was the swelling that first captured my attention), reading online about what could cause water retention. Suddenly it clicked: I felt exactly like I did when my blood sugar was too high. And that frightened me. At age 25 (for the 5th time), being diabetic threatened the whole future of my life. It's one thing to choose not to eat sugar, it's another to know that by choosing to eat sugar you are killing yourself one cell at a time.
So there it was, the swift kick I needed. I jumped on the band waggon and got myself a diet. Atkins is what I chose. It offered a yummy variety of foods, and the lowest glycemic level of any other diet out there. I can eat as much as I want as long as it's "legal" within the Atkins plan. And like a true Internet junkie, I joined a Low Carb diet forum.
So am I miserable? No, actually I'm not. I'm 17 lbs less than when I wrote my waisting away post, and I don't have to go hungry. I exercise daily, and I have more energy than I've had since, well, probably since I got married and started packing on the pounds. And best of all, those size 18s are now so big I'm thinking of sending them back to the goodwill for someone else to enjoy. Perhaps I should slip a card in the pocket to let them know how well Atkins has worked for me so far...or maybe that would just be rude. In any case, I'm glad to say "I gave up!"
There are many reasons I joined the dieting world I had brushed aside so certainly just weeks before. There was the ever increasing size of clothing I found myself wearing. Faced with a size 18 pair of jeans, I realized I was dangerously close to not being able to shop in "regular" stores. And then there was that pesky scale; either it was broken or the needle was going up and up because I was *gasp* getting heavier. Yes, those were fairly compelling reasons in and of themselves, as was the chest pains plaguing me, that may well have been anxiety, but with a family history of heart disease like mine, who wants to take the chance. But truly, the most compelling reason of all was diabetes. Not that I bare that diagnosis mind you, but the threat of it was there.
I had been borderline diabetic during my last pregnancy. It was not fun poking myself with a needle 4 times a day to double check that I'd eaten correctly. But it was a good lesson: this is your future if you're not careful! And I got to know my body and how I responded to high blood sugar, I got to the point that I could tell by how I felt if my sugar was too high. So there I was one day, fat and puffy (it was the swelling that first captured my attention), reading online about what could cause water retention. Suddenly it clicked: I felt exactly like I did when my blood sugar was too high. And that frightened me. At age 25 (for the 5th time), being diabetic threatened the whole future of my life. It's one thing to choose not to eat sugar, it's another to know that by choosing to eat sugar you are killing yourself one cell at a time.
So there it was, the swift kick I needed. I jumped on the band waggon and got myself a diet. Atkins is what I chose. It offered a yummy variety of foods, and the lowest glycemic level of any other diet out there. I can eat as much as I want as long as it's "legal" within the Atkins plan. And like a true Internet junkie, I joined a Low Carb diet forum.
So am I miserable? No, actually I'm not. I'm 17 lbs less than when I wrote my waisting away post, and I don't have to go hungry. I exercise daily, and I have more energy than I've had since, well, probably since I got married and started packing on the pounds. And best of all, those size 18s are now so big I'm thinking of sending them back to the goodwill for someone else to enjoy. Perhaps I should slip a card in the pocket to let them know how well Atkins has worked for me so far...or maybe that would just be rude. In any case, I'm glad to say "I gave up!"
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