It's tough being a 14 year old girl

[bazfaz]

As part of her peculiar diet Kate has baguette and strawberry jam for lunch. She refused to finish the pot because there was a lump in it. Yes, the lump was a stawberry.

[happytraveller]

I don't like "lumps" in jams either ;D

[Deleted]

Baz, the reason the yogurt aisle in the supermarkets is 300 meters long is because you need mixed, smooth, with pieces of fruit, without pieces of fruit, fruit on top, fruit on the bottom, etc. I'm afraid it is quite the same with jam.

But I'm afraid that most of these variations are for dealing with 4 year olds instead of 14 year olds.

[lola]

Bless her overly fastidious heart.

[bazfaz]

Kate won't put cherries in her mouth because they have stones in them. Instead she gets the garlic press which has an attached olive-pitter and squeezes the stones out of the cherries one by one.

[spindrift]

I saw her doing that.
Perhaps she has a medical condition that causes a reflex vomiting reaction if she eats anything lumpy?

she has lovely skin, btw.

[bazfaz]

Jul 16, 2010 8:19:10 GMT spindrift said:

I saw her doing that.
Perhaps she has a medical condition that causes a reflex vomiting reaction if she eats anything lumpy?

Kind thought but no, she is just fussy. She eats raw strawberries without any problem, even though they are lumpy.

[Deleted]

If you were a bad grandfather, you would probably tell her that all of those little dots on the strawberries are actually tiny pits, same as in cherries.

[bazfaz]

She inspects peaches with closer intention than she does just about anything else. If she detects the smallest brown speck on the skin the peach is rejected.

[Kimby]

Then she's probably never eaten a good ripe peach!

No bruises means hard as a rock and green. The more bruises the softer and riper and tastier.
To a point.

[bazfaz]

She won't go in our bathroom (hooray) because she says the noise the tap in the basin makes is scary.

[cristina]

Baz, I've had a good giggle reading your adventures with your young Kate. My 15 year old daughter is probably her twin.

Her older brother started a list, which is posted on the refrigerator called: Food that A hates. It is a very long list. Beans, mushrooms, beef that doesn't look like a hamburger, fish that isn't shrimp, etc.

However she just returned home from a 2 week visit with her godmother, who called to tell me that a friend had remarked that A had very sophisticated tastes. Simply because she loves blue cheese! She did fall in love with okra on this trip, which is unfortunate, as I hate okra.

Thinking about the lumpy jam, though...I do remember going through a very long period where texture in food could make or break a dish. I don't think I could stomach mashed potatoes until I was 20 or so.

[bazfaz]

We are constantly told how the grandchildren eat broccoli. This is an untruth. Mrs Faz is in charge of cartering for the little ones (I am simply a critical observer) and I beg her not to believe this broccoli myth. Nevertheless we became the possessors of a large head of broccoli. Mrs Faz steamed a small portion of the broc - and just as I knew, 2 tiny florets were eaten, the rest pushed aside. Result: we ourselves had curried broccoli on Thursday. This is a dish that has no culinary future.

[Deleted]

I am ashamed to say that I was the 'Kate' of the family when I was little (but still not as finicky as this dear girl). How things have changed!

Actually, most of my 'aversions' were easy to understand -- who can claim that black pudding has any appeal at all visually? And rhubarb tart? Nobody could convince me that something that looked like celery belonged in a dessert!

Ha ha, if I ever managed to drag my brother to Asia now, how I could gross him out!

[bazfaz]

I wonder what she would make of black pudding followed by rhubarb tart.

[tillystar]

I am enjoying reading about Kate’s aversions. I know how she feels about the lumpy jam, it used to really upset me if I had big lumps in my yoghurt. Cherry yoghurt was a complete no no.

2 yr old little star asks for black pudding when we go for breakfast at the weekend, she loves the stuff. She has currently got our enthusiasm for food, she loves all sorts: mussels, olives and curry are favorites - she even tried snails with enthusiasm.

However, I am not under any illusion that it will last. I am sure at some point she will decide she hates everything except for baked beans and chocolate fingers and will only drink some kind of green artificial coloured gloop.

My nephew loved trying food when he was very small, I remember laughing at him wolfing down Acki and saltfish when he was a toddler. Now he at 9 he really only likes chicken, hot dogs, pasta with a tomatoey sauce and chips (but he doesn’t eat any other form of potato).

[cristina]

My son was the most adventurous eater when he was young. There really wasn't much that he turned his nosed up to, and when in restaurants always ordered the most exotic thing on the menu.

Now, as an adult, he is a vegan. But he is still pretty adventurous in other culinary ways.

His youngest sister is really a PITA when it comes to food. She will throw away a bunch of bananas because the there are too many brown spots. She doesn't appreciate banana bread, I suppose.

I suspect this is the result of agribusiness telling us what produce is supposed to look like. Rather than how it should actually taste.

[Deleted]

I think that grammar school is where a lot of kids learn what it is cool to like or not -- and where they discover that their parents have been tricking them into eating a lot of uncool items. And then of curse course, high school puts a whole new set of weird ideas into their heads.

[bazfaz]

Kate loves baguettes but only the crust and cuts out the middle. Her 10 year old brother cuts the crusts off his bread. A perfect match, you might think. Alas, Max has a gluten intolerance so eats a different sort of bread.

[bixaorellana]

Tilly, I doubt little Star will turn into a food twit. Giving kids an appreciation of all kinds of food in a relaxed, sharing-the-enjoyment way is a gift that will last through life. It's true that kids learn some ugly truths when they go to school -- "Mom, some kids I know put sugar on their cereal!" (actual quote from my son when little), but it doesn't mean they embrace the new bad stuff.

Sometimes parents communicate a permission for twittiness to their kids, maybe out of some kind of anxiety. I remember a mother bringing her child over for a play date when our boys were @3 or 4. It was almost lunchtime and as she dropped him off she said (in front of him) "He only eats peanut butter or Campbell's Chicken Noodle soup." Oddly, he ate what we were having without a peep.

[bazfaz]

I had an American family visiting, parents and boys of 13 and 15. When they were leaving ther 13 year old said, 'Mon told me I had to eat the food even if it was strange but it was really neat.' It was possibly the first time they had eaten roast lamb.

[Deleted]

That is even a certainty. You have to be at least 90 years old in the United States to have had much of a chance to be exposed to lamb, and most likely if you went abroad.

Oh, if only people would tell their children (and their entire entourage), "our diets in this country are quite limited, so we should make sure to eat anything new and different with gusto if it is offered to us."

[bixaorellana]

That is sheep poop! I'm old, but I'm not that old. I ate lamb my whole life, right up until the time I left the US.

[lola]

My mother roasts a lovely leg of lamb on Easter, and we went to a graduation party recently where they served lamb burgers.

[Deleted]

My rule of thumb is: if something is NEVER on the menu of the school cafeteria, it is not part of the normal national diet.

[bixaorellana]

That's a strange rule of thumb. I ate (or avoided) stuff in school cafeteria that I never saw on the table in my own home or those of my school friends. And remember, I went to public schools all over the place. Judging by the reaction of classmates, school cafeteria food was not the same food they were eating at home.

If you miss school cafeteria food, go buy yourself a can of peas and a bag of the cheapest dehydrated potato flakes you can find. Cook some ground meat with lots of filler into a dense loaf. Make an apple crisp. Serve it all together, making sure the apple crisp is well soaked with water from the canned peas.

[lola]

"Normal national diet" forsooth. Maybe.

Yours truly, aged between 14 and 90, lola.

[Deleted]

Oh girls, you must not hate the national culinary treasures.

I didn't eat the same things at home either, but this was the best food that a lot of the kids were getting. But perhaps Mississippi is insufficiently representative of the country, since some of my classmates in grade 4 came to school barefoot, and even then it was "USA #1" on the school agenda.

[lola]

Boys in our school got off a week for deer season. Venison is not in the normal national diet, neither.

[lagatta]

I'm relieved. I was wondering why all our neighbours to the south weren't eating yummy lamb.

Pamela Anderson was in Montréal recently complaining about the usual suspects such as foie gras... (By the way, she is originally Canadian though now Hollywoodized or whatever).