and dinner, really. We’ve finally hit the wall. I knew this wall existed. I knew I had it coming, but I was just hoping if I ignored it, it would go away. But Stella is really, really sick of our pretend “meals” we feed her. We’ve been feeding her basically the same thing since she starting eating solid food.

• Chicken (cooked weekly and slowly growing more slimy over the week) or Cheese
• Frozen Vegetables (mainly corn and peas because that’s what she likes
• Milk
• Water
• Bread or Toasted O’s

She’s finally started getting a little antsy about this same boring food. Especially when she goes out to eat and gets hamburgers and cheese omelets. So last night I was making Grilled Chicken Breasts with Tomato, Olive, and Feta Relish for dinner. Usually dinner gets made after Stella goes to bed, but I made the sauce early and spooned it over her chicken breasts. I even put a piece of mint on there for garnish.

Sidetrack I’d have a picture of this, but Julie’s laptop is a pain to use these days so we aren’t downloading pictures that often. I’ll post it at some point.

It was very artsy. And Stella had another first.

Stella’s First!Realizing garnish doesn’t taste good and is just there to look pretty.

It was amusing. She pulled out the mint. Looked at it. Chewed on it a bit. Then dropped it off of her high chair as an offering to the dogs (who learned about garnish quite a long time ago and were not deceived).

She devoured the food. Which was excellent. And it had vegetables and cheese, so it was sort of healthy.

This led back to the fact that I really need to start cooking for Stella. I’ve been inspired by the past by the site Vegan Lunch Box, even though I could not be less vegan if I tried. She does really interesting things with vegetables. I’m looking for other blogs like this to try to get some ideas for the omnivores in the house.

So I found:

http://lunchinabox.net/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/laptoplunches/

Let me know if you find anything interesting, or have any good ideas for easy balanced lunches for toddlers than can be prepared ahead of time. I also want to get some Bento type lunchboxes for packing leftovers away. I think this might inspire me to be provide more variety (since you’ve got to fill the multiple containers, right?)

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Comments

kelli (gillysmama.blogspot.com)

2007-06-12T18:41:15.000Z

I always forget to come over here! I don’t know why, because it’s always interesting. Anyway, there’s a book called First Meals by Annabel Karmel that has a lot of good healthy things. It’s too much work for me most of the time, but I know you cook good stuff. In fact, I can send you my copy if you want it because I NEVER use it. :)

Tim (http://www.loadedguntheory.com/blog/director/listblog/tim.html)

2007-06-12T18:45:41.000Z

I’ll definitely will try looking that up at the library. Epicurious gave it a really good review. I’m trying not to acquire any new books at the moment, though, because we’re going to be moving soon, but thanks for the offer.