Potatoes

I love potatoes.  As a child I ate potatoes as a side dish in most meals and no matter how they are prepared I include potatoes on my list of ‘comfort foods’. 

As a parent with four picky eaters, potatoes were the one constant that I could be certain that everyone would eat.  In fact, five pounds of potatoes was the absolute minimum I’d prepare for any meal and often it was more.

I’ve never served potatoes as the vegetable portion of a meal – nutritionally I’ve used it in place of pasta, rice or bread.  When I first opened my childcare home I created a 4 week menu for lunches and snacks.  On that menu I ensured that each weekly lunch menu contained;

• one rice dish
• one cold sandwich meal
• one pasta dish
• one potato dish
• one hot, bread based meal

This method offered the children a variety of meal types that would appeal to most of the children – you can never please them all with every meal.  Yet, year after year, group after group, potatoes seemed to be the least favourite food.  I was perplexed.

I tried serving them mashed, roasted or scalloped – all refused by the majority of the children.  I added them to homemade soups and stews and watched as the children picked out their preferred items and left the potatoes behind.  Even the Au Gratin Potatoes got dubbed ‘Rotten Potatoes’.  Seriously, how can you go wrong with cheese & potatoes?

Over the years there were more children that would eat salad than there were those who would eat potatoes.  Broccoli has been counted as a ‘treat’ by at least two preschoolers who also refused to eat potatoes in any form.  Don’t get me wrong – I’m not complaining that they prefer their salad & veggies – I just can’t fathom why the versatile potato consistently gets refused.

I have considered that it could be a learned behaviour from an anti-carb culture but ALL these children will eat vast amounts of pasta and bread so that’s not it.  According to their parents, a few of these potato haters will eat potatoes at home but the majority don’t.

I won’t force anyone to eat something they don’t like but I also want our menu to contain a variety of foods and I do think potatoes should be included.   Currently, of our 20 lunches, only three have potatoes.  Two of them are usually refused by all and need to be replaced because I dislike wasting food.  The other one is french fries which are only sometimes eaten by half of the current group.

So, it has been a year since I last changed our menu and it is time for a revamp.  I’m looking for new recipes and there will be some that have potatoes.  They all look so good to me, I hope to find some that the children will enjoy too.

Bananas

While shopping in the produce department of my local grocery store I spotted something I had never seen before – red bananas.  I was curious so I bought a few.

Now, I’m always a little cautious with food related activities because I don’t want to encourage playing with food instead of eating it and sometimes negative food experiences can influence the children’s willingness to try new food items.

My plan was to compare the new red bananas with familiar yellow bananas so as I prepared morning snack I sliced the bananas like this;

I tried a piece of red banana – advance preparation while the children were all still playing.  The experience was not what I expected.  For what seemed like an eternity I debated about trying to swallow the partially chewed banana slice or spitting it out.

I finally managed to swallow it.  It wasn’t the flavour that bothered me – actually, I wasn’t even certain that it had any noticeable flavour.  I was focused on the texture – it was horrible – grainy, dry…not like anything I have eaten before.

There was no way I could serve these red bananas to the children. Most of the children love bananas – these red bananas might change their opinion of bananas forever!  The children happily ate their YELLOW bananas with homemade biscuits and milk for morning snack.

The red bananas were left sitting on the counter while I did some research and debated about what to do with them now.  I wondered if they were maybe just not ripe?  I love under ripe yellow/green bananas because of the texture.  If the red ones were just under ripe would that account for the horrible texture?

I checked the red bananas daily – after a full week they finally seemed to soften a little.  Tentatively I tried another small piece.  It was fabulous! Wonderfully sweet, mild banana flavour and perfect texture.  Today we would have yellow and red bananas for afternoon snack.

I showed the children the whole red banana and asked them to identify it.  “Banana!” was the unanimous response so I asked if they noticed anything unusual about the banana.  The responses included;

• “They are tiny.”
• “They are straight, not curved.”
• “They are made of meat – ham.”

OK, this is not at all what I expected.  I asked if they noticed anything about the colour.  They replied that the bananas were red – a fact they seemed to think was so obvious that it wasn’t even worth mentioning. Now, enough talking, let’s eat.

Everyone loved the red bananas as much or maybe more than the yellow bananas.  The only exception was the one child who doesn’t like yellow bananas – she wouldn’t even try the red ones.

I doubt the response would have been the same if I had given them the bananas last week.  I guess that they are ripe now but the colour hasn’t changed, just the flavour – and the texture.