In her seasoned old age, Josephine has started rejecting some of the food that we try to introduce to her. She has, heretofore, been a very good eater. With the dawn of the tenth month, we’ve noticed a change, or more specifically a grimace (see below).
Maybe she’s reached an age where she feels comfortable insulting our cooking? Or possibly we’ve started offering her some food that she doesn’t like. It’s hard to tell. She had some adult ratatouille (meaning that I made ratatouille for us, with garlic and all and then I popped it into the food processor for her). She seemed to enjoy it the first round, but when Td tried to give it to her the next day, she was spitting most of it out. We’ve also tried to introduce some lentils but these have not gone over well, even if they’re covered with tahini, her new favorite condiment. From what we can tell, she actually hates lentils and won’t eat them any which way. I was thinking that since she loves tahini that she’d surely be into mujaddara, which is one of my favorite comfort foods, but she could not be persuaded.
We also tried to introduce some meat, but her first experience with beef stew was not promising. Perhaps it’s the texture of these new dishes? On the other hand, she always seems to find room for du pain, even when there’s no room to be had.
She recently started eating cauliflower, which she loves, even though her father detests it, and admittedly, the kitchen does smell kind of rank after we’ve steamed up a whole batch for her. She also can’t get enough of green peas, which we also steam, and then we spread them out all her tray so she can practice picking them up with her pincer grasp. (Our solution to the lack of Cheerios here in La France.) Here’s some photos of Josephine happily picking away at her peas:
Josie gets plenty of sign-language practice when she’s eating her favorite foods. However, she’s recently been incorporating peek-a-boo into the mix. We’re not sure if she’s trying to insert a little play into mealtime, or just trying to cover all her bases: “I know one of these signs will work…”
she’s so blond! she looks like she has so much more hair!
Nichole,
You’ll find red lentils at Auchan (grocery aisle), they are sweeter and tastier. And the good part is that they cook in 15-20 minutes. I used to add carrot puree and some onions and the boys tought it was the best “French dish” ever. When we came back we found red lentils in a little Greek shop in Chapel Hill and now they’re asking me to cook red lentils at least once every week
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Good luck!
Thanks for the recipe, Dana! It’s good to know that your boys love lentils…