As a mum the evolution of your eating habits change. When you're pregnant, you tell yourself that it's OK to eat for two. You're not supposed to drink alcohol, eat French soft cheeses, eat raw fish, essentially eat all your favourite things, so you start eating bizarre combinations of chocolate and pickles or sardines and a glass of milk. Once you have your child, breast-feeding kicks in, and even though your weird selections have lessened, you are sleep deprived and do anything to get some energy into your system, so you go for the high sugar alternatives to keep you awake.
As your child starts to eat solids, you do everything you can to encourage them to eat the unusual textures and tastes. You taste it to see if it's too hot, you show them how yummy it is by over-exaggerating the action of eating and when they start pushing your hand away because they are full, you end up eating the leftovers. And you do it every time until one day you realise, "How did I put on that extra 10, 20 or 30 kilos?"
So when does the time come that they help you finish your plate and not the other way around? Well for me, I think it started last night... My boys wanted to go out for sushi. For them 'sushi' isn't raw fish, it's more like a chicken teriyaki hand-roll with cucumber, rice and seaweed. I decided to do something different and bought myself a proper sushi platter. There were small tuna rolls, an egg roll, a caviar morsel, prawn with rice, raw salmon with rice, raw tuna with rice, and slices of raw tuna and raw salmon on the side. It was a colourful selection like an assortment of chocolates, but a lot more healthier. As I plunged my chopsticks into the wasabi and dabbed a bit on my tasty samples, from one side of the table I get "Can I have some of the salmon?" Sitting next to me I get "Can I have the prawn?" As one takes the salmon (it was actually the tuna he was after), the other one takes the prawn, then they just kept helping themselves. I didn't see a piece of raw tuna pass my lips, and the eight year old took off with my pieces of raw salmon as well as the prawn and even tried some of the caviar, wasabi and pickled ginger. I really didn't get to see much of my dinner, but I was happy to see them enjoying something different to hamburgers, nuggets and chips.
They convinced me that we should get dessert after, as they spotted an ice-cream shop on the way to getting Japanese. So they decided to get the sickly sweet 'rainbow' ice-cream in a cup, and I thought, for the same price I would go for pancakes with maple syrup with a dollop of vanilla ice-cream. Once they saw how delicious my Americano pancakes were, they then asked for a bite or two or three.
So, for what I thought would be a nice amount of food for dinner for me, ended up being half what I expected. But that's OK, I don't need to eat too much. It was just nice to see them finishing their meals and wanting to try new things without being prompted. Let's just see how long it lasts :)
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