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Thursday, July 21, 2011

Bhook Lagi Hai... Khana Do

‘My kid doesn’t eat’, ‘He is so fussy with food’, ‘She hates food’, ‘Feeding him is like winning a battle’… Do these lines sound familiar? I have heard these rants from many moms. But touch wood, I am not one among them. My kids had just begun throwing tantrums when I simply nipped it in the bud. They’d say they don’t wanna eat and I would say ‘That’s fine with me. It’s upto you’ I would rarely give them an option or an alternate choice if they rejected the food they were offered. Nothing drastic will happen to a child if he/she skips a meal. They will infact be hungry and would quickly gulp in whatever is served to them in the next meal. I might sound like a ‘CRUEL’ mother but then I don’t mind being one. Having said that, I would like to add to it that I do ask them what they like to eat and what they don’t. I try to make them enjoy their food, just the way I do. My excitement about food has been infectious enough for them to catch on! Every evening on the way back home, we have a wonderful tête-à-tête where they share their feedback of the food that was sent, along with requests for the next day’s menu. I love every bit of this conversation. I try my best to cater to their requests, in case I was not able to prepare what they had asked me to, I would confess to them apologetically and assure that I would make it up to them very soon. They happily agree.

Why I started writing all about food? It was a couple of months since they had started speaking words… the first ever sentence that Mannu framed must undisputedly be “Akhon ki khabo?” – Meaning “What do I eat now?” And she would shoot this question after completion of every meal just as I would heave a sigh thinking they were full. Baffled, we would ask her what she would want to eat and we would receive this question back. It has so happened that we served her 4-5 course meal and at the end she again says “Akhon ki khabo?”. There have been times when Abbas and I were completely at loss and he would only ask me “Seemu, are you related to Bakaasur by any chance?”

Tammu is not a food freak but she is not hard to please either. Only thing she doesn’t like in her food is onions. You give her a mouthful of food, with onions sneaked in. She has an uncanny knack of filtering that onion piece while gulping in rest of the food. Same goes with nuts! One more distinctive characteristic of hers is that she will stuff her mouth to its brim, as in she will shovel whole biscuits or most things whole rather than biting them and eating. She has it in her genes as Abbas does that too.

Now to conclude, I was a big time finicky eater. But not any more… People say that whatever troubles we have given our parents as children will come back to us in the form of our children. So far so good. Hope I will not join the club with moms of fussy eaters!!!

1 comment:

RS said...

Oye! Kaala Tikka post this is! Nazar na lage...

And the interest you show in cookingfor them translates to them wanting to eat and I know how YUMMY your food tastes! :-)