Toddler in Transition

I get this question a lot: How is your daughter doing with the vegetarian thing?

The answer: Pretty good!

I do not know all toddlers, so I cannot speak for them; however, I'm happy to share my observations about our little girl as she discovers new tastes and textures.

Before we started this transition, I never knew what L would or would not eat. The same is true now. At the same time, I think this was the best time for us to make a switch in our diet. At her ripe old age of 21 months, she is very open to exploring the world around her--and everything is so new!--that she seems really open to at least trying new things; however, I've also observed that toddlers are pretty moody little people as they try to navigate through human emotions for the first time, so L's trying new things can largely depend on what mood you catch her in.

She has promptly refused some foods that we have offered her. For instance, she took one nibble of tofu and unequivocally pronounced it "shucky." Since her mouth is so little, it's hard for her to get a bite of tofu with something else, and she definitely doesn't like it solo.

On the upside, I feel like I now have a wider variety of healthy foods to try out. One of the things we've been pleasantly surprised she likes is baked snap peas. These whole snap peas are baked until crispy, like potato chips. She asks for them all the time and seems to love their crunch. 



Enjoying a snap pea & yogurt.

I think that the best news is that L is barely two years old, so she has not had much time to develop definite preferences (at least not any she won't forget soon--lol). In addition, we didn't really have a junky diet beforehand. She has always really liked fruit, though we are continually forced to be highly creative when it comes to getting her to eat vegetables. In addition, we thought she had a milk allergy and switched to organic soy early on. Though the allergy alert proved false, she likes the soy milk so much we just stuck with it (and it's cheaper than organic dairy!).

Though she certainly has many opportunities to make healthy choices, L is yet a toddler and most often prefers the staples: bread (in all its forms), cheese, bananas, and "gold fish" (Annie's Cheddar Bunnies). It's hit or miss with anything else, but we'll continue to offer her healthy options in hopes that--one day--she'll be a good eater too.

This week I'll leave you with my go-to stirfry recipe, Honey-Glazed Chicken Stir Fry. Grab a bag of frozen stir fry veggies from your grocer's freezer section for a SUPER fast meal. I make it with these changes:

• tofu rather than chicken
• double the sauce, adding an extra 1/2 teaspoon corn starch so it gets nice and sticky

Also, my mom brought to my attention that I left an ingredient off of the recipe for her Tuna Mac Casserole. Oops! I sincerely apologize if you made it and it didn't turn out so well without the one can of cream of celery soup! I went back and made the change on the original post for future reference. Many, many apologies!!