K used to go to daycare and they would tell me all the wonderful foods he would eat – strawberries, hummus, salmon – yes, SALMON. Even not so wonderful food like hot dogs. Then K would come home and I would try to give him food that the daycare providers insisted he LOVED. He refused them. I even succumbed to making hot dogs (exactly the way they did btw) only to have him announce that he does NOT like hot dogs. um, okay.
One day, while cutting up a strawberry he says to me, “oh, a strawberry, I like strawberries”, so I say (maybe too excitedly), “you do? would you like one?” His response, “NO! I only eat those at daycare!” he said incredulously, as if I had just suggested he eat a rodent. So, there you go, he would only eat strawberries at daycare.
K’s last day of daycare was in August and nary a strawberry has passed his lips. I’ve tried cutting up fruit and putting it in cute containers with cute little animal picks into his lunchbox, but alas the fruit always returns home with an exclamation of how he “doesn’t like that” pointing at the offending fruit as if I had tried to sneak that moldy rodent into his lunchbox.
I realize that a child not eating fruits and vegetables does not make that child an unusually picky eater. There are a myriad of other reasons my child has been given the “world’s pickiest eater’ moniker by me and my husband. Let’s just say that I am more sick of making peanut butter & honey sandwiches than our son is of eating them and we are eternally thankful that his school doesn’t have a peanut ban otherwise he may very well starve. Of course I tried all the other non-nut butters; do you think I’m an amateur here? pfff.
But, I digress (I often digress), how then do I get my kid to eat fruit that isn’t laden with extra sugar, and is easy to eat at school for a 3 year old? Enter GoGo Squeez.
Close-up of GoGo Squeez I'm sure you've seen them, or some form of them - squeezable fruit. We also get the brand that is sold at Fresh & Easy market because we shop almost exclusively there, but it was GoGo Squeez that originally grabbed our heart. It's basically no sugar added apple (or other fruit) sauce in a squeezable container. It's always the simplest of things that are so darn brilliant right? My son loves them. We call them fruit squeeze (or Fruit Sucks when we're trying to be witty) and K loves them. Not just when he's somewhere other than our home, but everywhere! YAY! It may be sneaky food, but sometimes you have to resort to drastic measures. I don't have a child like the lady on Weelicious (who has some amazing recipes for kids btw - just not my kid...yet) who has these awesome kids who are willing to try anything she makes. And, yes, our kid cooks with us. He 'oohs' and 'ahhs' and even licks the sauce off his fingers saying how yummy it is, but when it's time to eat, we hear, "nope, I don't want it, I don't like it, I'm not hungry'. oy vey! So, the lunch box is filled with the same ol' things every day: Peanut Butter & Honey sandwich, fruit leather or Annie's fruit bunnies (although these have now been banned at school), pirate booty, a frozen yogurt squeeze (not shown), and a fruit squeeze (aka GoGo Squeez) and a container of water. Some days I try to do some sort of cool roll-up sandwich, but then I'm swiftly brought back to reality by our son. Some day I know he'll be eating us out of house and home. Until that day arrives, I think I'll buy stock in organic peanut butter.A View Inside K's Lunch Box
