I'm sure I'm not the only mother alive who has wondered if anything she does or says gets through to her kids, especially in regards to food. I'm a serious foodie and that my kids don't like huge amounts of food boggles my mind. You'd never know it but these kids once ate anything and everything.
Years ago mine decided to go on a seafood strike that hasn't ended ...... or so I thought. Seriously, how do kids that eat tuna salad sandwiches and pasta salad with tuna suddenly decide they don't like it? I've asked myself this repeatedly over the years since this began. Fishsticks were common food for them, served with tartar sauce of course, that suddenly was no longer acceptable food to be served. No more tuna salad and no more pasta salad with tuna added. No more mac-n-cheese with tuna and mushroom soup either. Isn't that a childhood staple?
I've lived with this silliness for years and basically ate fish only when we went out to eat because it was easier then fixing fish for myself and having them gripe because I dared to have fish/seafood anywhere around them. I should mention that the pickiest eater would be my youngest son. He is the child that recently told me that Burger King as a gourmet restaurant because they have mushrooms on the menu.
So jump forward probably 15 years into this seafood/fish strike and my youngest son (now 19) and I are walking through Costco the other night and they have the typical food vendors out with samples. I stopped to try a crunchy fish sample and noticed my son had also grabbed one. Being the nice mom I am, I quickly informed him that it was fish - to which I got the teenage universal "I know" reply as he continued to eat it. He knows AND he's eating it???? As we continue to walk he proceeds to inform me (while I'm still in stunned silence) that the sample wasn't too bad, that he has been trying different types of fish and now "likes" some types!! My son eating fish and liking it! Has somebody kidnapped and replaced him with an alien?
As we continue walking he then proceeds to tell me that he's been trying different types and proceeds to start a foodie discussion, granted a very basic one, on how he prefers his fish cooked. Egads! I'm sure some of this interest stems from the fact that he's being trained as a cook at the restaurant he works at but I can't help but wonder if maybe something I've said and/or cooked hasn't finally helped him expand his foodie wings after all these years especially since I know that the restaurant doesn't serve many varieties other than fish-n-chips. It does a mommy's heart good to think something has gotten through though. My baby is growing up. Best of all, I can start cooking fish whenever I want instead of just on the days he's working and isn't home for supper.
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