The Secret to Getting Your Kids to Eat Well

Feeding your kids is one of the most primal things I've experienced as a mother. When your child doesn't eat, it is utterly agonizing. From day one, our first son, Alessandro, had no interest in eating. He didn't even know how to eat. After my c-section, that glorious mother-child moment that is supposed to happen when your baby starts suckling from you fresh out of the womb never happened for me. He just didn't know how to "latch on" as they say in the breastfeeding world. We spent four days in the hosptial working round the clock with lactation specialists, rigging up tubes filled with breastmilk and taping them to my finger (which was the only thing he would suck on) until he finally got the hang of it two weeks later.

Several months later, when he was old enough to eat solids, he still didn't eat much more. Our boy sure
loved his milk, but went through only a jar of baby food every two days. Seriously. I'm half Italian and food equals love to me, so this seriously stressed me out—and laid on the Italian mother What-Am-I-Doing-Wrong? guilt.

All those memories came rushing back when I read the first chapter of Matthew Amster-Burton's funny and wonderfully assuring new tome, Hungry Monkey: A Food Loving Father's Quest to Raise an Adventurous Eater. He and his wife, two local über foodies, went through a similar breastfeeding drama, but what kept me reading is how they managed to groom their daughter's palate…but not freak out when she just wanted to eat things like Crunchberries.

In the genre of the memoir-with-recipes-books that Ruth Reichl and so many others made popular, Matthew details the experiences in dining over the first four years of his daughter's life (she's now 5) and along the way offers his (and his daughter's) favorite recipes. Rebekah Denn, late of the PI and presently a vibrant blogger and a James Beard Award winner, has an excellent review on her blog and goes into much more detail than I can here.

But I can tell you this. I rarely have time to read books but I tore through this one. Maybe it was partly because I so very much appreciate Matthew for all his contributions to our magazine. For years he wrote our Chef's Test columns in our Dining Guide, and his new column, "Out to Lunch" (spotlighting local hole-in-the-wall lunch spots), debuts in the July issue of Seattle magazine. Maybe it's because I admire how he's been a stay-a-home dad and maintained a freelance writing career. Maybe it's because I think his mother, Judy, is one of the coolest foodie women I know. As our mutual friend Lynne Sampson recently told me the other day, she's the Jewish mother we all wish we had.

But really, what I like is that he tells it like it is, even though he has the luxury of time on his side. Matthew fully admits that he has two hours (sometimes all day) to think about dinner, whereas most of us don't. His recipes are intriguing, with lots of quick and easy ones for time-compressed working moms like me. His chapter on crock pots was one I couldn't wait to read, since I have been holding out hope that that device I have crammed in the back of my cabinet is the answer to finally figuring out how to get a home-cooked meal on the table for my family, only to be thwarted by his disdain for it. I still need to invest in a pressure cookers (his preferred time-saver), though.

Perhaps one of the greatest gifts this book gave me is that it helped me let go of my guilt. I used to agonize over how Alessandro only consumes the bare minimum amount of food that he needs to consume, and how he has very little desire to try new foods. I love food. How could this boy possibly be the flesh of my flesh?

Having a second son also helped me let go of that guilt. Luca, now 4, is my little foodie. He devours artichokes like they're popcorn, adores capers and has declared that when he is a grown up, he will eat lobster. Hooray! I love my boys equally, but I I know who I'll be going to all those hot new restaurant openings with me someday when Jose tires of it.

My only complaint about the book: It's fun for me--and I imagine the foodie community here in Seattle--to read about the many, many Seattle references and people, but I'm curious if it will reasonate with a national audience? We do tend to have an overly inflated sense of importance here in our Center of the Universe world.

Now that Seattle's fooderati is having kids of their own, grooming their child's palate has become a much buzzed-about topic locally. Hsiao-Ching Chou, a partner at Suzuki + Chou Communimedia and the former food editor of the Seattle P-I who just had her second child, recently launched  Future Foodies, a networking site dedicated to her efforts to broaden her kids' palates and encourage them to make healthy and environmentally sound choices. There is something about having kids that gets us all on the soapbox for our causes. The mama--and papa--bear comes out in us all.

But even if you aren't joining the cause for noble reasons, Matthew's book is required reading for anyone currently feeding a child--and especially required reading for all the overly politically correct I'd-never-feed-my-kids-THAT parents out there. You just don't have that much control over it, so get over it, and laugh about it. Hungry Monkey just might replace my favorite book to give new parents (Anne Lamott's Operating Instructions).

Matthew's book launch party is tonight at Bailey Coy Books on Capitol Hill. He's serving cupcakes, so I figure if I bring both boys, at least they'll both be willing to eat.