We LOVE Thanksgiving at our house. We do it up BIG TIME. Even though we rarely have actual guests or friends or family in attendance, my husband and I cook up enough food to feed a lazy, gluttonous army of competitive comfort-food eaters.And Noah has never, ever once taken a single bite of any of it.
We start at least two days before with the brining and the prepping and triple-checking our ingredient stockpile (since we always, ALWAYS decide that we need more cheese and a couple extra bottles of wine at the last minute otherwise). Thanksgiving eve is spent baking pies and making the stuffing and homemade cranberry sauce, and then we're up first thing in the morning for the main event -- turkey, mashed sweet potatoes, various vegetables baked into a pile of cheese -- and then it all comes together mid-afternoon in a glorious ballet of oven-temperature compromises and burner turf wars for a single solid hour of stuffing our faces with entirely too much food.
Except for Noah, of course, who goes on a day-and-leftovers-long hunger strike every stinking year.
I've never even expected the turkey or vegetables to go over that well, but...no stuffing? It's BREAD, child. Sweet potatoes? What kid doesn't like sweet potatoes? OR PIE. WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU WON'T TOUCH PIE?
Wait. Wait. It's coming back to me now. I'm lying. Last year Noah ate one single solitary brown sugar cluster off the top of an apple crumb pie. And WE WERE THRILLED ABOUT IT.
This year, we had hope. We have a chance. We've had a breakthrough with his eating and texture aversions. He can use utensils and chew meat without choking. The Time Timer continues to be our personal mealtime savior, as he'll generally make a solid effort to try and finish his food so long as we set him up in a race against that stupid clock. He is inexplicably -- though I suspect Nick Jr.'s seasonal programming has something to do with it -- super excited about trying pumpkin pie and has been talking about it all week.
I don't even usually make pumpkin pies (we do an apple and a chocolate-type variation usually), but this year I dutifully made one, remembering my own childhood weirdness where I would s-l-o-w-l-y and deliberately scrape out every delicious bite of pumpkin-flavored custard, leaving the pie crust standing -- still perfectly shaped -- on my plate. Because I absolutely could not stand the texture combination of pie and crust at the same time.
GET TO THE POINT, AMY. DID HE EAT ANYTHING?
We set the Time Timer to 45 minutes, armed with the threat of No Pie. He ate a few bites of turkey, two small helpings of stuffing and about four glasses of "Thanksgiving juice." (Apple cider, but good luck getting HIM to call it that) A chocolate chip pie that I'd assumed would be the Big Hit was roundly rejected because, when served warm, the chocolate chips got all "melty" and "sticky."
However, he really, REALLY liked the pumpkin pie after all. Custard AND crust. Together. On a fork. Almost a whole slice. Madness!
How'd all the other picky eaters out there do yesterday?
Photo via Amy Corbett Storch