Just add spinach

October 25, 2014

I thought my older son was picky. He went through a phase where he’d only eat chicken nuggets and corn for dinner for weeks at a time.    

He’d happily eat whatever food he was offered for breakfast and lunch, but not dinner.

I bought chicken nuggets and bags of frozen corn in bulk.

And then one day he ate something else and never looked back. Months later I dug out the freezer-burned nuggets and threw them away.

I know now that picky isn’t defined as eating the same thing for dinner every night. 

I’ve learned from my second son that picky is not eating anything.

Nothing. For days at a time.

It’s not entirely accurate to say the child refuses to eat anything. If we’d offer him candy or dessert, he’d eat continuously all day long.

I should have known we were in for it when, just a few weeks after his first birthday, he dumped his brother’s Halloween candy on the floor and rolled around in it in ecstasy.

He’d hardly ever seen candy at that point. Somehow he just instinctively knew it was divine.

My older son used to whine when I said we had to swing by the bank. His younger brother says, “Yay!”

He’s learned that at the bank he gets a sucker. And if you give the lady your sweetest smile, you’ll get two.  

After months of begging and pleading with the child to eat something healthy with very limited success, I had an inspiration.

Pumpkin pie.

I made a special trip to the store to buy the ingredients and raced home to put it in the oven.

Not only did he eat it, he wanted seconds. I let him eat as much as he wanted for breakfast, lunch and dinner until it was gone.

But after the initial relief wore off, I felt guilty. The child couldn’t live on pie.

And that is how the pumpkin, carrot, peanut butter, spinach pie was born.

I replaced about one-third of the pumpkin with pureed carrots and peanut butter, pulverized a big batch of fresh spinach until it was almost powder, and used only a quarter of the sugar the recipe called for.

I tried a piece before serving it to my son and discovered that it was actually edible!

It is not an exaggeration to say that I danced when my son asked for seconds.

It is a bonus that his older brother also loves the pie. It’s a great after school snack.

The pie has become a refrigerator staple along with the butter and eggs.

Once I made the discovery about spinach, I realized I could sneak finely minced fresh spinach into almost everything.

Making a homemade pizza? Add it to the sauce. It looks just like all the other spices.

Taco meat? Yep. Add spinach.

Ditto for meatballs, spaghetti, scrambled eggs, banana bread, and even chocolate cake!

If you eat a meal at my house, you can almost bet that you’ll be eating spinach, even if it’s not on the menu.

And you can bet that the toddler won’t eat a single bite of any of it, unless he thinks it is dessert.

This article first appeared in the Lewistown News-Argus and the Sidney (Mont.) Herald on October 25, 2014.