learning to like new foods: the sitter said it best!

Usually when we have a sitter, I make mac-n-cheese. Last night we also had grapes and carrots and dip. I sat with and ate it too. I love that white Annie's mac-n-cheese...

From the beginning I always mixed peas in our mac-n-cheese. M prefers it this way. So, the pasta was boiled, the peas were nuked. I asked our sitter, Loulou * if she minded if I mixed them together. Here is what she said...

"Sure. I like it that way. At first when I started coming here I thought it was odd, but then I got used to it and now I like it."

I couldn't have said it better myself. She basically described the process of learning to like new foods (food acceptance.) With repeated, pleasant, neutral, non-pressuring exposures, even new foods become familiar. Now, mind you, kids will never say this, or appear this rational. The process looks much more chaotic, with more fits and start. They look at it, they smell it, they watch you eat it, they might lick it or even chew it and spit it out, they might swallow it, they like it and eat lots one day, refuse it the next... Believe it or not, that's all part of the process of what Ellyn Satter calls "sneaking" up on new foods.

Just hang in there! If you serve the foods you want to eat at family meals and sit-down snacks, your kids will grow up to like the foods that you eat as a family.

What weird things do you put into or on classic foods? (I ate corn on the cob with ketchup for the longest time!)