I like the image of eating with your five senses – we try the best we can to make meals for our son that are not only appealing in flavor, but also have an eye-candy property as well as pleasant smell, touch and sound to them. I admit, more often than not, we are not very successful and sometimes fall back on pre made gyoza or tofu-hamburgers. But the intention is there and hopefully with our son becoming more independent and me learning more about his palate, I can focus even more on cooking meals that are appealing to him.
That said, oftentimes when we do cook a very well balanced and five-senses focused meal, our son will not enjoy it at all, no matter how much love we put into it, no matter how delicious it look to our eyes. When the mere sight of something prevents the food from even reaching the vicinity of our son’s mouth, we are in trouble; when he remembers something as not tasting good, we struggle; when the smell makes him push the food away – then it is time for to the pre made hamburgers that are supposed to contain all the necessary nutrients.
There is however, we have recently come to discover, a backup-solution that seems to solve all of these issues at one go – seaweed, nori in Japanese. Our son loves his onigiri, the Japanese (often triangularly shaped) riceballs, popular with a seaweed cover doubling as a grip. Giri-giri he calls them, and if we ask him if he wants to have onigiri, he infallibly shines up and says giri-giri. And the beauty of giri-giri is that no matter what we put inside the seaweed he happily eats it; today he had corn-onigiri, peas-onigiri, fishsausage-onigiri. When it came to the strawberry from our little garden, I could not make myself mix it with rice and cover it with seaweed. The strawberry still lies on its little plate with a reproachful air to it – maybe my son missed out on the delicacy of a lifetime.
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