Eleanor's top ten for travelling with toddlers

We have just returned yet another overseas trip with the toddler (yep, I know that sounds smug but it's probably not as glamourous as multiple overseas trips without a toddler). From previous experiences I've certainly learnt a few things about how to manage the whole situation but also how to relax a bit and let some unhealthy meals/snacks through to the keeper.

It's not all about tricks and tips though so I thought it would be worth recapping the pros and cons of travelling and feeding kids in my one-off ,top ten findings from travelling with toddlers and their tummies. First five good things:

1. If you pack some good healthy snacks, they are often super keen to eat them (we went a lot of places with chopped apple, dried apricots, rice cakes, and wholegrain muesli bars).
2. You never know when you might stumble over a new food that they are surprisingly prepared to try. For this trip there were egg sandwiches, naan bread, scampi (like prawns) and banana bread in the new food favourites.
3. You don't have to do the cooking all of the time, so if food is rejected it's not as personal (except maybe for poor Grandma Jeanne who slaved over the hot stove).
4. There may be occasional opportunities to utilise peer pressure "Look, Charlie loves eating that nutritious wholegrain cereal - would you like some as well?"
5. Whatever happens you can always use the justification that you're on holidays to ease your guilt over any bad food days. For example, it is totally normal to eat chocolate pastries for breakfast in France and I'm sure they are supportive of multiple ice creams as well.

And then there are five not so good things...
6. You will never be able to predict how a slight difference in foods overseas will lead to rejection. For example weetbix and apples don't taste the same in the UK and therefore cannot be tolerated by a toddler.
7. No matter how hard you try, sometimes a toddler is just going to want hot chips for dinner over the gourmet pot of mussels (pommes frites anyone?)
8. Your best intentions in bringing healthy snacks can sometimes lead to toddler obsession with looking in your bag "what you got in your bag Mummy?"
9. You can't always stop well meaning friends/relatives from feeding the toddler biscuits 10 minutes before you were going to serve them a bowl of vegie laden pasta.
10. No matter how much of a pep talk you have given yourself not to worry about what the toddler is eating while you're away, you may find yourself jet-lagged at 5am documenting everything that they have consumed for the past three weeks and trying to identify how many of these could be considered a plant-food, let alone a vegetable.

So there you have it. It's not all bad but it also won't be perfect. If all else fails, I still recommend falling back on whatever healthy food it is that they will eat. One of ours is this super easy and quick gnocchi that only requires two saucepans!

Eleanor's Hidden Vegie Gnocchi

Ingredients
500 gms gnocchi
1 onion, finely sliced
1 zucchini, finely grated
1 handful spinach finely chopped
Half a jar of pesto

Recipe
Boil a large pot of water and cook the gnocchi according to the packet instructions
Meanwhile in a separate pan, fry the onions over a medium heat in a teaspoon or so of olive oil until softened. Add the zucchini and spinach and stir until wilted and softened.
When the gnocchi is cooked, add it to the vegies and stir through the pesto.
Serve with parmesan cheese

Yum cha - a parent's best friend

Today I have a hankering for dumplings and it inspired me to reflect on a very successful visit to the Shark Fin Inn in Little Bourke St last week. I think it is one of the best dining options when dealing with a toddler or even smaller little people! Or do I just tell myself that because I like to go to yum cha regardless?

A friend had proposed an 11am Sunday yum cha sitting following his going away party on the Saturday night. For him, this turned out to be a bad decision as he was out on the town until 6am but for us it was perfect! Kids seem to be pretty much ready for lunch by 11.30am (which it was closer to by the time we all got in there and seated).

There are a few aspects that make yum cha perfect kid food. Firstly, the food is there instantly which is an important first step for feeding kids (it's the same reason that all my handbags now have boxes of sultanas in them). Secondly, kids can pick whatever takes their fancy which for Leo is mostly prawn dumplings. Thirdly, you don't get any weird looks if you bring you're own kids food in as well. I tend to bring some chopped up fruit so when there is a slow patch where nothing is taking the toddler's fancy we can keep his interest going. Finally, if it all seems to be wearing thin, you can easily pack up and go at any point and it doesn't really affect anyone else - others can keep grazing or hang around for dessert without it feeling weird.

So if you're organising a lunch with multiple kiddies or just looking for an easy outing with a smaller group, (oor like me you are jjust crazy for dumplings) I would strongly recommend hitting Chinatown!

Why you should trust other parents

In a weird paradox, I often seek advice from other parents about what they are successfully feeding their toddlers but simultaneously think to myself "that wouldn't work for us". I included an example of this in an earlier post where I was convinced that a cookbook recipe for 'green rice' that was supposedly a favourite in the author's household was going to be rejected by our toddler (and probably my husband). In that case, I was entirely wrong and all of it was happily eaten.

Today I was wrong again in exactly the same way. We are pretty much out of fresh food in our household (it's Friday) and while I had enough to pull together a chilli con carne (inions, mince, tomatoes, beans) I had no rice just tortillas. I remembered a friend telling me how much her toddler loved burritos a while back. At the time, I had rejected the idea thinking it would be too messy and too confusing to explain - my husband even has trouble folding them. However, as I mentioned, I was happily proven wrong. All family members successfully folded and ate their burritos and I even managed to hide bonus vegies in the chilli.

It's funny how much energy I expend trying to convince the toddler to try new things but it turns out I am the one nervous about change. So recommend any of your successes to me and I am going to try them from now on! I have learnt my lesson - trust other parents, they have been there before.

Why you should never shop when you're hungry or pregnant

I think most people know that it is not advisable to do the grocery shopping when you're hungry as you tend to end up buying too much food (or eating potato cakes in a shopping centre food court). Unfortunately the same useful messages haven't come out about the perils of shopping when pregnant. I was caught by surprise on the weekend when I somehow came home with frozen hash browns, nacho flavoured corn chips and mini-boost chocolate bars (which I convinced myself were for my workmates but are now sitting in my bottom desk drawer in the office).

I am usually I very disciplined shopper and totally know to make lists and a budget and to stick to them but somehow the black arts of product placement overcame me just this once. I've never really subscribed to the concept of cravings but it seems this time it is my only excuse. Something in my body desperately needs orange colouring, MSG and trans-fats (and wouldn't mind a post-dinner cheeseburger).

So pregnant ladies be warned - the supermarket knows your weaknesses and they will get you!

Chop and they will come

I always love reading about other people's small successes (or large ones for that matter) when it comes to kids eating' - the time that someone's little one non-chalantly ate a piece of brocolli after never touching anything green before or announced that chips make their tummy feel yucky and they would prefer some soup.

I had a success on the weekend with not just my boy but my husband too. After a junky dinner of fish and chips (we were at the beach to be fair), I suggested having some chopped up apple for dessert. Both husband and boy rejected the idea but I pushed ahead regardless thinking I could at least get some fibre into myself. However, no sooner was the apple chopped up and on the table than it was demolished and the boy requested some more.

This was a happy reminder that it is only my job to present healthy food and everyone else will decide what and how much they eat (of my dessert mind you). It also confirmed my belief that a chopped up apple is at least twice as appetising as one in the fruit bowl...

Why I cried into the mac and cheese today

I don't usually stray into personal territory on here - it is a kid's nutrition blog after all. However, today I had one of those moments of clarity that reminded me why you bother.

I was chopping up brocolli into suitably small pieces to hide in macaroni and cheese and I thought to myself - why do I always make such an effort to squeeze an extra vege into everything? I know there are lots of people out there who eat mac and cheese minus the greens as a normal meal and in fact I'm pretty sure we did as kids sometimes for lunch growing up (Dad didn't think pasta was an appropriate dinner food). We also often had pizza, fish and chips or cheese toasted sandwiches for dinner and my sister and I are healthy people with great attitudes to food and eating right. This is certainly no criticism of my wonderful mother who is also an excellent cook, it's just that sometimes Mum was tired and Dad was a big supporter of takeaways.

Then it hit me, it's not even just about what kids need to eat and how they learn about food. It's about what the parents eat too. Dad died of bowel cancer - surely one of the most diet-linked ways along with heart disease and other obesity-related illnesses. Dad wasn't obese or anything, he just really liked refined crap like donuts, hot dogs and pretty much anything that had been deep fried and now he's not here to see my son grow up and do all the things that a grandfather should havea chance to do.

This might not have made me me cry in a normal week but as I am pregnant and full of whatever hormones that makes you overloaded with, it was all a bit much. At the very least it was a good reminder about why I try so hard - I want to be here as long as I can and I want this for the family as well. It's worth the effort.

I'm not a scientist but...

As you may have guessed from the theme of this blog, I can't help but read articles about nutrition when I stumble across them and Sunday papers are a popular host for this topic. So this morning I was reading the Sunday magazine of the Age newspaper, I was drawn to an article by Michelle Bridges, of Biggest Loser fame, about whether genetics plays a role in weight problems (sadly it's not online yet so I can't make the link).

The article starts out by saying "I am not a scientist". No problem, I'm not a nutritionist either but I like discussing stuff around the food and nutrition. However, I'm a bit nervous that a series of scientific conclusions are drawn from some research that Michelle has read and the way her arguments are played out.

The thrust is that "it's not the genetic cards you've been dealt, but rather how you play them that determines much about your physical health and wellbeing." I actually like this bit of the argument as it's a good message that people can control their own health destiny and that eating right and exerising can improve your health - even if that is a bit of an obvious message.

The bit of logic that concerned me was that this therefore dispels the "fat-gene" theory which suggests some of us are incapable of losing weight. Whoa,whoa, whoa Michelle - are you trying to say that people don't have different metabolisms?? She goes on to note that the Biggest Loser trainers manage to get weight off people even when they claimed nothing worked. Sure they did, but these contestants had also never been able to take 12 weeks off work before to exercise and be cooked healthy, nutritious meals all day, every day.

I think it's a important, and only fair, to acknowledge that some people find it much harder to lose weight than others and that this is kind of a "fat gene", and that this means some people need more or less food and exercise than others. I think we've all met someone who can shovel it in and be rake thin (I live with one of these people). Metabolism rates are real and shouldn't be dismissed as a lame excuse.

Recognising different metabolisms seems to me to be such an important thing when you're feeding kids too. It's easy to worry that you're little guy is eating too much when he has had three breakfasts when you've just met someone who said their kid wouldn't even have a cup of milk in the morning. However, kids seem to know better than grown ups what their bodies need (when offered reasonable food choices of course).

It seems to me that teaching kids to eat and drink when they're hungry is an important step in making sure that they have a healthy attitude to food into the future. But as I said, I'm not a nutritionist...