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You may have a habitually picky eater – the child who does not like most of what is presented to him for consumption.
Or you may have a child who is going through a phase and refuses anything but mac and cheese.

If you ever find yourself in that situation, I have a solution for you. This should not be your primary plan, but it is guaranteed to work.

You are going to need three main items:

1. A few women over retirement age, to be helpers. They don’t have to be actual grandmothers, but it wouldn’t hurt.
2. Some cafetria trays – one per helper
3. A bunch of small paper cups

When mealtime comes, station the helpers around the dining room, each with a cafeteria tray full of paper cups containing samples of each item from the meal.

The kids will walk around the room, helping themselves to the cups and eating.

If that does not work, your only hope is to obtain some shopping carts and push the kids around the room (while they are sitting in the carts).

No matter what the states of the kids’ stomachs before we enter Costco, our children are always interested in the food samples. I figure that in order to entice them to eat at home, all you need to do is recreate the experience of the food-sample carts in the store.

Or just let them not eat much, and they should be hungry at the next meal.

Mandarin oranges are underrated.

They are popular in the canned-fruit section of the supermarket, but nowhere else.

Why is nothing else mandarin orange flavored?

No popsicles.
No yogurt.
No candy.
No drinks.

I suppose they don’t need to sell juice with the flavor of mandarin oranges, because everyone drinks the syrup that comes with the fruit. The syrup was great, and the new stuff – the fruit juice that they use instead of sugary syrup – tastes just as great. But it’s inconvenient and dangerous to drink from a tin can.

If I were ever to start selling energy drinks – or any sort of drink at all – my first flavor would be mandarin orange.

My second flavor would be cantonese orange.

This is what the grocery store sells as American cheese:

But it’s not, really. It’s ORANGE. When you think of things that are American, how far down the list does anything orange appear?

Still thinking?
(more…)

Yesterday I presented a flowchart of candy bars. But I think a flowchart is not the best way to show the variations of candy bars and their ingredients.

What is the best way?

A Venn diagram!

I suppose it would be more appropriate to call this an Euler diagram rather than a Venn diagram, but not many people know or care about the difference.

Some of you may have ignored this post when you saw that the title contains the word flowchart. But that would mean that you’re not reading this, so why am I bothering to explain that?

Here is a flowchart that documents the choices among candy bars, in case you are overwhelmed at the grocery check-out.

Transcript (although it’s hard to type a flowchart in plain text) :
Which candy bar is right for you?
Do you like chocolate?
Do you like peanuts?
Do you like caramel?
Do you like peanut butter?
Do you like a lot of peanuts?
Do you like nougat?
Do you even know what nougat is?
Do you like crunchy stuff?
that sticks to your teeth?
Do you like coconut?
(I’m not going to bother listing the various candy bars)

Here is how things are in my house for most of the month of December:

Transcript:
Hey! There’s no chocolate in the house!

It’s the Christmas season. We need to have chocolate and cookies and stuff.

(make/obtain sweets)

These are yummy. It’s hard to stop eating them.

Oh good – they’re gone. Now I don’t have to worry about self-control anymore.

Specifically, things not to feed a child who is not potty trained.

Alternate title: how to make enemies in the church nursery

I don’t like potty humor, except for maybe this one case. But parenthood brings you into certain situations that you wouldn’t discuss otherwise.

Today is such a case.

It’s for a public service, though, not a cheap laugh. I know there is at least one new father who reads this blog, and there are things he might want to know so he doesn’t have to learn the hard way. In order to bring him up to speed, I am publishing this list of foods to avoid giving your child if you will be changing his diaper within the subsequent 24 hours.

• Blue Moon ice cream
• Corn
• Blueberries
• Spinach
• Chili

Apparently the color blue is not easily digested.

And I wonder why we even eat corn since it appears to not be used at all by the body. Surely there must be a better use of one’s energy than eating and attempting to digest corn. Unless maybe it is just exercise.

Parents who have gone through the diaper-changing phase:
Any other foods to avoid?