yet more parenting milestones

[psocoptera]

Child rejects roasted cauliflower lightly dusted with a paprika/cumin spice blend as "too spicy", eagerly devours cauliflower in leftover navratan korma, notably spicier, from very same plate.

I am starting to understand why people find feeding three-year-olds so frustrating. (It's fine with me if she doesn't want to eat things, I just want to be able to predict that for meal-planning purposes.)

Comments

[glassonion]

Isn't an awful lot of taste about expectations? She eats cream sauces a lot --- she probably doesn't associate them with "spicy" unless they're overwhelming. But if she can see red (from the paprika) on something, it clearly must be spicy. That's a hypothesis, anyway.

[psocoptera.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it's very possible that visual spice is an issue here. Unfortunately it's hard to hide much on cauliflower. Besides, uh, salt.

[crystalpyramid]

Are they both the same spices? My guess from context is that they are (since Indian food is often generally cumin-spicy), but kids are sensitive to different things sometimes, so if they're different kinds of spicy that might matter.

[psocoptera.livejournal.com]

No, somewhat different spices, and yeah, she could be sensitive to something in particular - I think it's going to be awhile before she's open enough to trying things that she can help me figure that out, though (by trying individual spices one at a time on something bland, perhaps). I mean, the roasted cauliflower *really* didn't taste very seasoned to me, but I do know that little kids can taste things way more intensely than adults. But this is all part of why they are frustrating ::grin::.

[prof-fran.livejournal.com]

This totally jives with my experience of kids. Spices (People, Tastes, Plug in your noun here) are different from one another and that's what makes the world interesting and fun.

C. (MYS's daughter) loves to smell spices; we take her to Penzey's to play for half an hour or so. Field trip for Junie?