Tuesday, May 14, 2013

The Care and Feeding of Husbands

It's taken me eight years, but I've finally figured Matt out.

I'm the primary cook in our house. Matt is really good at making breakfast food, and I almost always do dinner. Every week when I'm meal planning, I'll ask him what he wants to eat in the upcoming week, and he always says tacos. I don't want to eat tacos every single week, so sometimes I oblige and sometimes I don't. I don't have a meal rotation, because I like trying lots of different things and I get bored easily if I have to make the same things all the time. 

But I made the assumption that because he is okay with eating tacos for every meal, that he will willingly eat anything else I buy week after week. And then I found out that assumption was wrong.

For a long time, I wasn't that great at buying fruit regularly. So one week, I came home with a big bunch of bananas, and Matt was really excited. We devoured all of them in only a few days. Because he seemed to like them so much, I bought another bunch the following week. Aaaand most of them went bad, sitting untouched on the counter.

And that's when I realized. My husband has the food attention span of a 10 year old. For him, it's all about the novelty. (You should see the amount of chocolate milk he drinks.)

So now, every single week I bring home a different kind of fruit. Because he's always excited when I bring home different things, and we have much less rotting fruit in our house.

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When I was a kid, I hated green beans. (I don't know why, because GREEN BEANS ARE DELICIOUS.) My mom had a hard time getting me to eat them, so she would mash them up and mix them in with pancake batter, and then she would make pancakes for my sister and me. We love pancakes. We never even knew.

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My mom refuses to eat garlic or onions, because she thinks they are gross and make your breath smell terrible. (Which ... okay.) But she doesn't understand that a lot of times, those ingredients can add a little oomph to a meal! She doesn't know that almost every single meal I make in the Crock Pot has either garlic or onion in it. And on the rare occasions that I actually cook for her, she generally likes anything I make. I just make sure they're chopped up really small, so they're unrecognizable and un-pick-out-able.

Two can play this game, Mom.

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Do you live with a picky eater? What tricks have you used to get them to eat stuff they don't like?

7 comments

  1. I was the same way with green beans...and now, I have NO idea how I didn't like them- especially when they are fresh. SO good!

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  2. I can't believe you can disguise green beans in pancakes! And I love that you're giving your mom a taste of her own medicine lol!

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    1. I'm pretty sure she used canned beans. They seem easier to mash lol.

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  3. I hated green beans too when I was a kid, but mostly because my mom always did the canned green beans. I'll eat those now, but I way prefer fresh green beans, and could eat them every week for sure - no pancakes necessary!

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    1. I prefer fresh green beans as well, but I actually do like canned ones ... so I don't know what my problem was!

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  4. Hah - I'm the picky one in our family...I feel bad for my husband sometimes! And that's hilarious that your mom put green beans in pancakes!

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  5. I love that you are using your mom's game against her! And, my husband seems to love novelty in food too, we always buy things that he never ends up eating!

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