Topic today: the ups and downs of good kid nutrition when one goes out to special events.
Yesterday, we took the boys to the Harvest Festival thrown by our CSA, Two Small Farms, which was also a fund-raiser for a charter school in Watsonville. We took the usual supply of food for Isaiah, who is 2, because he's eating all the time and you darn well better pack your own. For us and for Duncan, we figured, hey, it's an organic fall harvest! They have food, according to the flyer! We should be able to get some good food there, right?
Well, when we got there, there were two options for food: grilled veggie kebabs and "all-natural" hot dogs. (I love hot dogs and when we buy them we get the same kind, but I've never seen a hot dog in nature so I maintain 'all-natural hot dogs' are an oxymoron.) Well, Duncan wasn't having any of the veggie kebabs when hot dogs were available, even though we have hot dogs on the meal plan this week (Duncan's choice of the week). And when Isaiah saw Duncan eating a hot dog, he wanted to eat nothing in his kit as long as a bun was available. (We do not have him on processed meat, or red meat, for that matter, as yet -- only fish and a little mashed up chicken from time to time -- his protein is from dairy and veggies right now.) So it wasn't terrible food for them, nice sprouted wheat bun and everything for Iz and at least an all-beef dog for Dunc, but it wasn't quite what we had envisioned they'd be eating at an organic farm's festival. (The farm was neat, by the way, when I get a chance I'll post up some pictures as a separate entry; we have now seen both of the two small farms in Two Small Farms.)
Today we took the kids to Gilroy Gardens, since we had paid-up season passes and have an extra recovery day thanks to the three-day weekend and Dunc had been agitating for a while to go. Now the thing about going to a theme park of any sort is: you expect the kids are going to eat a certain amount of junk. We smuggled in Isaiah's food supply, of course, only the usual problem with him is he sees others eating something and he no longer has eyes for his own food, so it was largely as car food and emergency supplies, not with much expectation he'd be eating green beans and tomatoes out of his kit. Gilroy Gardens has the usual ballpark food you find at such places. Basically the only healthful thing on the menu is the fruit salad. So we sidled up the grill at lunchtime, Duncan already telling us he was going to order the hamburger and fries, probably because this is just about the only place we have ever let him order the hamburger and fries, and who knows, maybe that's why he wanted to go there today.
However, we always get a fruit salad on general principle, if nothing else maybe it will deter the boys from begging for ice cream if we sneak it in there. Plus Izzy's always willing to eat fruit.
It was unexpectedly busy today at Gilroy Gardens -- perhaps the holiday weekend, because the weather was sure cold enough. Consequently the service at the grill was slow. You order your food, although you get things like milk and fruit salad on your own, you have to wait quite a while for the short order hot stuff. Consequently Duncan found himself picking at the fruit salad, then eating it, while he got impatient for his burger. And when his burger finally came -- after he carefully picked out the lettuce and tomato -- he was so full the only thing he ate off it was the pickle. He made a desultory stab at the french fries but only managed to eat one before abandoning them. And of course, Izzy sees Duncan chowing down on the fruit, he wants some too. Yay, fruit salad!
So there you go. We went to an organic farm on Saturday and the kid at a hot dog. We went to a theme park on Sunday and he ate fruit salad.
