Day 52: A Sleepover and Hot Chocolate

The other night my 5-year-old had one of her very first sleepovers, and one of my biggest concerns was of course – what am I going to feed them!? My daughter’s friend is…let’s just say, very selective in what she will even consider eating. So it is definitely a little more challenging to not only ensure our food won’t break the rules, but that it will also satisfy even the pickiest of eaters.

I declined the mom’s offer to send food/snacks over with her daughter and assured her that I could surely (and hopefully!) make something that her daughter would eat. After getting through my line of questioning I discovered that our little sleepover date would not mind the crust on the pizza being whole-wheat and that she does eat things like pancakes and waffles for breakfast. So I decided to go with that and sneak in some fruits and veggies whenever I thought I could get away with it.

To make our dinner into something that would also be a fun activity for all three girls (including my 3-year-old), I let them make their own individual pizzas just like we did a few weeks ago.

When it came time for the sauce I realized I should have thought ahead and made sauce from some of the tomatoes in my garden. I hated to use sauce out of a can when I had a bowl of fresh tomatoes sitting right there. So since I hadn’t planned ahead I quickly blanched the tomatoes (when none of the kids were looking), took off the skin, and mashed them up in a little food processor with some oregano, salt and olive oil. It ended up being thinner than ideal, but all 3 kids were totally fooled when I introduced it to them as the “pizza sauce”. They ended up having lots of fun making their creations and eating them up, too! I also gave my daughters frozen peas (yes, they like them frozen) and our little friend a slice of apple since that was all she was willing to accept from the fruit and vegetable department!

For breakfast I made pancakes by request. I was honestly too worried to even ask my daughter’s friend if she liked bananas because I was certain she would say no. So I was totally chancing it, but when no one was paying much attention I quickly mashed up two bananas and put them into the pancake batter. It is easier to ask for forgiveness than permission, right? Once the pancakes were done I was very pleased (and relieved) that all three kids gobbled them up! Later, as if I was taking a survey or something, I finally asked our little friend if she liked bananas and she of course said no. Oops, I guess she didn’t notice that she ate some for breakfast! I am thrilled that she survived her “12 Hours of Real Food” without a problem.

In other news, my older daughter reported yesterday “her throat hurt her when she swallowed her saliva”. So I told her I would fix her some hot chocolate when we got home to help make it feel better. I haven’t made hot chocolate yet (or even cold chocolate milk) since being on our real food diet, so I experimented by mixing in some chocolate sauce with warm milk. I think it turned out pretty good, and at the very least it satisfied my daughter without a problem. This chocolate mixture is similar to what I have been mixing into my espresso and hot milk when I am in the mood for a mocha. I used to have white chocolate mochas almost every day and the long process of figuring out how to make them on our new diet has sort of broken my mocha habit in general. So I still have them on occasion, but not nearly as often as I used to.

Well that’s it for now…I must go work on dinner for tonight since we spontaneously invited friends over, and I haven’t even started on anything yet!