Gateway Food

Dinner’s ready but where are my diners?  Stretched out the floor, under sofa cushions, curled up in a ball on the stair landing.  “Dinnnnner!” I call out. My children are tired from the start of school. So tired, they can’t drag themselves to the table. And it’s only 5:45 p.m. “What are we havvvvvving?” someone listlessly whines back, after a long, echoy silence.  I dread this moment. In this phase of family life, our children have opposing food preferences. Nightly I contend with two ideologies that can’t be reconciled. Mac and PC, Coke and Pepsi, Jack Sprat and the Mrs.  “We are having something deeee-licious, ” I say vaguely, like a politician. No reaction. We all know I’ll be carrying them to the table.

I prop their boneless bodies up in the chairs. “Is there any meat in this?” my daughter asks, peering into her soup. “I don’t like this!” my son fires at me, looking suspiciously at the garbanzos in his bowl. The food is not new to them, but this level of fatigue & depletion is. They like the meal I’ve made; they inhaled it the last few times I cooked it. They’re normally open-minded, polite kids. This is not about what’s on their plates. So I break out my secret weapon: the Gateway Food.

Every kid has a Gateway Food–a tasty morsel she will always eat, even in the heaving hell of a stomach virus. For my daughter, it’s Greek olives. For my son, it’s raspberries. If my children are face-down and groaning on the dinner table, reason, bargains and threats hold no sway. Instead, what works is to slip a little saucer of the Gateway Food alongside their dinner plates. “Have an olive,” I’ll suggest, turning on my heels and returning to the kitchen on a phantom errand. They need space to eat their tender treats without it feeling like surrender. A few minutes and few bites later, their blood sugar, spirits, and manners revive. Then, and only then, will they be able to tackle their dinner. Watching them chitchat happily as they eat, it’s hard to resist the “I told you so’s.”  But resist I must, if Gateway Food is to remain the power drill of my maternal tool belt. Next up: selling chores and bathtime.