Author Archives: vcsj

The ‘Mac’ Daddy

I—like you, I’m sure—like macaroni and cheese. Cheese, noodles, a crunchy top (maybe some bacon if you’re really getting at it)…what’s not to like?

However, I do not like mac and cheese from a box, which we literally keep cases of in our basement for Kraft’s biggest fan, Tillie.

I wouldn’t mind having some macaroni for dinner every now and then. But we find ourselves in a quandary here because Tillie has let it be known time and time again that she doesn’t like it baked, just out of the box—powdered cheese (how do you “powder” cheese?) and all.

How could I sway her to my side, where we could have a nice macaroni meal together?

I know: make muffins!

Kids always go for muffins: it’s just what they do. Maybe it’s the shape that appeals to them. And maybe, I thought, if I present mac and cheese in this form to Tillie, I’d be able to get past the idea of her favorite food being prepared in the dreaded “baked” fashion.

I found a recipe for Easy Macaroni and Cheese Muffins on AllRecipes.com. The word easy drew me in most of all as I’d never made these before and I was trying to leave myself enough time to come up with a backup plan, if need be. Also, it was moms’ night out and I wanted to get Tillie to bed on the early side so I could have some TV time.

I’m just getting into “Arrow” and watching it on Netflix: check it out if you haven’t! (CW Network, you’ll be getting my bill for that plug there.)

Anyway, I set about my task to get this meal going. And it was easy, as the name of the recipe suggested. So easy, in fact, that I really didn’t have much for Tillie to help me out with. I did get her to crack an egg, beat it and pour over the cooked noodles. She added the milk and cheese, and did some stirring. And she helped me put the mix in the muffin tin.

I guess she did more than I thought!

So after topping most of the muffins with bread crumbs (a necessity, in my opinion), we got them in the oven and took a couple of peeks from time to time to watch the magic happen.

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After about half an hour, while we watched “Teen Titans Go!”—another show I recommend (Cartoon Network, see above statement to CW)—our muffins were done, ready to break out of the oven in all their cheesy, bubbly goodness.

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The recipe said to let them sit for a few minutes so the cheese could settle, which gave me time to steam up some broccoli for the veggie portion of the meal. I wanted to go with a safe accompaniment for T because there was no telling how she’d react to the mac and cheese. I guess if one were to place a bet, though, the safe one would be no dice.

How pleased/surprised/flabbergasted to find that wasn’t the case!

She stabbed into one of her muffins, chomped into it and seemed satisfied. She did ask, “Where’s all the cheese?” (which, due to the muffins’ baked nature, lacked that powder-into-liquid taste she was accustomed to). But she did give me a sign of approval:

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And with that, I feel macaroni and cheese now can make its way onto everyone’s plate at the same time. It did take some work and thinking on my part (note that I never referred to them as “baked” macaroni and cheese muffins because that would’ve been the end before things even started).

Also, I’m not going to deprive her of the boxed version: I can’t take that away from her. After all, she still has a case of it in the basement to go through!

That’s using my noodle?

“Fine, if you’re not going to eat what I cook, then you cook!”

Just kidding: Things haven’t gotten that drastic on the homefront where I’d tell Tillie to fix her own meals.

She’s only 6, and I’m sure there are some laws out there that would prevent me from doing that.

But I did have one of those brilliant/common-sense ideas: Why not have her help me make a dish? And for this particular experiment of mine, I figured I’d start out with something that’s going to involve multiple steps to keep her engaged.

Something like… lasagna!

Something… she’s only eaten six bites of in her life and didn’t like.

What can I say? I like a challenge.

We got her to try some a couple of years ago after she had this brief exposure to that lasagna-loving cat Garfield. The lasagna to her didn’t taste as good as the world’s laziest cartoon animal made it out to be, and she was done with it—and Garfield—shortly thereafter.

But this time would be different, I thought, because she was going to be doing a lot of the prep work and cooking.

First, I had her cut up the zucchini to go in the sauce. After that was chopped, we put it in with the orange peppers I had sauteeing, then she kept those two cooking. I relieved her and had her cut up some portabella mushrooms to go with the peppers and zucchini. We threw those in and she went back to stirring.

(Don’t worry: Safety measures were taken with the cutting and cooking!)

After I browned some ground turkey in a separate pan, I combined it with Tillie’s veggie saute, then dumped the sauce over it for her to keep stirring, as seen here:

tilliestirsI let her sample it, telling her chefs always need to taste their food. Some got on her apron and she had a line for me, saying that shows you’re a good cook when your apron gets dirty (a little nugget of wisdom from mom).

When the sauce was done, we got our spinach-ricotta combo going. I showed her how you can squeeze the ricotta out of the container and let it plop into the bowl: fun times for the kid set. We put some spinach in with the cheese, then came the part Tillie was a little nervous about: cracking an egg into the bowl. She did it like a pro and ran off to tell her mom, full of pride.

So we got the sauce done. We got the ricotta done. Final steps, layering it all up lasagna-style. And since she’d done so much in the process, I wasn’t going to hold her back on this. We each did half, no simple feat. It went in the oven for the requisite 45 minutes or so and it came out looking like this:

thelasagnaWhile that was resting, I made some garlic bread and also worked on my backup plan: just some regular spaghetti sauce and noodles in case the lasagna was a no-go. I didn’t want to have a fallback, but I also wanted her to have a full meal in her belly. She can easily fill up on garlic bread if you let her.

When it came to serving up the food, I cut her a small chunk of the lasagna and dished it up with a piece of bread. Tillie had no idea about the extra food, which I didn’t want to spring on her until she was absolutely out on the lasagna.

I kept talking it up, like “You made this: this is going to be awesome!” and other such platitudes to try to get her excited about it. But actions speak louder than words and it was eventually time for her to taste it.

She took a bite and very politely said:

“I don’t really care for it.”

There were mushrooms; she doesn’t dig those. She bit a crunchy-after-baking noodle; thought she was going to break a tooth. There was the mushy ricotta and melty mozzarella.

In other words, there was a lot going on.

I’ll give Tillie credit, though: She got down a few more bites before she was completely out. I told her there was spaghetti and she downed a plate of that. As for the lasagna, which she worked so much on, she didn’t completely pan it:

tilliebiteI won’t try it again anytime soon, though. But I will let her help me out more: She had a lot of fun making the food and I had a lot of fun working in the kitchen with her. Tillie assists Nancy with baking a lot, but all I’ve ever had her do is roll out pizza dough with me. She’s more than just a dough-roller; maybe she could have a future in lasagna-making.

Eating it, on the other hand…

So, what happened?

A conversation between you and a friend, or even just with yourself:

“Hey, what happened to that blog Van started about getting his daughter Tillie to try new foods? That sure was a great idea!”

“Yeah, the writing was just oh-so witty: And that daughter of his, what a cutie!”

“What was it called again? Will Tillie Like It?”

“No, no, it was called Lunchtime With Tillie Part 2”

“Wait, that’s not it, it was ‘But Will Tillie Eat That,’ right?”

“But Will Tillie Eat It? That’s it! I wonder what happened…”

Well, let me tell you what happened so you can cease your inner/outer dialoguing.

Summer happened. Yep, that most wonderful of seasons threw us out of whack with the scheduling around camp and all. Then the school year started, and our schedules became a little more crowded in the evenings. And then there was that time I cooked something and Tillie said, “No way dude: this is no good.” I went upstairs to my room and cried till I couldn’t cry anymore, vowing to never cook her a different meal again.

But after 49 black bean quesadillas and seeing her go through a case of Kraft Mac and Cheese, I decided, “No more!”

And here we are.

So I’m ready to get back in the swing of things and hopefully tell you of more exploits because really, there should be more to her meal requests of me than just burgers. I have a couple of dishes/tales in the queue: It’s just a matter of putting them to WordPress.

Let’s hope you check them out, but more importantly, let’s hope you’re not left to wonder again what happened to “But Will Tillie Eat It?” I wouldn’t be able to handle the stress of you going around not knowing what’s going on!

My fate is in my hands (Part 2)

At our house during the week, breakfast-time goes like this:

“Tillie, do you want a breakfast burrito, grilled cheese sandwich or Cheerios?”

I know, that’s not what you usually think when it comes to a breakfast menu, but it kind of works for us, even though, if I were to admit it, the grilled cheese option has pretty much gone out the window. So essentially, it comes down to two choices: the burrito or Cheerios.

But a kid can’t just go on that alone: even though she seems to be making it work somehow. Doesn’t she want more from life than that?

Dear old dad should be doing more to help her out, so I decided at last one recent morning to take action against the breakfast rut and make something I’ve long had my eye on, pancake bars.

This was a recipe I saw months ago on Kitchen Daily and thought it could be the perfect on-the-go dish for the family that more often than not finds itself at the bus stop in the morning wondering, “Will we ever get this to kid to school on time?”

Anyway, I asked Tillie if she was up for helping off and she raced off to grab her apron. While she was doing that, I had to figure out the most crucial part of the meal:

How to make pancake batter.

I know, how could I think of making “pancake bars” without the pancake part. Luckily, that’s what Mr. Google is for, to help out in those moments of necessity! I chose this one from AllRecipes.com, figuring old-fashioned has to be good, right?

When Tillie came down, I told her I had to run across the street to get a couple of things, among them more chocolate chips, a move she readily endorsed as our at-home stash had dwindled down. My mother-in-law was visiting, so I left T with her as my wife slept. Upon my quick return, we were ready to get down to it.

I followed the recipe for the pancake batter down to a T and felt pretty good about it. Since Tillie always helps Nancy with the pancake making at our house, I asked her if I had the consistency down and she told me I got it right. Then came the add-ins: honey almond granola and chocolate chips. The recipe didn’t say how much granola to put in but did mention you can add as many chocolate chips as you’d like, so I put in a pretty good amount.

After giving Tillie a plate of chocolate chips to snack on, our mix was good to go into the oven. After the recommended cooking time, I the tray out, but it was lacking that golden hue found in 99.9 percent of the pancakes of the world. I threw the tray under the broiler for a little tanning, but it still didn’t get as dark as I liked.

Oh well, we still had to eat and after a little cooling, I cut the dish into the size of breakfast bars and served one up to Tillie. My wife was down by this time and all the adults were eager to hear what T thought.

Turns out she loved it!

All was good—or so I thought.

All was good—or so I thought.

My wife said of course she would: it has chocolate chips in it. My counterpoint was that we eat pancakes with syrup: what’s the difference? Plus it has granola—that’s healthy, right?

We all tried them and thought they had a nice taste, but Nancy thought they were too salty. (My pancake recipe called for salt: guess that’s how they made them in “old-fashioned” times.) But I was just happy to have something Tillie could take on the go before breakfast or camp as she seemed to be digging them—for a couple of minutes anyway.

As Nancy and I were standing over by the counter, Tillie walked over and said, “I’m never eating those again. I don’t like the top of them.” I looked over at her plate and the chocolate chips that sunk to the bottom were pretty much gone. It was almost proof of what Nancy said to me, that I was serving her cake for breakfast.

Oh well, at least she had a day’s respite from Cheerios or a breakfast burrito, even if it took cake to make that happen.

My fate is in my hands (Part 1)

Tomato paste? Hmm, nope. Worcestershire sauce? Maybe…actually, no way. Thyme? Too tricky, forget it. Cabbage? I’m the only person in our house that even likes cabbage.

What does that leave me with then? A cooked pile of ground beef and diced potatoes absolutely, undeniably, unequivocally, unabashedly, utterly devoid of flavor that was to be the filling for my first crack at savory hand pies for dinner.

Aw man.

Let me tell you how I ended up in such a sad state of affairs. In my travels through the Twitterverse, I saw a recipe around St. Patrick’s Day for Irish Beef Hand Pies tweeted by Kitchen Daily by way of Martha Stewart and I quickly favorited it to have on–sorry to type this–hand.

I never had this particular dish before, but I’m really good about getting behind savory hand-held pastries. Who knows? Maybe it brings me back to those Hot Pocket days of yesteryear I enjoyed so much (but am in no rush to revisit now). Anyway, I was down to give these a try. However, one question always comes to mind when talking about food for the family:

Will Tillie eat it?

Not with those aforementioned ingredients, I figured. Visions flashed through my mind of her biting through a hand pie as originally intended and curling her mouth up with such disgust that I might never want to cook again. So I left out the tomato paste, Worcestershire sauce, thyme and cabbage. And evidently, the flavor.

That ground beef and potato mixture was some of the driest and tasteless food I’d ever put in my mouth. I tried to add more salt, but nothing doing: It just wouldn’t, couldn’t get right. And I was left thinking, “Van, you took the coward’s way out. Better to go out knowing you went for it, then self-sabotage.”

After beating myself up over this for a while and resisting the urge to call my wife to tell her and Tillie to just pick up a pizza on the way home, I picked myself up and decided to fight back.

“Horrible-tasting, dry meat and potatoes, you’re goin’ down!”

I reached in the fridge and grabbed this marinade I recently bought from a butcher’s in Brooklyn. I put a spoonful of it in there, then another, then another until it started to look like some moisture action was happening. I wasn’t tasting it, though, as I went along: I figured it was smelling pretty decent, so maybe it would be alright.

We’d all find out together!

Then, I went to work on my pie crust—store-bought, of course. I had to roll out the shell, then cut it into the necessary pieces. We had a crust from 1996, or at least it seemed that old because when I put the dough roller to it, it practically crumbled.

Luckily, the fresher ones I picked up that day held true and I got to hand-pie-making. Soon after I got them into the oven, a nice aroma started making its way through the kitchen and I started to have a glimmer of hope that everything would be OK.

Tillie and Nancy came home from their bike ride, then went upstairs for T to take a bath. While the hand pies were baking, I sauteed up your favorite green and mine, some kale. I heard exclamations from Tillie and Nancy that things were smelling good, which was great to hear.

Soon, it was hand-pie-removal time. I took a bite of one of the shoddier-looking ones—they didn’t all make it into the oven looking picture perfect—and was pleasantly surprised. It came out with some nice flavor.

I asked Tillie if she wanted to try a bite, but then quickly rescinded my invitation. I didn’t want her saying “no way” before she even sat down at the table. I fixed her a full plate and served myself up one. Nancy got her own dish together, then we convened at the table with me anxious to see what Tillie thought. She took a bite and…

She liked it! She really liked it! Success! But not just regular success. No, this was snatching victory from the jaws of defeat success! Despite myself, I did it—and Tillie rewarded me with two thumbs up.

tilliehandpie

The pies were a hit—plus she was killing that kale.

All in all, it was a good meal. Granted, she did lose her enthusiasm about eating the hand pie. But I have it captured for posterity that she was happy at one point while eating the dish. Would I make it again? Probably. I can’t see Tillie clamoring for it anytime soon, but I’ll give it a shot in the future—maybe even with all the ingredients.

That’s something to ponder for another day, though. Right now, it’s moment-savoring time!

NOTE: Oh, before I forget, the headline says Part 1 because I’m going hand-held for the next dish, too: stay tuned!

Simply the best? Well…

It started on the bus ride home from school:

“Ewww, I don’t want to eat ribs from a pig.”

And just like that, the battle was on.

Hey all, I’m back again with details on my next attempt to broaden Tillie’s food horizons. And this time, I thought I’d try something simple, like barbecue ribs.

But not just any ribs. Oh no, as the title of the recipe says, these are the Best-Ever Barbecued Ribs. With a name like that, how could anything possibly go wrong?

They didn’t for friends of ours, who introduced these meat sticks of heaven to us last summer. We’d been out to there place in Connecticut for the weekend, where they fed us quite wonderfully from the moment we got there. And on the last night, they dropped these on us, proving that there’s some real merit to that whole “save the best for last” saying.

I’m not going to go into too much detail about that magical night, but it was a revelation. And our friends spoke of the recipe itself in such awe-inspiring, mouthwatering platitudes: “First, you cook the ribs till they’re falling off the bone–three days in advance.” What, that’s crazy! “Then, you throw them on the grill for a few minutes to bring them back to life.” Huh, this is wild! (Those in-between-the-quotes phrases are the thoughts I had while they were talking and I was eating.)

I tried to replicate those ribs a couple of times, but had suffered a couple of missteps when it came to reserving the fat from the pre-cooking. Yes, you read that right: You hold on to the fat and use it later.

I know, crazy!

Anyway, this time, my fat was secure and ready to be put to use on those ribs.

I just had to get Tillie on board.

We got home and I went to work while she hung out with her mom. I fired up the grill and threw on the ribs, and put some broccoli to steam as well for the veggie component.

The ribs are going good, coming back to life, then I covered the slab in Sweet Baby Ray’s Honey Chipotle Barbecue Sauce, a nice touch, I thought. (And here’s where you’ll want to put your virtual bookmark for a big clue on how dinner turned out.)

I bring the best barbecued ribs ever into the house, de-bone one of them for Tillie and put on her plate with broccoli. Nancy fixes herself a plate and she joins Tillie at the table. I break out some leftover macaroni and cheese to warm up for me as a side, put the finishing touches on my plate and get ready to join them when I hear in that soft, almost-whiny, I tasted it but no dice tone:

“I don’t like the ribs.”

All before I even made my way to the table.

Then Nancy’s getting the hummus (the store kind, not our homemade version) for Tillie to dip her broccoli in. When I get to the table and ask what’s going on, Tillie says the ribs taste kind of sweet, kind of spicy, which basically meant that wasn’t doing it for her.

Darn you, Sweet Baby Ray!

Well, actually, darn me for not leaving a rib or two untouched, which I thought of initially, but forgot to do. Tillie ends up eating carrots and broccoli with hummus, and I’m left to think, what if?

I will make this again: After all, they are the best barbecued ribs ever. I’m sure after this, though, for Tillie, they might make their way to maybe-they’re-OK status, but I’ll take it!

A (c)love story

It’s only been a few days since my introductory post, but in case you forgot, let me repeat something from it:

“Let it be known now: I feel I can hang some in the kitchen, but by no way am I an expert in any dish.”

In other words, there’s bound to be some mishaps as Tillie and I go along. And I’d like to share one of those with you now, on our first food adventure.

So, I figured I’d take things light this go-around and instead of dropping something brand new on her, I decided to take a stab at making hummus, one of her all-time favorites. And I’d get her to help, too, especially in the tasting department because of my lack of experience with it, which, if you don’t mind, sets up for an important segue going forward with this blog.

I, Van Sias, aka Tillie’s dad, am the original fussy eater. You may have been a fussy eater as a kid, but I’m pretty sure I have you beat. Like, the only way I can eat any type of cold cut cold is if it’s been fried in a skillet beforehand. I don’t eat ketchup, mustard or mayo. I’ve been known to give my lunch salad a quick microwave treatment if it’s just out of the fridge.

I’m way, way, way better than I used to be, but I do have issues with condiments and various dips, which has made me resistant to trying such things as hummus.

Where Tillie downs it on the regular and has for most of her life, I only had my first bite of it a year ago at a kid’s birthday party. And I have to say, it wasn’t that bad. But that was the last time I tried it. I wanted to give it another go, but it’d be some that I made as opposed to the containers that are usually inhabiting our fridge.

I found a recipe on a website, Inspired Taste, for simple hummus–“simple” being a main attraction. I had my chickpeas, olive oil, lemon, tahini and garlic all set, plus the recipe came with a video to even walk me and Tillie through. I broke out the food processor and was ready to begin.

But simultaneously, I had to make dinner: and for some reason, I decided to be extra industrious that night and grill burgers. On a school night when my wife was coming home later. No worries at the time: I got this!

However, it ended up being a lot to handle. The asparagus I was grilling for myself to accompany my food ended up burnt to a crisp. The burgers came out great, though: Props to me. Meanwhile, over in the food processor…

I had tahini and Tillie-squeezed lemon juice just sitting there. I did manage to get it going and make it creamy. Then came the next step, or misstep:

The garlic.

I usually just buy garlic already minced and go from there, but this time I decided to use fresh garlic. And here’s where semantics kind of got me.

The above recipe calls for half a large clove, which, to me, seemed like a ton, so I only put in three of those little dudes, less than half.

See what I did there?

I thought the whole thing was called a clove and the things inside were just … things inside, or little dudes.

Anyway, I got everything blended up eventually while Nancy finished getting Tillie ready for bed. When they were all done, I let Tillie take the first bite, since she is the resident hummus expert.

And this is what I got, with a little dance accompanying it, and her saying “spicy, spicy, spicy!”

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I thought she was referring to the cumin, but when Nancy tasted it, she said it was pretty garlicky. And I said I put in less than half a clove. Then I thought about it and asked her, “Wait, are those little dudes the cloves? Oops!”

I took a bite, and yep, it was garlicky–like ultra-garlicky. Enough to give me weird dreams about garlic garlicky.

Tillie finished getting ready for bed–with an emphasis on teeth-brushing–and that was that.

The first bites were rough, but I lemon-juiced the heck out of it and I made a recovery.

In fact, when I came home from work the next evening, Tillie was actually snacking on it with vim and vigor while Nancy cooked dinner.

So our first rodeo wasn’t too bad, and I even got to learn something: There is no food actually called a “little dude.” It should have a real name, like clove, for instance.

Tillie handled that softball I threw her pretty well: It’ll be interesting to see how she responds as I start stepping it up some!

 

 

I thought she’d be eating everything by now

Thai, Indian, Cuban, American, South African: It didn’t matter. My former almost-two-year-old was like the United Nations of eaters.

Then she went to daycare. Then I got busy with other stuff. Then she turned 3. Then 4. Then 5.

And before you knew it, Tillie (aka the Tillie of “But Will Tillie Eat It?”) had forgotten about her prior culinary forays and became mired in a cycle of black beans and rice and Kraft macaroni and cheese.

Now don’t get me wrong: that’s not all she eats. She’s a champ when it comes to downing the veggies, for instance. But the aforementioned black beans and rice and macaroni and cheese are definitely staples—as to where she might have one or the other at least 4 to 6 times a week.

That’s a far cry from her “Lunchtime With Tillie” days.

What’s that, you might ask? You see, that was a weekly feature I used to write for the much-loved Clinton Hill Blog, where I—a newly laid-off guy thrust into the stay-at-home dad role—would take my infant/toddler daughter out to different restaurants in the Fort Greene/Clinton Hill/Bed-Stuy parts of Brooklyn and write about the food and experience. I also made pains to expose her to all different types of cuisine and I have to say, she really took to it.

But as life changes, I guess so do the tastes of your average kindergartner. And we don’t get out to nearly as many restaurants as we used to with our days being so hectic.

So that’s where this new, hot off the WordPress blog comes in, because I’d like to expose Tillie to a variety of food again, but with a bit of a twist. It’ll be meals I make at home.

Back in the day when I was home with Tillie Bear, I really got into cooking. Now I find myself always saving recipes I find online (primarily on Twitter), but I never set aside time to make different things, which contributes to how the kid goes about her dining.

The goal, though, is for that to change: I’ll be making pancake bars for breakfast. Or instead of mac & cheese from a box, I’ll be making individual cups in a muffin tin. Crab pilaf? Caramelized onion & cheese squares? Yes and yes.

I’ll try to get Tillie involved in the cooking process, too, as I’ll probably need the help. Let it be known now: I feel I can hang some in the kitchen, but by no way am I an expert in any dish. Even my Cheerios can end up too soggy from time to time! But it’ll be fun and if anything, the family (including my lovely and amazing wife Nancy) will be trying some new meals or new twists on old favorites (more on that in my next post).

And I plan on writing here at tilliemeals.com as frequently as possible, with Tweets and Facebook posts to come.

So welcome to But Will Tillie Eat It? As things go on, feel free to comment and share your getting-kid-to-eat experiences, too. Maybe we’ll all be able to turn the tide on these kids and their stubborn ways!