“Are we ever going to eat at home again?”

When Luke asked me this one night last week, it made me realize how much I had been avoiding cooking. It’s no secret that I have picky eaters. In fact, my parents will tell you that I was (and still am) a picky eater myself. I worked long and hard to get my oldest to accept something beyond Perdue chicken nuggets; ham was a big step, as were hot dogs, ramen noodles, homemade chicken strips and pizza with sauce. Pasta is still a no go (as it was with me through college and even while backpacking in Italy. I am sure my roommates could tell you how annoying that was).  After checking out a grocery store on our househunting trip in November, I felt I could breathe a sigh of relief: hotdogs could be bought; plain, uncooked boneless skinless chicken breasts were easy to find; ramen noodles were plentiful.  And they all are, but while hot dogs are readily available, buns aren’t.  The chicken tastes terrible and is tougher than any poultry I have ever eaten, and the ramen noodles are an ingredient you would only eat with something else to add flavor – which means they rank alongside jalapenos and spicy curry on the list of things the kids will eat.

It’s not like we eat every meal out or have take out for three meals a day.  We have breakfast at home all the time – cereal and milk isn’t hard to find and cornflakes taste about the same.  Lunches are not hard to put together either.  We have found packaged ham just like we use at home and the bread is good. The boys eagerly try new packaged goodies that I would not buy if I were grocery shopping at home. Ritz with cheese, chocolate goldfish, swiss wafers, small packs of mint milanos, yogurt raisins, cereal bars – they all have found their way into the boys lunches. But the packaged stuff is not where I want to expand the breadth of what they will eat. I needed to get creative about expanding our taste and texture tolerances. Creative and willing to spend some money. The Garden Cafe is a lovely restaurant just a few floors away. It costs a small fortune every time we eat there but it has been worth every penny.

The Garden Cafe is a hotel restaurant which serves an extensive buffet at breakfast, lunch and dinner. There is section devoted to Chinese dishes, an array of Japanese selections, a carving station with several choices of meat, fish and poultry (duck, anyone?), as well as all the choices we find “usual” at a buffet – eggs, bacon, sausage, bread, muffins, bagels, fruit and an omelette station. Each meal we eat at the Garden Cafe begins with the directive that everyone must try something new. With a western dessert buffet for consolation, attempting a new flavor isn’t that bad. Between us, we have tried sliced octopus, sushi, deep fried salmon with noodles, bean sprout salad with some sort of unidentifiable fruit, dumplings, delicious chunks of arctic char with mirin, fried noodle dishes, fruit smoothies that tasted weirdly of meat, tiny sardines (?), and a pepper mousse that I thought was tomato soup.

I credit the buffet with helping the boys’ tastebuds adapt to their new home. We are thrilled that Jed has decided salmon rolls are palatable, and while Luke is not pleased with the taste of the seaweed, he will happily eat cold sliced octopus. Ty remains an adventurous eater, gamely trying all sorts of new textures and flavors.  The boys all love calamari and are also willing to eat chicken or beef satay.

Since the boys are game for different tastes and textures, cooking might get fun again. Next step, more eating in, less eating out!