This week I have had exactly seven brilliant ideas. Five of those were ways to get Mr. Pants to try new foods. Four of those five failed. He wouldn't even give the array of bitesize Nathan's hot dog with red straw tooth picks and all four of his favorite dipping sauces a sniff. I mean, what kid doesn't like a hot dog? It's a hot dog! And Nathan's aint cheap. You know I had to eat that cold ass hot dog after he left the table. I digress, SO, one of my brilliant ideas succeeded in getting a taste but that was it. He hated it. Sweetheart. But this kid wouldn't recognize delicious food if it kicked him in the shins. Because, I mean, not to toot my own horn (ok yes, I will toot it), this dinner was amazeballs. It was stupid good. And I'm going to take it one step further and say that I'm officially graduated from basic skill/ not very good to level two. Or the "I have a few skills in the kitchen and I'm not afraid to use them" level.

On Wednesday, I decided to make it Green Day. All day we talked about green things and gathered all of the green toys to play with. I was pumping up the idea that dinner would be all green too. He seemed to think that was cool.  But when I placed his green meal in front of him he looked at me as if to say, "What the hell is this?". It was avocado mac and cheese, kale chips and broccolli. He took all of the broccolli off the plate to save it and then asked for spaghetti.  He's lucky I had some leftover in the fridge because my wounded heart turned a smidgey resentful (I'm human!) and I probably would have made him toast for dinner rather than make a fresh batch of spaghetti. But I try not to die on hills in battle without a good reason, so I heated up some spaghetti and we all sat down to eat.

It's a good thing for my ego that Plum is a food lover. It's a cruel twist of fate that she is my food allergic kid. And  I've been trying to find a way to feed them both the same things. So when I stumbled on the avocado macaroni and cheese posted in a FB dinner group by my friend (and vegan sage), Hillary. I thought I was looking at the perfect solution. She vegan-ized  this recipe and her son loved it so I gave it a go. To make it safe for Plum, I replaced the milk, butter and cheese with Earth Balance, rice milk and Daiya shreds. I added more cilantro and garlic than the recipe called for too. Because I figured that since I wasn't using the recommended pepper jack cheese, it would need a little more flavor (I added some red pepper flakes to my serving. Duuuude, so good). When I placed it in front of her, she laughed. She has never had anything creamy or cheesy before. Her reaction made me smile. She poked the noodles with her finger for a minute and then brought her finger to her lips to taste. Then it was on like Donkey Kong! Baby girl hummed and rocked back and forth and ate every last bit of her creamy avocado goodness. When she was done, she smeared herself with the leftover sauce.  And for two seconds, she was my favorite. Because she obviously knew that I needed that to happen or I may never cook again. I'm fragile. As I reached for my phone to capture Plum covered in avocado cheese sauce, I looked over to see Mr. Pants tasting his serving. He gagged and then scrubbed his tongue with a napkin. I mean, he tried it. Which is a lot more than I can say for the fancy hot dog dippers or the terryaki chicken (covered in his favorite cheese to encourage trying it. BARF!) or grandma's chicken and rice (I mean C'MON! You LOVE rice but noooooo, it touched the chicken.) or the pot stickers that we tried to convice him were fancy nuggets (Fail). He didn't even smell those things. But he tasted the green mac and cheese. I guess I'll take the progress. At this rate, he'll be eating one new food every two years. Le sigh....