Starting Right

Been meaning to do this for a while, but I've been kind of busy. As in 'lacking two consecutive minutes to call my own'.

Your man Beeso has assembled a right crew here. I'm downright intimidated by the sheer culinary power of this fully operational death star... I mean food blog. Yeah.

Anyway. I figured I might start at the beginning, myself, and address one of my primary interests, issues, and problems in cooking: my kids. Your kids too, if you have any.

Cooking for kids and feeding kids is a bastard of a job. You can produce the best, most interesting, most nutritionally perfect meal in the world, and the kid will push it around the plate like a large, ugly toad had just died there. And they'll do that even though the love every single individual ingredient of the meal, dammit.

It's as though the act of assembling all those tasty ingredients into 'food' suddenly turns them into Kryptonite for kids. Raw capsicum? Love it. Pickled capsicum? Love it. Roast capsicum? Delish. Capsicum on pizza? Whoa, Dad! Back the fork up there, for a moment, big fella -- I'm not eating that! It's poison!

Anyone ever tells you cooking for food critics is a tough gig, give 'em a knowing smile. Food critics rate you in stars. The better your food, the more stars you get. And sure, getting all three or four or five or however many your local food critic likes to award could be trick. But if your food is basically good and served well, the critic will acknowledge that.

Kids have only two settings: all or nothing. Either it vanishes off the plate, or it's a battle royale to move even a scrap. And I don't think I've ever heard of a food critic who was willing to whine, scream, cry... or stuff peas up his nose in the hopes of being allowed to leave the table.

So. By and large, I'm gonna talk about feeding kids around here. My expertise? Well, I've got three of my own, and they delight in: fresh vegetables of all sorts, all kinds of fruit, fish, squid, pickled octopus, mild curries, Vietnamese food, Thai food, Chinese food, Malay food, sushi, cous-cous, and so forth. The children are eight, six, and three years of age. Their tastes have changed as they've grown, and I expect them to keep changing. I still have my battles with them, but I'm happy to say that on the whole, they'll try 'most anything foodish at least once.

That's the intro, folks. Next time you hear from me, I'm gonna talk baby food. Believe me: that's a thing which needs a whole lot of work.