Cheese fiend

Toddlers obviously go through phases of liking and disliking foods.  And lunch is really hard to get variety into them when you want it to be quick, and fit in with what’s easy for the rest of the family.  We tend to just have sandwiches for lunch, sometimes soup, occasionally I might do scrambled egg on toast etc.  But all quite similar.

N’s happy enough.  We have crusty bread, but N has a variety of sliced breads.  Thankfully he’ll eat white, granary, wholemeal, whatever’s going, but it’s fillings that’re hard to decide on.

He used to have phili quite a lot, sometimes with ham, sometimes I’d add peanut butter (if you’ve never tried it, the combination’s actually quite nice as the phili takes away some of the dryness) and occasionally he’ll  have tinned salmon if his dad’s having some (vile stuff in my opinion, smells like cat food!).

But now he’s decided that proper cheese is the only way to go…and phili’s not good.  Pain, as we always have a stash of phili, but if he doesn’t eat it, it won’t get used quickly enough before going mouldy.

It seems that any hard cheese is good.  Cheddar (mature or extra mature) is the favourite, although he’s quite partial to nicking my Double Gloucester or Red Leicester.  He’s not a fan of mozzarella (unless it’s on macaroni cheese), and we’ll have to see over Christmas whether he’s a fan or not of stilton or brie when we get the crackers out.  If I’m cooking and grating cheese, his little fingers will be in there like a shot, getting any cheese that’s outside the box grater.  Mind you, he’ll eat anything off the chopping board if I leave it in his way (spring onion, red onion, pepper).

So now, we’re unable to have cheese if we want him to have something different, as he just won’t eat the sandwich unless there’s cheese in it.  I tried the other day, just adding a slice of cheese to his phili & ham sandwich and he just pulled out the cheese, and pushed away the rest.

I’m hoping he’ll eat other fillings too as too much cheese just can’t be good for him.