I tell my kids who don't like my food, that they can get their own dinner. In fact, they can organise the entire evening meal for the family. NEXT meal, not this one. If they don't like what I prepare, they can take my job. Please. But they have to follow the same rules I have to follow:
1) budget. You can't blow the entire week's food budget on one meal of lobster thermidor, no matter how tempting.
2) shop for it yourself, or at least draw up a shopping list of ingredients. Whatever you use that is already in the cupboard has to be put back onto the shopping list. Always. Whoever uses it.
3) Make sure what you prepare takes into account everybody's dietary restrictions and preferences. If you have a Jack Spratt and his wife situation (ie the only thing one will eat, another hates and refuses) then you have to accommodate it.
4) If someone complains, do not blow your cool.
Somewhere in there, a person's other chores have to be done or negotiated to be done by someone else.
I helped my kids through this process. I remember my mother working with me on something similar - back when I was a kid, we had compulsory cooking class for girls at school. These were a joke, the food usually inedible. We had to eat what we cooked. I remember curried eggs was a particularly fearsome class. We'd heard horror stories form kids in other classes, about how awfully spicy and horrible this was. So when it was our turn, I said to my fellow students at our stove, "Let's only put in a quarter the amount of curry powder."
The teacher was suspicious because our bechamel with curry powder was not as yellow as it should have been, but I lied to the teacher wide-eyed and said I had put in the required tablespoonful (instead of the teaspoonful I used). When we were done and sat down to eat - my table-mates loved it. We were the only group in the class who could eat their food. And not only eat it, but enjoyed it. At that point I confessed to the teacher that I had made it palatable by reducing the curry powder amount, and we all liked it.
It was a breakthrough moment for me, cooking-wise. I learned that recipes I don't like can sometimes be played with to make them tastier. I rushed home and said to my mother, "I want to fix curried eggs for dinner for everybody."
Mum said, "But your sister doesn't like curry, says it is too spicy."
I said, "I've found a way to make it taste good, without being spicy."
So I did it. My mother let me take over the kitchen to do it. I felt so good doing this. Of course I had cooked dinner for the family before, but usually under circumstances where my mother was in hospital and I had to follow her exact evening routine in her absence. But this time I was doing it for the fun of it, doing what I wanted, knowing my mum was not in hospital this time but in the next room relaxing for a change.
So a bad situation and a kid feeling frustrated and angry t a meal he/she doesn't want, can be turned around.
Another point - boys especially, adolescents especially, tend to get "munchies" really badly and want THAT thing, NOW. They get really unreasonable about it, like a diabetic who has taken too much insulin and feels the world slipping away, fast. I've seen kids like this arrive home from school and rush almost panicked to the fridge in search of something to stave off the hunger pangs. I used to make up vegetable sticks and cream cheese dips (or similar) for them to raid. Or cold cooked sausages. I saw friends go through this too, with their kids. Especially the boys. Weird, but poking food at a hungry bear first calms the savage beast enough for them to be a bit more reasonable afterwards.
Marg
(sorry)
