My Kid Eats Anything... Finger Food or Not

As I've mentioned time and again, William eats just about anything. He is incredibly easy and, yes, I am very thankful. (I know this can change at any moment.) So, since I have an easy eater, I tend to keep it simple and throw together things we have in the house.

Top 100 Finger Foods by Annabel Karmel is a very pretty book, but tough for people like me... I don't have to hide vegetables in muffins. I can throw anything on my kid's high chair tray. But, here's the biggest reason it was tough: I don't have the time, kitchen utensils, or the oven features that some of these recipes demanded.

When we bought this old house we knew that the state-of-the-art Magic Chef oven was missing its broiler feature and the stove top was missing the use of the back two burners. We'll replace it, we thought. A year and a half later and we're still short a broiler and two burners. It's not that big of a deal, except when you're trying to make your kid some kid-specific treats.

The recipes in this book were more complicated than I would have liked and demanded more ingredients than I would consider simple. There were also a lot of calls for skewers, which I don't think I trust William to deal with right now and didn't feel like pulling meat off of, so skipped. And when I flipped through to find the easiest recipes possible, two of them demanded the use of a broiler. (I rolled with it and just turned my oven up really high.) None of that works for a full-time working mom.

The highlight of our recipe book testing were curry chicken tenders that we all loved. (Seriously, they were AWESOME and I will absolutely make them again for all of us.) The low point was the corn and cheese muffin situation. Maybe it was because I made them in a large muffin tin, rather than a small tin... Which leads me to another item I didn't have: Small bite-size muffin tin.

So, when I stock up out kitchen, get a new oven, and somehow find more time, I'm ready to give some more recipes a whirl... However, I'll triple the recipes to make enough for the whole family. I'm not going to that much trouble to feed one little person. And the food all looks like it would satisfy the pickiest of our eaters (me) and the easiest palates in our household (Matt).

This post was inspired by Top 100 Finger Foods by Annabel Karmel, which I received complimentary as a part of Chicago Moms Blog (Silicon Valley Moms Group) Book Club.