I know better than to apply logic to the process of feeding kids, but there I was doing exactly that a few weeks ago when I spied the perfect recipe for “peanut butter sauce” (aka satay, tahini, sesame sauce, etc.) by my friend and mother-of-two Melissa Roberts. The logic went as follows:
If Peanut Butter = Surefire Consumption, and Noodles = Surefire Consumption, therefore Peanut Butter + Noodles = Mom Twice as Sure About Surefire Consumption
Jenny! Jenny! Jenny! How long have I been in this parenting business? Long enough to know that the surer you are about something, the greater the likelihood of failure.
I think my six-year-old, sensing my peanut butter-fueled swagger, figured out that she could really twist the knife if she rejected the sesame noodles (which, by the way, were delicious). And so I never really had a chance. Here’s what really kills me: She orders the dish at Chinese restaurants as a matter of course and this homemade version was infinitely better. Which she would have found out had she deigned to take a bite. My only consolation was that I was able to use the sauce to replicate an appetizer which I used to order at my favorite midtown sushi restaurant (RIP Expense Account)…a steamed spinach with sesame paste, also known as Goma Ae. My other daughter likes both peanut butter and spinach but, well, you can probably guess how that one turned out.
