That’s right folks. We’ve moved onto soup. It’s downright embarrassing that my kids don’t know how to eat soup. I happen to love soup. Tim, on the other hand does not… so we did our soup project when he was gone.
First we went to the store and we each picked out a soup flavor that looked good to us.
- Josiah chose Chicken Noodle (with the noodles in the shape of Mater)
- Chloe chose Cheddar Cheese
- I chose Split Pea with Ham
Oh, and I picked up oyster cracker to make the whole ordeal more fun. 😉
Then we got home and made all three kinds and tasted them. They gave me a thumbs up or thumbs down after tasting them…
Mator Soup: Chloe (Thumbs sideways) & Josiah (Thumbs up)
Cheese Soup: Chloe (thumbs down) & Josiah (thumbs up)
Split pea soup: Chloe (thumbs down) & Josiah (thumbs up)
I will admit, the cheddar cheese soup was terrible. We agreed that it’s a soup that would be best to help you make something else–as an additive not as a stand alone soup. Josiah was indifferent about all of them–saying he liked them all.
And Chloe was bound and determined NOT to like the split pea soup because it looks weird. But I made her finish her bowl anyway and she did so with out too much drama which tells me she didn’t hate it THAT much. (Oh, and I should add, that after trying all three, she changed her opinion of the first soup to a possible thumbs up.)
All in all, however, it was a successful meal. They tried them all and learned that there are lots of types of soups out there, and while me may not like some, there are going to be others that we do like. The big deal was that they tried all of them without complaining.
Success!
Good for you for trying this! You might want to try some homemade soups, because canned soups can be so salty tasting, which could be hard for kids to like, since their tasters are better than ours. Ask them what they liked or didn’t about the textures – did they like creamy or did they like the chunks of meat and the noodles? Then you would have an idea what to try. I would think canned tomato soup would be something they might like – you can dump things in it really easily, like popcorn.
Another problem with soups might be that they always involve many ingredients mixed together, so someone who likes to eat different parts of the meal totally separate would have trouble with soups.(Hence Tim’s dislike of them.) But if you did some two ingredient soups, that might work better. For instance, you could have a broth with just some sort of noodles and add peas or corn or carrots, or whatever vegetable they prefer. Later you could add a bit of meat, but in quite large pieces, so they could actually pick it out and put it aside to eat separately.
Oh, how I LOVE soups, but then I love casseroles, too. I guess I just prefer my ingredients all thrown together and mixed up!
Good ideas!