This week's episode of The Sporkful podcast is up! Listen through the player or iTunes/Podcasts app. (And please subscribe!)
There are so many rules around food and eating: what goes with what, which fork when, elbows where? But what happens when those rules get broken, and the result is delicious?
A while back I put out the call for your kids’ weirdest, most innovative food creations. And we got tons of great submissions. This week on The Sporkful, I get together with my friend Hillary Frank (from the wonderful parenting podcast The Longest Shortest Time) to listen to them. (You also heard Hillary in last year's show, "How To Find Deliciousness In Your Kids' Table Scraps".)
As Hillary and I learned, sometimes you have to break all the food rules to be a real innovator.
First up, my own daughter Becky, age 4.5. (You didn’t think I’d do this whole show without including one of my adorable children, did you?)
When I interviewed Becky for this episode, she was eating a plate full of scrambled eggs with cherries:
Sounds terrible, right? But consider this -- are cherries really so different from another tangy-sweet egg accompaniment: ketchup? In fact, I would argue that cherries are better than ketchup because they're less cloying in their sweetness.
Next up: Josie, age 9, in Seattle -- who likes to mix milk into her chili:
"I think it makes sense and is almost exactly like sour cream and chili," she says. "But my mom and dad think it’s disgusting."
Josie makes a good point. Milk and sour cream are pretty similar, though milk lacks sour cream's tangy edge.
So far, these kid chefs are pretty much on point. But then we listened to this message from Erica on Long Island:
"When my brother was about 9 or 10, we’d come home from school and he’d ask my mom to make a hot dog with peanut butter and sliced grapes. The hot dog had to be cut up into small discs, no bun."
Hillary and I are both down with grapes and hot dogs -- sweet and salty is always a good bet. But hot dogs with peanut butter???
Listen in to the full episode to get our take on peanut butter hot dogs. Will we trade in our ketchup and mustard for PB & J? (Would you?)
And later in the show, Hillary and I reminisce about some of our own own childhood food memories -- like my fascination with mixing milk and orange juice (despite my Mom's dire warnings) and this anthropomorphized tuna salad Hillary's mom made back in the day:
As you can tell, Hillary loved it:
Eaters, what do you think of these innovative food creations? Are you tempted to try any of them?
Did you experiment with new flavors when you were a kid? And if you’re a parent, how do you deal with it when your kids want to eat some combo that grosses you out?
Let me know in the comments below, or via Twitter or Facebook.
This week's episode of The Sporkful podcast is up! Listen through the player or iTunes/Podcasts app. (And please subscribe!)
Connect with me on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook!
Interstitial music in this episode by BWN Music:
- "Stony Brook" by Kenneth J. Brahmstedt
- "Agree To Disagree" by Cullen Fitzpatrick
- "Bunyan's Bunion" by Cullen Fitzpatrick
- "Steady" by Cullen Fitzpatrick
Photos: Richard Frank (courtesy of Hillary Frank), Dan Pashman, FlickrCC/Anthony Nelson, FlickrCC/Yoshiyasu Nishikawa
