Tea Parties & Tea Sandwiches

Nope. No way, no how. She is not trying that peanut butter and jelly sandwich and neither is my son. If it’s new, they are not interested. I am always amazed at the long and tedious process of getting kids to try new food. Why will they eat a cool ranch dorito with out flinching, but putting a green bean on their plate will send them running? I don’t get it at all. I know at some point they started accepting new food because they aren’t still eating baby food. But must it be so hard?

I know it can take anywhere between 7 to a hundred thousand times of putting a new food before them before they will eat it. But this gets very frustrating for me. I decided to enlist the help of my sister for a creative way to get my kids to try new foods. She decided one rainy day that we were going to throw a tea party! A tea party with tea sandwiches and all sorts of nutritional snacks that I knew my kids wouldn’t eat. We gathered up Abbey’s tea sets complete with tea pots, tea cups and plates. We gave everything a good scrubbing and set out to put together a try new foods tea party!

The tea sandwiches

We started with a “safe” food for each kid so we knew they would eat something. Depending on the child, they chose either jelly sandwiches or cheese sandwiches for their safe food.  We cut them up small so they looked like little tea sandwiches. Then we added some new food. We made them mini peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on whole grain crackers. The second tea sandwich was cream cheese with a slice of cucumber on top.

The kids seemed very interested in all of the little finger foods. They were really into the idea of having a tea party. My nephew is always excited to try new things and he dove into the PB&J crackers. Once my daughter saw he could eat one and survive, she tried it too! I was so happy! She finally tried peanut butter! The youngest ones were a bit more skeptical, but at least they managed to prod and poke at the cracker sandwiches.

The snack

Everyone had a snack of yogurt covered raisins. All of the kids used to love raisins, but lately they refuse to eat them. Denine bought yogurt covered raisins and told the kids it was “like” candy. They all figured it must be true, because they looked like they were covered in chocolate. So they each tried the raisins and decided they really liked their “candies”.

The tea

My son is going through a stage where he does not want to drink milk, he thinks milk should only come out a bottles. But he isn’t supposed to have his “babas” anymore. So Denine decided to make the “tea” in the tea party be milk. We took out two toy tea pots, washed them up and filled them with milk. They all took turns pouring their own “tea” and guzzling it out of their little tea cups. It really worked, my son drank an entire tea pot of milk!

The dessert