The Great Green Bean Experiment 2004

Our almost 17-month old Lima Bean is by all measures an excellent eater. Despite being a busy toddler, she happily sits down for three meals a day and is usually open to trying anything we give her. She likes most things she samples and is basically a very easy child to feed. We've heard stories about how difficult and picky some kids can be about food and we know we're very lucky that she's like this.

The one food that Lima's not a big fan of is green beans. On a good day, she'll eat a few of them and then start spitting out the rest. On a bad day, she moves them all around her plate hoping they'll disappear or she just tosses them overboard from her highchair onto the floor. I've read that kids need repeated exposure to foods so that they can continue to sample them as their tastes develop. What might turn off a one-year old could appeal to them at 14 months, for example. So this is why I continue to cook green beans for Lima every now and then.

While I was digging through the fridge tonight in search of foods for Lima's dinner, I noticed that I had some leftover green beans and some leftover minestrone soup. A lightbulb went off. Lima loves minestrone soup and happily gobbles up every vegetable in it. So what if I took all the beans, dumped them into the soup, and then let that "marinate" overnight? Would the green beans soak up enough minestrone flavor for Lima to like them tomorrow?



An experiment was born: The Great Green Bean Experiment of 2004. It's things like this that will probably land Lima in therapy down the line ("And my crazy Mom just wouldn't let it go and kept making me try beans I didn't like..."), but I'm all for experimenting to see what works.

Stay tuned for the results...