Have your children got their favourite dishes? Maybe you have perfect children who eat everything you put on the plate, but my children aren’t like that. If I cooked only the dishes they like, I would serve green pea soup or red borscht with meat-stuffed ravioli (in Poland we call them "small ears") and spaghetti for my daughter, and meatballs with buckwheat groats for my son. A varied and balanced diet... Fortunately, they love fruit and vegetables. Until yesterday, tomato soup and crispy pork chops were delicious; today they are horrible. Whatever I cook I always hear that they don’t like it. In everyday life in my home there is no room for pickiness. In my opinion we should eat everything on our plates, but not when a child is sick and doesn’t have an appetite. I know that people feed their children in various ways. You may say that like an adult a child may have their favorite flavours and can like or dislike any dish, and maybe you are right. You should remember that small children don’t like unknown things. New colours or flavours do not tempt them, and it is easy for them to say, “I don’t like this”. I think that we should give our children a chance to try new dishes. Otherwise, if we would like to eat lunch elsewhere, we may have two choices: pizza or fast food.
We have our own eating traditions. On Saturday or Sunday we eat “eggs on a box” for breakfast. It isn’t an especially mysterious dish. When my daughter was two years old, I suggested ham and eggs for breakfast. My two-year-old slightly misheard, and using her imagination and playing on Polish words she created “eggs on a box” (The Polish words for “ham” and “box” sound very similar). It’s been that way ever since.