French Style..

... eating. I read this post the other day on Janet Lansbury's website about the "French" way of teaching kids to eat well.

Now I'm usually wary of when Americans talk about how Europeans do this & that (the opposite holds true too). But for all it's worth I liked this woman's approach to serving food for her toddler. A four course meal. It sounds too fancy at first but on a closer look, it's very doable.

The first course is a vegetable starter (I almost always have sort of vegetables prepare, so check). The second is the main meal (that's always there, so again check). The third is a serving of a lettuce salad and some cheese (we never did that but we always have good cheese around). The fourth is the dessert and that is mostly a piece of fruit.

So instead of serving the veggies with the main meal as I usually do, I marketed this as the "appetiser" and gave the whole thing a go. It worked so well that I've been doing dinner this way ever since.

Here is how she does the four course family meal: Anatomy of the French four-course meal.

The first day there was a cucumber, tomato, mozzarella and olives salad with balsamic dressing.

The main dish was a quick stir fry made with chicken, broccoli and cashews.
For sauce I mixed some mango chutney with yogurt.

Mache salad. You can't see them here but there are some pea shoots in there :)

And a humble cheese plate. Turkish white cheese, brie and a pepper cream cheese disk.

And melon for dessert. Yes a melon in March. I did not do the shopping that week so I'm not to blame!