Little Meatball

Every language I know has its affectionate terms for people. In French, your loved one could be ‘a little cabbage’ or ‘my little louse’.  In English someone could be your ‘cookie’, ‘cupcake’ or even ‘sweetheart’. Spanish has too many to even name here but I don’t think that they are food related.

In Italian you’ll often hear someone being called a meatball. It makes sense to some degree. Meatballs are very important to Italian cuisine and it’s meant to refer to a little something that comforting and special. (Although I’ve also heard it refer to someone who is fat and dumb but that’s neither here nor there.) My daughter actually will be christened ‘little meatball’ not so much because she tastes good or is yummy with pasta but because of a couple of events around meatballs themselves.

In introducing her to adult food, she wasn’t very fond of chicken,meat or ham. She just thought they were weird. She had no real issues with veggies and some fruits she ended up enjoying after the second try. However, the proteins have been hard. So one day I said, maybe she just needs a little something extra with the meats to make them interesting. So I thought meatballs might just be the trick.

We started first with chicken meatballs in broth. Before even giving them to her, she decided to make a little pool in one of her high chair compartments with her water. This happened mostly because she turned her sippy cup upside down. Then I cut up some chicken meatballs to give to her. She took one and put it in her mouth. She was a little skeptical of the taste. But she eventually ate the small piece. She then swept the other pieces into the water with her hand. She moved the meatball morsels around in the water and then one by one ate the bits. I guess she thought they needed to be sanitized before she could chew on them. Regardless, it was cute and she ate them and it was the validation I needed that perhaps now she would eat some protein.

A few days later I decided to make beef meatballs with some pasta. This would be the first time she would eat pasta too so it was another big milestone. I decided to make fusilli/corkscrew pasta because I could cut it small enough for her to get little bites. I gave her some of the meatballs first which she enjoyed. Then I gave her pieces of the pasta which she took in her fingers and inspected. She looked at the first piece in front of her eyes and made a face like ‘I’ve never seen you’ and she then quickly put it in her mouth. However her mouth was still full of some meatballs. So she couldn’t quite make out the taste of the pasta so she spit everything out. The gnawed piece of pasta and little bits of the meatballs fell on her bib. She then reached down with her mouth and tongue to the bib and ate the pasta piece only. She chewed it and seemed happy with its flavor. Now that she had the essence of it without it being tarnished by the meatball, she was content. She mixed together some meatballs and pasta as she completed her meal.  Finally we were eating a real meal together as a family.

Her playfulness and then acceptance of meatballs made me very happy. Up until that point, I was cooking food for the adults and mashing up food for her or giving her purees of food. We weren’t eating the exact same things. Now she was having adult food in baby sizes. And because she’s small and special and cute when she eats, she will now be christened my little meatball (although I will still call her a munchkin and a pumpkin and a number of other names).