Twice Baked

Olivia has always been a good eater. Even when she was suffering from horrible reflux as an infant and screaming between feedings, she ate well. Once she was on Zantac for the reflux, she ate even better.

Considering the fact that there are quite a few babies/kids/individuals with 5p- syndrome who are tube fed, I realize how lucky we are that Olivia eats as well as she does.

Heck, considering how picky Alyssa is I consider us lucky that Olivia eats the variety that she does.

One of O’s very favorite foods is potatoes. She loves potatoes cooked in almost any way imaginable. Baked potatoes smothered in butter and sour cream? She’ll be salivating before you place it on the table in front of her. She loves her potatoes mashed and swimming in gravy. She likes them cut into wedges and baked with herbs and spices. She enjoys them cut into spirals and fried ala Arby’s.

Recently Tom suggested I make twice-baked potatoes. He knew he liked them and was pretty sure Olivia would too.

Holy cow does she love those things. She looked at the first one I served her and her eyes lit up. It was like she was being served her very own single serving of mashed potatoes in their own potato skin bowl. Best thing she could even imagine. The last few nights she’s eaten the equivalent of two potatoes each night.

Of course I also serve her other foods along with her twice-baked potatoes but she would eat only the potatoes if I let her.

She loves to hear how things are made. The first night I served her the potatoes she asked me how I’d made them. I went through the entire process as she spooned bite after bite into her mouth. She listened, fascinated, as I described washing the potatoes, rubbing them with oil, baking them for an hour at 400 degrees then mixing the sour cream and butter and cutting the potatoes in half and scraping the insides out of them to mix with the sour cream and butter. She loved the fact that the potatoes were in fact truly baked twice, you know, since that’s what they were named.

I think we might be raising a foodie. Give her another few years and she’ll be a contestant on Master Chef Kids.