Are your kids picky? As a kid, when dinner was served, I finished everything on my plate. No questions asked. There was no, “I don’t like this, can I have something else?”. Those were the days when you waited a year to watch a movie on TV (or else you weren’t watching that movie for another year).  After playing outside for five hours, there was no room to complain. Not about Sloppy Joes or cooked spinach. I poured salt on that green glob and prayed that I’d be as strong as Popeye the next day. My kids are picky eaters. Good sleepers. Well-behaved. And they are so quick witted. But they are picky about what they eat.  I could fill a phone book with the reasons why I feel guilty about this, stemming back to the first spicy fish taco that I consumed during my pregnancy.

So, anyhoo, during a recent family trip, we decide to grab lunch at a small bar inside our hotel that claimed to offer lunch selections. (If you count maraschino cherries as an appetizer.) We were seated and glanced down the menu. We passed on the oysters and calamari and decide on the sliders. Yes, the mini-burger sliders. Unfortunately, these cute, tiny burgers were grilled with 40 kinds of spices, an imported cheese that smells like feet and some green-colored unmentionables. Trying to get my daughter to eat one slender patty is what I like to refer to as the Hennessey version of Fear Factor. We sat there for nearly an hour, waiting for her to stop complaining. She started taking bites, but it would be another week before we could get this child to finish her meal. I thought she was going to barf right there on the table. But she did it. Not puke. I mean, she ate her lunch. Well, most of it. OK, half of it. Maybe she didn’t finish it and I freaked out and let her have some chips so she wouldn’t feel weak or make a scene. In my eyes, she did it. In my maternal eyes, she was trapped in a glass box filled with snakes and never screamed once.