Just Bento

My husband is one of those picky people, it is a battle getting him to eat vegetables. Who knew a thirty-some-thing-year old man could be so much like a five-year old.

Some of the safe bets are carrots, frozen peas, frozen mixed vegetables, salad (without what he terms to be weeds or anything other than green), broccoli, tomato, or asparagus. All of these have to be over cooked because he doesn't like things that take too long to chew.

As far as protein goes he is pretty okay with any protein I make him as long as it is either meat or egg, and the meat should be cooked in ways familiar to him (i.e. American or Italian style seasonings, or maybe a little bit of teriyaki with extra sauce for the veggies). And he always wants more meat in his lunches.

For the carb, he will no longer eat plain brown rice. He will eat fried rice (without too many extras in there), rice with soy sauce, and spanish style rice; but he prefers bread or potatoes (oven-roasted or mashed).

I love raw beef ;-)

I am so So SO not a picky eater. Well, I do have fairly picky criteria such as fresh, real, un-fake, local is great, fresh, etc., but there's no actual food that I won't try just once. Even foods that I've had a less than enthusiastic response to, like uni (sea urchin roe) I will try over and over just in case I got a bad batch the first go 'round. Still no luck with the uni, but I will keep trying!

Back to topic. In my experience, picky eaters come in all flavors, shapes, and sizes, and so preparing food for them needs to be individualized to their particular issues. Grownups are harder than kids, I expect. With kids, you can do things like make mini-meatballs full of hidden vegetable and non-meat proteins. Same goes for meat sauces --I like to use even as much as half meat half veggie. So in a meatball forcemeat you might use your food processor to mince carrot, celery, cabbage, onion, etc., and then mix into your meat, egg, spices & herbs, and whatever else you put in. You can use blitzed whole oak flakes as a filler as well, instead of bread crumbs. Sauced with a yummy mix like Maki teaches on JB, these meatballs seem to be universally loved.

For grownups, wow. I suppose you could try sneaky stuff like the above. I guess I'm not much use here; it's really hard for me to empathize with super food pickiness! I'll ask my mom-of-7 friend if she has any clever ideas :-)

My (picky) boyfriend's response:

"You can make me a turkey sandwich and shove it in a plastic box, if that makes you feel better."

Maybe I'll make lunch for a coworker. I have a few people around here who would appreciate my hobby (*cough*obsession).

I know what you mean, I cant get my DH to try diffrent food very often, even in disguise as little bites. He is a Meat & taters man, doesnt want any frilly stuff.

My mom was a picky eater and a pretty good cook, but she only cooked what she liked, which wasn't much.
I didn't even taste cucumbers until I was about 10 at a friends house.
The guy who didn't want "weeds" in his salad cracked me up! That was one of her biggest complaints about restauraunts the last few years, she'd ask the waitress every time, "Are there any of those Weeds in the salad?"
Iceberg and romain lettuce were all she'd eat.
I think I learned to cook just so I could try stuff I'd heard of other places.

I used to hide the veggies in marinara sauce and meatloaf too for my kids.
But they weren't that picky. We had a rule in my house; You must try at least one full bite before you can declare you don't like something. If you still don't like it you don't have to eat it. But they couldn't just say they didn't like it if they hadn't at least tried it.
Then they could go make themselves a sandwich.
They eat all kinds of stuff now.