Yes this is another post about attempting to feed my fae. It is a subject that occupies most of my waking hours, so deal with it!
Yesterday, I was elated by the first signs that my child may actually have a food preference that she would be prepared to eat. She turned from the television, which was at the time presenting the trials and tribulations of an anthropomorphic coral polyp, and announced she wanted Pirate Pie. Of course, she wants a food that is from an Octonauts cartoon and made from ingredients that don’t exist in the world we inhabit. According to the cartoon we need coral slime (very important), essence of peg leg, powdered parrot feather and a multitude of other improbable things.
Well, that’s not going to stop me: if she will eat it, I WILL find a way to make it! So, with the challenge accepted, I spent the day mulling over how to make something that doesn’t have any relation to real life. It was fortunate that, a few days before she made this announcement, my husband found on YouTube a recipe to make tofu from pumpkin seeds and this was something we had tried, since tofu is a soft, bland, homogeneous food we felt might make a good base to feed to her anyway. It turned out that, despite the promises of it being ‘delicious,’ it was in fact utterly tasteless and made us question if it was worth the effort of chewing.
But it is also slightly slimy and a disturbing pale green colour. In short, when looking for a substitute for coral slime, it’s perfect! If you dump enough curry powder (powdered parrot feather) on it, it also becomes palatable, if slightly brown. So, now having figured out how I’m going to fake.. err.. ‘replicate’ the important ingredients, I added a few optional extras: sweet potato, onion, garlic and ginger (because pirates like to chop, chop, chop) and simmered the whole lot in vegetable stock (essence of peg leg).
I cheated, and bought the puff pastry to make the top, complete with skull and cross bones.
So, my fae and I spent the afternoon chopping, mixing, smashing and rolling and produced a pirate pie! Even better, when it came out of the oven she said it looked ‘yummy’.
2 minutes before we sat down to eat, the fae father cooked something that made the kitchen smell, and that was enough for her to decide that it must be the pie, it was therefore yucky and she was not going to even try it. She wanted porridge instead. Sometimes, you just want to break down and cry.
She refused point blank to even try the bloody thing, she wouldn’t even say why. Under careful bartering, she (reluctantly) agreed to eat one mouthful on a poppadom, providing she got the porridge after.
So, I go to make the sodding porridge. I place it on the table. She announces she doesn’t want the porridge, she’s going to finish the pie with poppadoms.
I quit.
For those who don’t know it:
The pirate pie song
And if you’re interested Pumpkin tofu
Raising the Modern Fae 