Risotto Prima Vera

I saw this recipe on the Barefoot Contessa and it looked really yummy. I've thought about cooking with fresh fennel bulb for a while but didn't have the courage. But this risotto with fennel, asparagus and leeks looked so good.

Add to this that the kids have become much more adventurous in eating. No more are we limited to the chicken nuggets, mac 'n cheese and pb & j that graced our menu for so long. After the very limited diet, they began to branch out to the point where one would always like new foods and the other not. It was never something you could reliably put odds on. You just knew that one of them would love it and the other hate it and the only other reliable fact was that if kid one liked it last time, there was not guarantee that he would like it the next time.

Now, Lastborn pretty reliably likes everything we place in front of him and Firstborn likes it as long as he can pick out the bits and taste them separately.

I did know going into this process that neither of them like asparagus, but I love it, so I was forging ahead.

The Risotto looked so wonderful. I added chicken to make a meal of it. DH loved it. He loves fennel and though this was his first dish with cooked fennel, he was happy with the outcome.

Lastborn tried valiantly to eat all of his. He didn't love it and did pick out all of the asparagus, but he simply couldn't get the whole bowl of fennel and leeks down. Firstborn gave it his typical barely-try-it-then-spit-it-out-announcing-how-gross-it-is try. He's much less trusting of my food experiments, but he knows to rein in his disgust to a certain extent. After picking all the chicken out and some of the rice, he asked if he could make pb & j sandwiches.

So I scooped up the leftovers in their plates and mixed them with Nova's food. Se was very excited to get table leftovers as this doesn't happen often. But even she was not sold on the fennel, leeks and asparagus. She carefully extracted her kibble, the rice and chicken pieces from the veggies and spat the veggies onto the floor to the delight of both Firstborn and Lastborn.

"Even the dog won't eat it, Mom." They announced with glee pointing to the pile of veggies on the floor in front of her bowl.