Cooking with Junior: Peanut Butter Date Balls

I’m always trying to stuff our family with protein, specifically the Juniors.

Junior the Eldest has developed quite a sweet tooth and this causes me a significant amount of anxiety.  I am trying to react to my children’s food choices with dignity as well as nonchalance, essentially leading the boys to the foods that will strengthen their bodies, teaching them to listen to their hunger levels and appropriately interpret their desires, but also not panic and cause undue focus on the junk food that they will inevitably find to eat (thanks a lot, school nurse who treats coughing with peppermint candies.)

Well, that’s a tall order, isn’t it?? Especially as The Hubs and I are just barely functional when it comes to food right now. There’s a whole lot of craving and emotional eating happening in Grownuplandia at this house, generally between 6:30 pm and 9:30 pm, which we are trying to address with various strategies. Like the time I got fifteen paleo/ketogenic cookbooks from the library and declared “Nevermore!! Carbs be gone!” And then realized that it meant I had to cook meat and vegetables ALL THE TIME, and probably no one would help me with this task. So I learned a lot but sent all those books back because I was still being awoken several times each night by a baby and just couldn’t get it together. I did end up with a 5# bag of dates out of the deal though so…yeah. Hence this recipe!

A bedtime stress reduction strategy at the opposite end of the spectrum has involved eating lots and lots of chocolate ice cream. So now we don’t keep that in the house. Except when we do.

Just when I thought eating couldn’t get much worse, Junior stopped wanting to eat a lot of things. I really detest the role Picky Eater, because I don’t want to label him something, but it sure has been frustrating. He also has a remarkable sense of smell, can’t handle tags on his clothes, is beginning to “not feel good” when he doesn’t want to go somewhere or do something – in short, highly sensitive.

I’ve had to let go of my urge to control what my kids eat, and how I perceive people view me. I took a lot of pride in the Baby Led Weaning strategies we employed. The tiny dudes ate absolutely everything, even things that were a little spicy or strong or bitter. Or made of sand, rocks, and grass. Now with the influence of school friends, fatigue from the long school day, and the boys’ influence on each other, meals feel different and I don’t enjoy preparing them as much as I used to. To counter this, the Hubs and I now eat a meal once or twice each week after the boys are in bed, though it kills us to wait until 8pm to eat. We try to chew and swallow slowly, since we’re not trying to shovel down our meal before the next tantrum, and we treat ourselves to half a beer each because who can drink more than 6 ounces of beer anymore? Not us, that’s for sure.  We also fast on Tuesday nights, but that’s new so I’ll write more about it when I see if it’s doing much besides making me verrrrry cranky the next morning.

As a family I still aim for four sit-down meals per week in which grownups and kids are all eating the exact same foods. I serve the main onto plates in the kitchen and then have vegetables, fruits, cheese, pickles, nuts, etc as family-style side dishes on the table, a tactic I read about recently. It allows Junior to serve himself enough of a balance of good foods that even if he refuses the main dish, I know he’s getting a decent meal. Junior Jr recently transitioned from a highchair to a kid’s chair, though still with a harness, and this made a surprisingly positive difference in his eating attitude. Welcome to the table, little brother! He will often fuss and refuse to eat until we sing our simple blessing and close with a rousing stomping and clapping version of “A-men!” Dude loves to flap his arms along to the chaotic Amen performance. The Hubs and I are trying not to do any bribing, begging, or mandated plate-finishing but once you’ve asked to be excused and bussed your plate to the counter, it’s over, there’s no going back later for a snack.

So I decided peanut butter balls would be the perfect protein with a hint of sweet after-school snack to tide us over until the meltdown … er… dinner hour. They evolved from a Google search and an original recipe that had a 1:1 ratio of peanut butter to honey. Allow that to sink in: that’s 1 cup of honey to every cup of peanut butter. I thoughtlessly made it true to recipe and then couldn’t handle how much the honey burned the back of my throat. Needless to say, the menfolk were big fans of the sweet version.

My version includes some carbs in whole grain form, some dates because yum, a bit of honey which you can adjust for more sweetness, and some good fats too. Sized and portioned for snacking, they also fit perfectly into Junior Jr’s mouth, whole. While his eyes bugged out a bit, I attempted to free him from one – it was like prying a coin from the bottom of a jar of paste. So, definitely break these into bits for the little ones!

What Can Junior Do:
* Remove pits from dates and eat the delicious sweet stuff that gets stuck on the pits
* If you use a TBSP cookie scoop, Junior can scoop and release. Or grease up his (clean) hands with some coconut oil and have him roll the balls out.

What Can Go Wrong:
* Junior can feed the (inedible) date pits to his younger brother. Plus the aforementioned plugged mouth incident.

Recipe Notes:
* We store these in the fridge. They get a little dry and crumbly by the end of the week, if they haven’t been eaten by then.
* Excellent additions include shredded coconut. Roll them in sesame seeds. Drizzle on some melted dark chocolate or, for a spiky accessory, roll them in miniature dark chocolate chips.

Peanut Butter Date Balls