My Son's Journey of Discovering "New" Food

As some of you have read in my previous posts and rants, my son has a mild form of autism. Mild as it may be, he is still autistic. He is a creature of habit and routine. Those of you that have dealt with people with autism at any level know this is something you do not muck with on any level lightly.

My son is now 7 years old and is progressing far better and coming along to be more "normal" than I have ever hoped and thought possible. Since my last post about him where he astounded me how crazy skilled he was in math, he upped the ante tonight.

My boy, as I said before, is a creature of habit and routine. He will only eat certain foods. There are picky kids and then there is my son, bringing it to a new level. He won't touch veggies. Won't eat fruit except the occasional grape or apple. Hates potatoes…what kid hates all forms of potatoes? Only eats highly processed crap. He will eat salad from time to time and baby carrots but other than that…junk. At least he eats the salads. I never ate salads when I was a kid.

Anyhoo…out of the blue, he comes up to both the wife and I and says he wants to try steak and green beans the next time we cook it. Most family meals in the house are cooked by me while the wife sticks to the mega family holiday meals. Tonight's meal consisted of baked potatoes, Omaha Steak bacon wrapped filet mignon, my take on country style green beans and crescent rolls. The steaks are coated in olive oil then seasoned and grilled. My green beans are based on my grandmother's country beans. She was raised on a farm and the green beans were cooked with some chopped onion and a huge hunk of pork fat. I took that idea and tweaked it by using french cut beans, more onions, garlic, bacon pieces, oregano, some salt & pepper, butter and BAM…OMFG it is so damn tasty. It also smell so amazing when it is simmering on the stove. Tonight was the night and we held him to his promise…and he delivered…kind of.

We gave him very small portions of everything except the potato. He just will not go near potatoes yet…yet. The steak had a few pieces cut off and cut into tiny tasting pieces. He tried quite a few bites of the beans and seemed to really like them. However, he was a bit skittish about the steak. He did eat a few of the tiny pieces but said he had enough after eating all of the bacon wrapped around it. He then took a crescent roll and sopped up the "steak juices" and ate the up. Overall…a win in my book. The foot is on the door and I am on the way into making my boy a full on carnivore.

Now if I can just get him to try some pork chops.