What's for lunch Wednesday: Toddler pizza

From the start, I knew that whatever the label (green, natural, organic or otherwise), I wanted to be selective with what I fed my son. I don't have the best relationship with food and I want my son to have a healthy one. In his first months of life, of course, that meant breastmilk, which I will talk about plenty I'm sure later on. Once food became involved, in our house that meant looking at ingredients on baby food jars and picking ones that didn't have any weird-sounding ones. A lot of the time, I found that meant that organic was the way to go. When I didn't buy organic, I watched out for added ingredients that he hadn't tried yet. Sometimes the labels shocked me! (Probably will talk about this at some point too.)

Later, a friend convinced me that making our own food wasn't that hard, so for a few good months I made sweet potatoes, green beans, peaches, apples, pears, peas and more in batches that we froze for him.

Before I knew it though, the baby food days were waning and my son still ate jars of things like broccoli, zucchini and even spinach, but wouldn't pick up a whole pea to save his life, despite having almost an entire set of pearly whites.

He chews like a champ, but favors chicken nuggets over corn or green beans.

So, basically I'm saying that the beginning was easy - we avoided salt and sugar and other things I saw no point in introducing too soon. Now, though, it's getting much harder to steer my son in a better direction than the typical American toddler diet.

One day he eats nuggets with ketchup. The next, he tosses them on the floor.

I've bought both of Jessica Seinfeld's books about sneaking purees into foods, and I think there's a little bit of something to that at least. We made her version of chicken nuggets, but he only really picked them up once I added some ketchup. The next day, I sent some to day care and they ended up on the floor. Oddly, he won't eat the typical toddler staples of mashed potatoes or macaroni and cheese, either.

As I experiment with keeping his diet decent, I have discovered more failures than successes so far. Every day is a challenge. Some days I send things to day care that come right back home at the end of the day. I refuse though - refuse! - to start feeding him Spagettios!

So, I thought it might be fun to dedicate Wednesdays to my culinary experiments.

Here's one that I can count as a success and that I am thinking is better than what you get pre-packaged:

Toddler pizza:

1 whole-wheat tortilla
Furmano's original pizza sauce (not a lot of additives, it seems)
mozzarella cheese
cooked ground turkey breast

Put the tortilla on a baking sheet and spread on sauce just like you're making a pizza. Sprinkle with cheese and a little bit of ground turkey. Bake it until warm and melty in the toaster over or oven. Fold in half and cut or tear into bite-size pieces. Voila! (Also, next time I think I'll add some veggie puree to the sauce!)