Sesame Street ran a segment a few weeks ago about what's a meal, kind of a game show (Mama says it's based on a real show but I don't know it) where you have to decide if the food is a meal or not. It certainly struck a chord here because we now find ourselves defining a meal frequently. "Is ice cream a meal?" Sis wants to know when we say it is mealtime. No, that's a snack (we try not to talk about dessert, not wanting to make that a habit).
What is a meal? Um, a protein (it can't be easy, can it? As vegetarians, we don't want to say it's a meat)--meats, beans, or eggs--with vegetables and fruit and some bread or rice or pasta (are they too young to understand "carb"?). So, then, Bud wants to know, can he just have blueberries, strawberries, and grapes? Sis would like just cinnamon raisin bread. We're not in the clean plate club and we don't reward eating, so we dislike saying they can have one food only after they finish another. But you can't just have bread or grapes. It's tricky, defining a meal, especially because as a nation, our concepts of food and meals are so skewed.
To make it more complicated, they still don't understand the difference between breakfast, lunch, and dinner, so we try to keep it to meal and snack. Until Sis wants grilled chicken for breakfast, which I'm not sure I could handle at 7 a.m. At that point, I'd rather give her ice cream!
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