Yeah, but what's in it?

My beautiful babies are pickytarians. Aside from peanut butter sandwiches, apples, cereal bars (must be from a package), pasta with sprinkle cheese (parmesan) and carrots (these just to get dessert), and a sprinkling of choices from the dried fruit and nut categories, they turn their noses up at most things. Rice?! How can you not like plain rice?! With a pat of butter sliding across the top, just beginning to melt into the plump little granules?!

Now, as babies, many interesting textures and tastes crossed their burgeoning palates. They ate tofu, peas, oranges to the point we were buying those giant Costco bags once a week, pickles and calamari ceviche, tentacles and all.

I figured I could get a healthy, homemade cereal bar into them over the years. Nope. Too gooey, too hard, not the right shape. Ugh.

But, I may have found something in this new cookbook I'm plowing through, testing recipes for the first Clark County Cookbook Club. The Smitten Kitchen has so far pulled off a few tasty treats my kids will eat, including these almond and date breakfast bars. They like dates, they like almonds, so I gave it a whirl in my KitchenAid. I switched the almond butter in half the batch to peanut butter to please one twin. They still asked what's in it, and peered at it from all sides before taking the teensiest of bites, but they ate the whole square. Thank goodness they cut into nice little squares or they may have been rejected before the first crumb hit their mouths! Ugh! Just eat!