Master chef Javo and school baon

Javo continues to enjoy school. He looks forward to going to his "other" school--OLL--located near the house but farther than Alres (his school the past year). He enjoys his time with Teacher Osam (Osang) and his friends and classmates.

OLL has made school transitioning easy for the young ones and the first time students by having them come in on a staggered basis and on short time spans for the first two weeks. Today was the first time he had snack time. He goes to school 11am-130pm but had class till 1pm today. So snack is lunch...

What to bring though. Javo has always had his own sense of taste. We survived on furikake (the Japanese rice toppings) and nori on rice for the first few years. He then moved on to peanut butter as a constant fallback (peanut butter with rice and olive oil). He would sometimes eat galunggong complete with its head or barbecue if his taste buds wanted them.

Worried about his eating habits and his being way underweight, I would ask my Tita Sani Orbeta for advise on what to give. She said as long as he ate something, was active and wasn't losing weight he was fine. She also said that kids love soft food so rice with soup--he would sometimes take that. Although clear soup is more to his liking. He would rather eat vegetables than meat. I recently discovered that bola-bola of miswa is fine too.

He is currently into bread toast with butter, sugar and syrup. That is one of his favorites and has replaced peanut butter and furikake as a constant. His food repertoire has increased to include hotdog, bacon, pancake, chocnut, and chocolate cake. Chicken is also on his list--boiled and not fried. He also likes shabu-shabu.

Going back to baon, I asked him what he wanted to bring for baon today. He said rice, butter, olive oil and peanuts. Peanuts! I didn't have those around. There was casoy so I looked for that. Unfortunately it could not be found. Since he likes parmesan cheese, I put that instead. I had him try it before finally closing the container to make sure he would eat it. "Sawap mommy!" was my reaction to the concoction. After preparing that we found the casoy so he had rice, butter, olive oil, parmesan cheese, and casoy for baon today.

Having to deal with his eating habits, I read some books on picky eaters. They all said not to worry too much as kids know how much food they can take. My doctors also advised speech therapy as his oral development may also be part of the cause for his eating habits.

My Javo also refuses to be called pare or mister or any other name. He will only answer to Javo except when you call him Master Chef Javo. Maybe his taste buds will lead him somewhere after all.