A Classic Pantry Pasta for Back-to-School Season

Summer break is so long in the states! From the parent of a kid who needs structure, I wish we were on more of a European schedule with shorter breaks but more regular holidays. It’s hard to have so much unscheduled time (not to mention expensive to fill it with camp, childcare, etc.) and be away from school, regular socialization, etc.

We use Wild Planet’s skipjack tuna (lower in mercury), jarred in oil. We get them from Thrive Market and they’re delicious!

Still chickpeas, but I like the ones in the recipe below, which get a flavour boost from the seasonings, a nicer crisp texture and are easy to make. https://thefirstmess.com/2023/09/27/kale-sweet-potato-salad-chickpeas-spicy-tahini-ranch/#recipe

Katy, I would either just leave out the tuna or substitute with sliced hearts of palm or chopped canned artichokes, marinated or not, and then add another tablespoon of capers or just the caper brine for saltier flavor. I make a very similiar pasta and have done all of these modifications. Delish!

Do you like other seafood? Canned clams, salmon, or sardines might be good. There is also canned chicken.

A friend of mine likes to add curry powder into the tuna to help make it more palatable for her (not sure how that translates to a pasta salad though). She will eat it in a salad or as a sandwich. Or perhaps you can add more lemon and balsamic vinegar, pickles to it?

smoked trout is not as reasonably priced but incredibly flavorful

You can stick with your chickpea sub but then add some Thai fish sauce or Worcestershire sauce to add back a little fishiness. Or in this recipe you could add a few anchovies or anchovy paste when the garlic and pepper flakes go in the pan. Smush them up fine and it won’t taste like anchovies, just that little extra depth that the beans are missing.

I recently learned a tip that adding a dash of cinnamon (not enough so you taste it, literally just a dash) can really help deal with the “fishy” smell of canned fish. I have yet to try it with canned tuna but did recently try it with canned salmon and can confirm that it works!

Thank you! We just fixed it :)

A lot of grocery stores have pine nuts in the bulk section and so you can just buy what you need and not have any leftovers hanging around. I know they are expensive- but buying a small amount might be easier??

I do a lot of olive oil toasted panko because my daughter’s school is nut free and she gets a lot of leftovers for lunch. We add it at the table rather than mixing it all in, and I put a little container in her lunch. If you live near a Trader Joe’s, the Aglio e Olio season is really nice mixed in to the panko. It’s more of a crispy crunch than a buttery crunch, but still excellent!

Try crispy bread crumbs for some crunch! I think I read this in an Alison Roman recipe: Heat a glug of olive oil in your pan. Sprinkle in 1/3 or so cup of panko breadcrumbs and stir constantly until fragrant and light brown. Turn off the heat and stir in shredded Parmesan. It’ll clump up like granola. The clumps will be bigger than pine nuts are but it’s great on pasta and way cheaper than pine nuts!

I keep them in the freezer so they don’t go to waste if they’re not all used.

Sunflower seeds, toasted slightly in a pan, are a great pine nut alternative. Here in Australia, they tend to be significantly cheaper than nuts – perhaps also in the US? Alternatively, and this may sound a little bonkers, what about crushed up tortilla chips, plain or flavoured? I do this with a simple butter bean dish I make, and it’s a high flavour return for zero effort.

Toasted sunflower seeds work beautifully in dishes like this. (The hulled ones, sometimes called kernals).

crispy chickpeas or edamame!

If you can find them – or make them?? I’ve never tried – I loove bagel croutons for this purpose. Or just snacking straight-up! They’ve honestly ruined 90% of all other types of crouts for me, ha.

I love the crispy panko/ bread crumb ideas and will give that a try. Thanks, women!

I usually just sub in sliced almonds! Pine nuts aren’t a flavor I enjoy, but light and crispy toasted almonds are perfection (as long as you aren’t dealing with nut allergies, of course.) This recipe looks fab – I can’t wait to give it a try!

I really appreciate that (both the compliment and the kindergarten commiseration!!).

Salmon patties! This makes me so nostalgic for childhood dinners. I would grab the tartar sauce while my sister drowned them in ketchup.

I just made a pasta with tuna the other night and 30 min later couldn’t stand the smell, so I personally I would say yes, there’s a smell! But I’m scent-sensitive!

How old is your kid? There are some great picture books to address this issue – maybe you could encourage a teacher for storytime? My son LOVED reading about foods from other cultures and appreciated the message to not tease others. Geraldine Pu and her Lunchbox, Too is one of them and there’s at least one other that we got from our library but the name escapes me. (Check a library rather than search Amazon…there are some self-published ones that def present as teaching a lesson with lame artwork, versus a more friendly story).

Yoko by Rosemary Wells is a sweet picture book that addresses these issues.

Your poor husband! I grew up in a very diverse neighborhood, so I have no memories of kids taking issue with another’s lunch. It wasn’t until I entered the working world that I realized that certain seafoods and spices seem to provoke outsized reactions. I do find tuna has a bit of a smell, but it’s not like it’s Surstromming, right?? I hope your kid gets to enjoy lunchtime stress-free!

Love a good parenting bribe!! It works!! I bribe my 4 year old with candy in the morning in order to sleep through the night….

Kids Eat in Color on Instagram! She’s a dietician that has curriculum for picky eaters.

I follow Kids Eat in Color on instagram, she has a lot of great tips and strategies for picky kids. Perhaps the 5 year old will be interested in cooking and baking with you? I find that can be a gateway to trying new things.

Raised a picker eater and the lightbulb moment came when I included him in food shopping and meal plans and pretty soon meal prep. Even from the cart seat at the grocery store, he got engaged. Just talking about different foods, flavors and cooking moved the needle faster. For him, it was texture not aroma and experimenting turned things around there too. We would do fun food projects like making pudding or applesauce together. Big hit.

My 7 year old is also finally starting to be less picky, but he’s been in feeding therapy once or twice a month for a year because it was bad. I also love Kids Eat in Color, but I struggled with her insistence on having safe foods at the table, even if the picky child doesn’t eat the whole meal. When my son hit six, he just couldn’t make dinner out of a bunch of fruit or veggies, his growing body needed more. So, I broke the rule and started serving noodles or ravioli every single night along with whatever else I made and honestly, it made a huge difference in his mood at the table. (His OT approved of this, too.). Hang in there. I try to remember, they are PEOPLE, not just kids. And while I don’t believe in catering to my kid’s every whim, I felt like he deserved to feel like he was eating a full meal like the rest of us every night.

Joy, I feel this question deep in my soul. My husband and I are foodies; our oldest and youngest kids are picky eaters, with the middle being adventurous. It helped that their list of food preferences are slightly different, so they didn’t have a ton of meals in common anyway. We focused on (1) offering the foods, (2) having them eat a full, balanced meal with minimal extra effort, and (3) keeping meals as positive as possible. Our main approach is to have the one unaccepting of the meal either eat meal components or to have one of their go-to safe meals. (One will eat most vegetables, so they’d add a protein without flavor; one will eat the meat and sauce but has an alternative vegetable… at this point, it’s still 99% baby carrots.) We have something they like at least once a week, so that they are included in the family meal some days. Hang in there! It really does get better when they hit puberty. Partly because they are more open to new experiences and are just really hungry – and partly because they can make their own @#$% alternative meal. :)

I have one picky eater in the house and I think what helped us was identifying what it is about the food that she was objecting to. For some things, it’s simply texture. I try to meet her where she is and expand the edges slightly. For example, she doesn’t like saucy things and soups… so when I make Baked Potato Soup for the family, I pop a potato in the oven for her and she can choose her own toppings. Or if I’m making a Teriyaki Tofu Stir Fry, she gets rice, raw veggies and a little bowl of nuts. (Sometimes her dishes even seem healthier than ours?) A lot of recipes can be modified to exclude the hated ingredient or texture, and I see this as both of us compromising? It’s been my hope that eating together will move the needle towards more food tolerance. And, it has. She’s a teen now and her palette is naturally expanding. Good luck!

Deconstructed meals ala Jenny Rosenstrach. That way you’re not doing extra while still catering to a youngster’s immature palate. And a lot of cooing while savoring the meal helps too!

I don’t have anything practical to add, but just wanted to say that I was an extremely picky eater as a child. I think I went entire years eating only pasta for dinner. I slowly began expanding my palette when I went off to college, and by the time I was in my 20s I can say that I definitely ate a balanced diet. So your kids will probably get there eventually!! As an adult, it’s clear to me that there’s something off about my system. Some foods simply make me nauseous for no reason, which was why I wouldn’t eat them as a kid. I wonder sometimes about food intolerances and when I’m through this pregnancy/breastfeeding I’ll look into it more.

If it’s helpful — I was an extremely picky eater as a kid — the only vegetables I’d eat were sweet peas and corn, and the only fruit was an apple. So many foods made me gag and just tasted awful. It frustrated my mom to no end. Things started to change in the middle of high school when I would literally dip individual spinach leaves into ranch to test the waters. I am a great eater now as an adult and will eat nearly all vegetables. Fruits are still bizarre to me (textures). But I’m always happily willing to try something new. My friend who is a speech pathologist suggested maybe there was something sensory going on but who can say. Things worked out.

One thought re: backsliding prevention . . . would your 8yo enjoy taking the role of the older kid who is able to model proud adventurous eating for the 5yo? I also wonder, just given the huge change of blending a family, if maintaining the status quo would be a good-enough goal for a bit. Obviously I don’t know you at all, and I know step-parenting is hard! I suggest keeping in mind that if your kid backslides, it’s not the 5yo’s “fault.” The new family unit is figuring itself out. In the case of my own picky eater, we decided to try OT for feeding therapy when her diet was so restrictive (at age 7) that she was hangry all the time, and was getting headaches. OT was amazing, and/but it is a process that takes time. We also learned a lot about neurodivergence, child development, and eating — having that knowledge and support made the daily moments so much less stressful for me and my partner. That’s maybe my best advice: figure out what can help you and your partner to lower stress levels, even in the least ideal circumstances. If this helps, super! And if it doesn’t, you’ll find what you need, I know you will. You’re gonna do great!

Look up “Ellen Satter division of responsibility in feeding” — it’s been super helpful to several parents I know with picky eaters. Has practical advice about what to do and just as important, not do, to make sure everyone gets fed and you maintain a healthy atmosphere around meals, without power struggles.

I was an incredibly picky eater as a child, and I was never forced to eat things I did not want to eat. My parents largely made meals that most family members would eat, and if someone didn’t want what was served they could eat the parts of it that they wanted and make themselves a sandwich / bowl of cereal / alternative meal. The only rules were that if we took food onto our plates we needed to finish it AND if we made a separate meal, we had to clean up after ourselves. I outgrew/overcame all of my pickiness by the time I finished college. I was blessed with an even pickier child, and I have done the exact same thing with him. He’s now a sophomore in college and is well on his way to eating everything. The most important things are making sure your kids eat nourishing food and not turning meal time into a battle. One of the few things kids can control is what and when they put into their bodies, so give them as much agency as possible. It’s a long game, but picky eaters eventually come around (or become solely responsible for feeding themselves!).

I’m a speech pathologist who worked in feeding and a mom to two kids with autism and adhd. My best is advice is to be super curious and nonjudgemental as to what is making the picky eater picky. I felt tremendous guilt over not being able to “fix” the eating situation with my own kids. Once I stopped fighting it, everyone is much happier and they’re expanding their palettes as they’re able. They’re as involved as involved in food decisions and prep as able but honestly sometimes one will say “there’s too much smell” and takes their bland plate of safe food to a different room. And that’s okay. Caring less and realizing I had less control than I thought has made it much better!

my mom always made a cold tuna pasta salad with tuna, mayo, chopped red onion, peas, capers, boiled egg, salt and pepper. it was soooooo good.

My goodness, that sounds delicious, Joanna! Peas!