My daughter's first school tiffin

My sweet little two and a half years daughter has started going to the playgroup. Her school starts at 10:30 am and is for two hours. The moment she wears her school dress, she wants to go- whether the time is 09:30 or 09:45 or 10:15. Initially, the school was for one hour. And now its for two hours with an additional activity of having a school tiffin. 

The menu of their tiffin for five days a week is fixed. 

• Monday- dosa
• Tuesday- potato chaat (boiled)
• Wednesday- chapati roll
• Thursday- one fruit
• Friday- anything of your choice (but it needs to have at least 60-70% nutrition and should not be completely junk food)

I gave her a dosa (and we had that too for breakfast) on her first Monday. Then I put little coconut chatni on its side, hoping she might just like it. She finished half dosa and the chatni remained untouched. That Monday morning I put green moong dal in water for it to sprout the Tuesday morning for her potato chaat.

Having high hopes of her having moong sprouts along with the potato chaat, I have made a delicious chaat I thought. I added a dash of lemon which she relished, to give it a chaat effect. Off the tiffin came untouched, entirely.

Overcoming my obsession of her healthy eating, on Wednesday I gave her a chapati roll with her favorite jam in it. Hurray, she finished it entirely!

Thursday fruit was one of her favorite banana. She had half. Not bad- I thought!

My choice tiffin on Friday was again her choice of jam chapati roll. I chose it so that she eats chapati and so that I can enjoy that hurray effect after seeing her empty tiffin.

So next week's tiffin was slightly better. She didn't finish everything but tiffin didn't come untouched. I started giving her half dosa, half chapati, small potato chaat (with only potatoes shallow fried in home-made ghee and tossed with salt and chaat masala) and a small sized banana. Her Friday tiffin is now almost fixed at chapati jam roll. Occasionally, I did get my satisfying hurray effect and other days were not bad. The only problem were Mondays, if I made dosa only for her. Then I might need only four teaspoons of rice and two teaspoons of urad dal. It might either become too sour or might just start stinking if I left for the normal 12 hours for fermenting, I thought jokingly. So, its better if we all have idli or dosa for our Monday breakfast. 

I enjoy packing her tiffin nowadays, anticipating the effect I will get after I open when she returns. I think she too enjoys the whole tiffin scene along with my reactions. She waits for me to open the tiffin after she is back. She daily comes and reports honestly if she has had her tiffin or not. The best of this naive sincere report is when she tells in her baby talk- "today I also had water from the bottle after the tiffin Mumma".