Cookbook review: The Gastrokid Cookbook

The Gastrokid Cookbook is great if you have a kid who is already an adventurous eater.

It will not help you if your kid steadfastly refuses to eat anything in non-nugget form.

In my ongoing efforts to get my stepson to eat something, anything that isn't either a hot dog or peanut-butter-and-jelly, I've been field-testing a number of so-called kids' cookbooks, and here's what I've learned.

You have to raise your kid to eat new foods, from the beginning.

If you cave and start down the mac-and-cheese path, you will never be able to get your kid off that path. He will be doomed. DOOMED.

OK, it's not that apocalyptic, but seriously, I don't understand the kid aversion to new foods. I really don't understand when those kids grow into adults with aversions to new foods. I haven't found one recipe or one trick that will get my stepson to eat anything I put in front of him. All the cookbooks in the world won't solve that problem.

But I'll go into that more later this week. Suffice it to say, if your child will eat new things, you did something right. I take my hat off to you. Go buy this cookbook and make zucchini hummus and fish cakes with your child, because while I can eat zucchini hummus all day long, my stepson would rather starve, and he has proven this on a number of occasions.