UPDATE 2: Food preferences

I've had a couple posts on food preferences, and now that we've had some time to experiment, it's time for an update.

The neat thing, from my perspective, is that Elena's pretty game to try new foods.  Sometimes she won't like the new thing, and she'll spit it back out (neatly, into my hand, or a napkin), but the important thing is she's game to try.  And she's liked a suprisingly wide variety of things so far.  About the only things she consistently turns down are spicy or pungent foods.  She's not a fan of hot sauce or spiced foods of any variety, and there's a limit on how flavorful a cheese can get before she turns it down.  She loves pointing and calling calling hot sauce "eh-ooh-ur-ee-ah-ook-[make a face, frown]"  Huzzah for onomatopoeia.)  

After trying horse radish, it was a "Nyet" for a minute of watery eyes, then it was a Da.  "More!" "Are you sure Elena?", and she said "Da, Fun!"  Its hard to predict what she will like.

Also--and this is probably not surprising to many of you--her like of certain foods is situational.  She's more apt to request more of something when she's grazing, or if trying a food when helping with cooking or baking--she likes to sample ingedients to become part of the process herself.  As an example, she's perfectly happy sampling a raw carrot when Teresa's making a salad, but no way will she eat one as part of a meal.  If she can pick it herself she is more likely to eat a little of it--tomatoes, arugula and cabbage are examples, but not brocolli.

As for her favorite foods, she's a big fan of milk products.  Milk itself, of course, but she also likes mild cheeses, and she especially likes sour cream and yogurt (even unsweetened).  I think she enjoys the texture of the yogurt more than anything.  At first she only liked the dry-mix-made milk.  We suspect that was what she had at the orphanage, but now she drinks regular vitamin D milk from the store.

Meat products are a little more difficult.  There are a few things she'll eat without any real enthusiasm, and we were hard pressed to find anything she liked until (at the suggestion of multiple sources) we gave her some chicken nuggets.  Those were a big hit.  We also found  these little meat pies from a local Russian market that she likes.  I'm a bit suprised at that, because the meat is noticably spiced (although not "hot").  I suspect she likes, in part, the experience of holding the meatpie and biting off pieces.  Maybe the pies are a familiar flavor from Russia?

However, we've had better luck with non-meat protein sources.  Eggs she likes, and peanut butter, and she'll even eat hoummus (the texture thing again, I think).  However, her absolute favorite new food bar none so far is refried beans.  I doubt she got a lot of refried beans in the orphanage (not a huge Mexican immigrant population in northern Russia), but when we get takout Mexican (from Mi Pueblo, which she hilariously pronounces as "Ne Plop-plop") she will demolish the rice and beans. 

Oh!...and she still loves caviar. "Ikra" in Russian, which she pronounces "Eeka".

Elena's usually pretty good about bread products; I think she's only turned down crusty bread that's hard to bite off and chew.  Tortilla chips are also a big hit, so she's turning into quite the Mexican food lover.

Fruits of course are much easier to feed her than vegetables.  Fresh fruit, juice, or applesauce are all welcomed; vegetables, barring the occasional grazing during food prep, not so much.  Bananas and pears are OK but not oranges,  "Nye apleseen-(no orange)!"  We did find a Gerber toddler's stew with a nice mix of meat, pasta, and vegetables that Elena likes.  She's been eating that quite a bit, mostly for the vegetables while we find things to expand her accepted menu, but recently has shown signs of being sick of the stuff.  And, interestingly, she loves spinach pie.  Go figure.

And, of course, desserts haven't been much of a problem.  She has, I think, only recently discovered chocolate and adores it; even the faintly bitter high-cocoa-content stuff.