On New Years Eve I brought out the fondue pot. If there ever was a recipe for fun, this is it: add one fondue pot, dark melted chocolate, fruit, and friends. Everyone young and old has so much fun dipping, loosing the occasional banana in the chocolate sauce and trying to find it dripping in the silky, melted wonder of chocolate.
While reheating the chocolate fondue at my friends house this New Years Eve I learned a valuable lesson and I think it has a wider meaning for all of us parents out there. My chocolate was doing great until I added some flavoring to it. The moment I added 2 tablespoons of an orange flavoring the entire pot of chocolate seized up. Yup, seized up is the technical word for what happened; it went from pourable consistency to one large ball of solid chocolate immediately.
You see chocolate is very temperamental and does not like anything added to it that isn’t at the same temperature. I immediately looked up on Epicurious how to remedy my mistake. I read that I was “foolhardy” to even attempt to add anything to chocolate that was colder than the chocolate. Foolhardy is exactly how I felt but I certainly didn’t need to be reminded of it in front of my friends. There was one possible rescue option given so my gracious hostess and I gave it a try. We warmed up heavy cream and slowly added it back to the chocolate mixture until it was the right dipping consistency. I was lucky, disaster was averted.
How many of us as parents try to get our children to make a change too quickly? We get tired of having to constantly encourage them to drink their milk or eat their vegetables. Many of us lose it on occasion and yell eat your broccoli, or hurry up with your dinner only to be met with increased resistance. Our children seize up if we don’t work with them at their speed too; just like with chocolate, we need to meet their requirements. If your child’s diet is not all it needs to be to give him or her a fighting chance of abundant health than follow the Build Healthy Kids program where we take one small step at a time. Join our Live Group Coaching Calls
Dr. Debbie Kennedy (Dr. Deb) is a pediatric nutritionist with 23 years of experience in the field. She has worked with both Yale and Columbia Universities, and has developed programs for some of the industry’s luminaries such as Dr. David Katz and Dr. Mehmet Oz. 
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