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The colorful kite flying over Curtis Cove Beach in East Blue Hill provides a playful sign of the toddler party happening below.
It’s the 1-year-old birthday of Ava, the daughter of Daniella Tessier. Ava probably won’t remember a thing about the day, but the occasion is a chance for friends and family to honor a single mother who has survived a year of sleep-deprived nights with grace. And, of course, the party is a way for busy parents to reconnect, trade tips, and eat.
It’s the food that makes this fete different from other birthday parties. Usually, a birthday menu is so sugar-laden that children are vibrating halfway through the party and are crying by party’s end. But while there’s no shortage of sweet fare spread out at the beach, the toddler sugar spikes are conspicuously absent.
The children begin the party by attacking a quart of fresh-picked strawberries until there are few fruit survivors. Another quart is brought out and meets the same fate. Guests bring a bowl of heart-healthy popcorn, flavored with a splash of oil, spices, and nutritional yeast. In unspoken consensus, the assembled parents negotiate the choking risk by placing the popcorn bowls in strategic locations; children who are old enough to reach the bowls themselves are allowed to dig in. Soon, a watermelon is cracked open and party dresses are made sticky and pink.
This is not average American birthday food because this is not an average American birthday crowd. Most of the guests are members of the food co-op down the road. Some are vegetarians or vegans (vegetarians who don’t eat eggs or dairy), while others eat meat but try to buy their food directly from local farmers. Everyone seems to have made some conscious choices about their diets, and they all seem to agree—the simpler, the better.
But will their kids follow suit? “The key is starting off right,” says Jill Day, a mother of two who believes if children are exposed to good food early, they will stick with it.
“This morning my kids were crawling all over me to get at my grapefruit,” Day says. And at another birthday party, her oldest daughter ignored the cupcakes to feast on melon.
Child nutrition specialists say that letting children experiment with different foods and feed themselves at an early age gives children more practice with utensils and the parents more feedback about likes and dislikes, and may lead to less finicky toddler palates.
The toddlers, by and large, feed themselves at the party, including Ava, who has just learned to walk and now travels on wobbly legs to get some melon.
“She eats like a horse,” Tessier says. “I let her forage.”
Simple foods tend to be the favorites for these kids, which is handy since that’s all the parents have time to cook. Tessier says one of Ava’s favorite dishes is brown rice with a touch of margarine. She’s also a fan of a dip Tessier serves at the party, a simple combination of silken or soft tofu, dill, and some vegetable bouillon whipped up in a blender or food processor.
Day and her husband have made a thriving business of the simple food philosophy, founding a successful organic popsicle company called Wise-Acre based on a family recipe, made with natural sweeteners like maple syrup and honey. Luckily for the other partygoers, Day has brought her work to the beach, donating a small mountain of popsicles in a cooler.
But the parents know that children like fun treats now and then, and that the shape and packaging of food can be a big toddler selling point. One parent reports that his toddler will only eat pancakes shaped like bears. The same toddler also likes little chocolate balls packaged in foil painted like a globe of the world.
Perhaps, not coincidentally, the two more complex dishes for the party were made by guests without children. Sally Clinton brought vegan macaroons that are the perfect size for little hands. Sticky rice syrup takes the place of eggs as the binding agent in the macaroons while providing an alternative sweetener to sugar. She picked the recipe more for the mothers than for the children.
“I know Daniella loves them,” Clinton says. “They’re easy to make, they’re finger food, and they only have rice syrup as sweetener.”
Clinton has become something of an expert on the importance of a good diet during childhood. Though she has no children herself, she spent many years running a nonprofit organization that worked to make school lunches healthier. Researching for her senior thesis and for the nonprofit, she found that many behavioral and learning problems, including ADD and ADHD, had at least some root in diet. A healthy diet proves beneficial to all young learners, she says.
