Adventures in dining – fine or not – with Aiden

We may have a latent gourmand on our hands.

Our grandson, Aiden, was with us last week and we learned he apparently enjoys some adventures in fine dining, although — like any good 16-month old, he’s not averse to some adventures in not so fine dining, either.

After his parents came over for Labor Day weekend, Aiden stayed with us when they went back home to the other side of the state in the middle of the week.

Alex and Julia both had monthly drill for their Army Reserve unit the next weekend near their home. Rather than a series of cross-state trips to shuttle Aiden back and forth, it was easier for him to just stay with us for the week and through the weekend.

Among other things, Terry has been busy with mushroom harvesting for the past several weeks, as she’s been getting a bumper crop out of her mushroom farm in the yard.

As a result, the dehydrator has been running almost constantly, drying mushrooms, and we’ve been eating mushroom soup, mushroom sauce, mushroom gravy, everything but mushroom oatmeal for breakfast — and if you happen to have a recipe for mushroom oatmeal, please don’t send it to me.

With all those mushrooms around, it wasn’t long before Aiden picked one up and started chewing on it.

To our surprise, he didn’t spit it out but continued chewing on it as he wandered around the house. Instead, he chewed down the whole thing. It didn’t move past cookies or fruit, or even French fries or waffles, on his list of favorite foods, but at least he didn’t reject it out of hand — or spit it out of mouth — which could be encouraging.

Of course, a little while later he found the container we keep the dog food in and managed to get that open. It wasn’t long before he was walking around the house munching on a handful of dog food chunks and not spitting them out either.

Who knows, he may have discovered a heretofore-unknown gourmet taste combination — dog food and wild mushrooms. Somehow, though, I don’t think that will be showing up soon on the menu at any of the finer dining establishments in our area.

Then again, if we go out to eat somewhere and find aliments pour chiens avec des champignons on the menu, we’ll know where they got the idea. We won’t order it, but we’ll demand that they pay Aiden royalties for the idea.

Speaking of fine dining establishments, we did take Aiden out for lunch one day to a well-known fastfood restaurant. I won’t say which one, other than to say it’s the one with the golden arches and the clown — the corporate mascot that is, and not any of the managers or employees.

Aiden proved he was a good 16-month old by doing a credible job on his chicken nugget kid’s meal. We got it with the apple slices as the side, but he seemed more interested in his grandparents’ French fries than he was in the apples.

This is the same kid who devours almost half a package of fresh strawberries with his breakfast every morning at our house. Apparently his thinking is that healthy fruits and vegetables are for home, while a fast-food restaurant is the place for junk food.

That’s a philosophy, I have to admit, that he inherited from his father and his uncle, who perfected that line of thought when they were about Aiden’s age.

Aiden’s parents had warned us there were some things he didn’t like to eat, like tomato sauce and milk chocolate. All that meant was that he enthusiastically partook of both while staying with his grandparents.

Again, that’s something that he inherited from his father and his uncle, who were not averse to doing the same sort of thing when they were Aiden’s age. Make it just one more of the joys — and part of the sweet revenge — of being grandparents.

We did discover there are limits to what Aiden will tolerate, even when it comes from his beloved grandparents — and whether he thinks so or not, I can use that adjective in front of grandparents. This is my column, not his.

We took Aiden with us when we went out on Sunday to take advantage of another local fast-food restaurant’s offer of free sundaes for grandparents on Grandparents’ Day.

As it turned out, we didn’t need to bring him with us, as most of the people there read this column enough to know we qualified for the free sundae without bringing in the evidence.

At any rate, we got Aiden a scoop of chocolate custard to thank him for the free sundaes he helped us qualify for. That was when the same kid who was slurping down chocolate milk all week like it was water decided that this chocolate he didn’t care for.

Both chocolate milk and chocolate custard, it seems to me, are intrinsically the same, but not to Aiden, it appears. Maybe if they’d had dog food flavor custard?

Next week: More adventures with Aiden.