Blame it on jetlag, but I think Louis must have been a little comatose when he arrived back in Singapore on Saturday afternoon after 3 days in Beijing. He actually fed Faith a wee bit of crepe, doused liberally in a sweet chilli sauce that night during dinner!
We were having dinner at the newly opened Zhou's Kitchen outlet (under Tung Lok) at Square 2. As usual, Louis was waiting for me to fed Faith before we both eat our dinner with the family. These days, Faith wants to eat food off our tables or plates and the dish on hand was Peking Duck. To pacific her so that she would continue to eat her own porridge, her dear father started pinching little bits of the crepe in which the duck skin was wrapped in.
Before I go on further, let me rewind back a little and share about Faith and her latest greedy little habit of eating from our plates :) For the last few weeks, whenever my mom or I eat in front of her, she would come crawling to us. Standing and wobbling on her feet while hanging on to us, she would grunt to us to give her some of our food. One day, out of curiosity, I decided to give her a little of my fried bee hoon (vermicelli) that was stained with some chilli.
Faith lapped the bee hoon up, chilli and all with nary a twitch of her eyes and grunted to us to give her more. We tested it out again on another separate one or two ocassions, each with similar results.
Hence, when we were heading home from the airport on Saturday, I recounted to Louis these incidences.
And dear Louis, in his jetlagged state, had thought that his daughter was now a qualified, full-fledged chilli eater. At the dinner table when he first offered her a small piece of crepe dipped lightly with the sweet chilli sauce, she swallowed that and looked to him for more.
I have to tell you that this father is putty in his daughter's little hands. Of course, he willingly obliged with more crepes. But the second time, he liberally swirled that little bit of crepe in the sweet chilli sauce and before I knew what was happening, popped the item into his daughter's waiting mouth.
Lo and behold, the 2 seconds after that bit of crepe entered her mouth and touched her tongue, the piquant bits of chilli swimming in the sauce must have hit her palate senses. She turned to me, giving me a panicked look and let loose with a volley of loud wails.
Faith spent the next few minutes bawling her heart out and Louis, stricken and thoroughly apologetic about the deed he had just done to his little one :) That night, after she slept and the two of us were chatting, he was telling me that he didn't know what striked him or why he had thought that Faith was ready to move on to chilli items based on what I had told him.
I had found the whole episode highly amusing. My philosophy about Faith is that I would like to expose her wherever possible to as many range and variety of food/cuisine as long as she's willing and able to try.
Eating chilli is certainly one of those things that I hope she would learn to accept and enjoy as she grows older. After all, we are Singaporeans and living in Asia where chilli forms a large part of our culinary heritage. Although not now cos she's still so young. I hope that as with young kids, the incident would fade from her memory very quickly and not frighten her off from eating spicy food in the future :)
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