Phipps Feeding Fiasco

Meet the Family

Ogre: The “man” of the house.  Or so he thinks.

Ogre (whose real name is Josh in case you are interested or his parents are reading this) grew up in Plano and spent many nights out at restaurants with his family.  I think that his family enjoyed certain restaurants that they would frequent over and over again.  We tend to not go to those restaurants anymore.  Ogre and I are started dating in high school and our dates, of course, often meant going out to eat.  I guess that’s when the love affair with each other and fine dining began. 

Ogre works out of the home, but tends to stay busy even into the evening hours.  While he actually enjoys cooking and is very good at it, we often times just don’t have the time or forethought to eat at home. 

Just so you can get to know him a little better personally, in addition to cooking, he is a movie fanatic and definitely enjoys playing a video game when time and his wife permit.  As you might have guessed by now, he works in the information technology world.  Anybody need a good software engineer?  He’s available for independent contracting!

Grace: Wife, Mommy, Doctor, and…Blogger?

I actually grew up eating at home.  It was only once in blue moon that we would venture out to eat and even then I can recall going to either Ryan’s Steakhouse, some non-descript Chinese restaurant, or we’d be going to some other Filipino’s house for a larger sampling of what we normally ate at home.  Not that I’m complaining.  I look back on those times quite fondly.  And I still love “going out to eat” at my mom’s house!

Ogre really started me on this whole “let’s eat out” thing.  I don’t think my palate is quite as good as Ogre’s, but I feel like I know what is “palatable.”  I know that I won’t be able to wax as eloquently and absurdly as many food critics out there (sorry, food critic people), but you’ll probably agree with a lot of what I write!

When I’m not galavanting as a blogger (which, by the way, I’ve never done before) or am being a wife and mother, you can find me at some area hospital taking care of hospitalized children. 

Mina: 4 years old.  Princess.  Supergirl.  Non-vegetable eater. 

Mina’s first dining experience came at 3 days of age at a little Mexican restaurant in Nashville, Tennessee.  La Terraza.  Try it out if you’re ever in Nashville, we have lots of good memories there!

Mina is a very well-behaved child-diner.  I think it is because when we lived in Nashville during my residency we were too poor to hire baby-sitters and too naive to not bring her out with us.  We were very lucky because usually going out to eat with friends meant going out to eat with other young pediatricians.  I was one of the first of my friends to have a baby, so at that time, the girls were all still fiending for a baby to hold.  Mina went out to eat a lot during her first 2 years of life and we are pretty consistent and persistent with our expectations of appropriate restaurant behavior, but she is four years old and a four year can only be expected to behave so well for so long…

Benjamin: 1 year old.  Wildcard.  Still developing his restaurant personality…

Benjamin’s first restaurant experience came even younger than Mina’s!  He was two days old and we went to Sushi Awaji in Plano (THE BEST SUSHI IN DFW!).  I had to have it after missing it for so long when pregnant with the little guy! 

We’re still trying to get Benjamin to eat non-pureed and soft foods, so we’ll see how this goes.  He usually behaves pretty well when eating out, but obviously his age makes things difficult.  Right now, we do what we can and he does what he wants -to a degree.  It’ll be interesting for us (and you) to see how things develop in the next year as we try to teach him how to act appropriately in restaurants and evolve his eating habits.  Your guess is as good as mine.

Click here for my tips for eating out with children.

Dusty: “…But Who is Dusty?”

Dusty is Ogre’s best friend.  I always laugh when I hear the story of how they met.  Dusty moved to the house right across the alley from Ogre’s house.  When Dusty was 5 years old, he knocked on their door.  Ogre’s dad answered and Dusty said, “Hello.  My name is Dustin Tanner.  Can I play with your kids?”  A quarter century later, they are still buds.