The Dining Passport

Baby M is not a terrible eater, but he is not a great eater and I'm always looking for ways to get him to eat a wider variety of foods. The Dining Passport is a clever idea that I got from Family Fun Magazine.  The passport is a booklet your child can record all of his culinary adventures in.  We kept ours very simple.  I punched holes in a bunch of 3 x 5 cards and strung them together.  Then we printed out flags from around the world at the CIA website.  Whenever Baby M eats an ethnic meal he gets to paste the nation's flag onto one of the cards and I write in the date and a few details about the meal.  Then we look up the country on the globe and see how far it is from Los Angeles.  I've found this is a terrific way to expand Baby M's diet.  He really loves getting to paste new flags into his passport, so much so that he'll gladly eat falafel or dosa or other foods that might normally be rejected.  And as a bonus, he is learning a bit of geography at the same time.  So far his passport contains flags from Egypt, Morocco, Italy, Mexico, Thailand and India.