My youngest son is a picky eater. I’ve tried all the tricks. I’ve insisted that he at least tries whatever is served. I’ve tried to force him to eat; I’ve tried bribes. I’ve tried building our menus around his preferences. Mostly, I guess, I have resigned myself to it.

You will never believe where this delicious meal came from.

Then one day I got the Jamie Oliver cooking app on my iPhone. It has many how-to videos and we enjoyed watching them immensely. (They’re great for long car drives, by the way). It also has recipes, and young son chimed in that he would like to make the pork chow mein. Just as I was about to tell him “this recipe is way to complicated,” I stopped myself…

We made the shopping list, bought all the ingredients and then we went through the elaborate preparation (“20-minute meals” my foot!) Sure, we got some parts wrong, but we ended up with something that looked pretty good (see photo). And guess who ate every last scrap on his plate!