Help me Obi wan! LuLu’s OCD has manifested itself in the last 6-12 months in a very troublesome new way: food obsessions.

She will literally get “stuck” on a new food and negatively obsess on all the foods she can’t have (dairy). Then will insist that she can only eat the one food that she’s stuck on. This week it’s hummus.

Now there’s nothing inherently wrong with hummus. It’s just that serving it for every meal seems a bit problematic. And, ultimately what happens, is that she burns herself out on the obsessed food, refusing to ever eat it again.

The pattern started with chicken from a favorite restaurant, called Zaxby’s. A year ago she would have sold her soul daily if I had allowed her to eat every meal there. Last night, she melted down at her sister’s suggestion that we eat there (we haven’t eaten there for months). “I’m over Zaxby’s!” she declared.

We’ve been through bacon, mayonnaise, pad thai noodles, two rounds with grits, and chicken pot pies (although, so far she’ll still eat pot pies - just not every meal).

Right now hummus and sausage are all that satisfy.

As if this wasn’t problematic enough, LuLu obsesses on what’s for dinner in a way that nearly always provokes a food war. So when she asked me, shortly after waking like she always does, what’s for dinner tonight, I replied “bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwiches”.

“I’m over bacon and mayonnaise,” was the response. And she’s asked me at least 10 times since then, as if asking repeatedly is going to change my answer.

So, the only way to survive the food wars around here is the hard and fast rule that I will buy a large quantity of the food she’s stuck on, and once that is gone for the week, then she will have to choose another food, or go without. I’m always mindful that I could get stuck with a case of hummus that she refuses to eat if I buy too much at once and she switches obsessions. The other rule is that I’ll make one family dinner meal a night, of which she can partake, or find the PB&J or her obsessed on food on her own, cleaning up her own mess.

Regardless of the rules around all of this, the food wars rage on. And they’ve started to spill over into our eating-out, an activity she has enjoyed in the past. She rarely finds any food on the menu that will make her happy, instead choosing to melt down over how some cheese, milk or other dairy product is keeping her from ordering what she really wants.