The Art of the Pile-On: Family-Style at It’s Finest

I learned about the “pile-on” from friends at work many years ago—the modern version of a pot-luck, where everyone brings 1-2 ingredients to put together a meal. We usually enjoyed the Mexican Pile-On, with tortillas, chips, ground beef, shredded chicken, beans, tomatoes, lettuce, sour cream, cheese, olives, etc. The “pile-on” is the fun part: everyone gets to choose from all the separate items to build their own taco, burrito, or nachos. With my own kids, the pile-on dinner has become an easy way for me to serve family-style in a manner that suits the very different feeding temperaments of my children. I have expanded this to the “Potato Pile-On”, “Pasta Pile-On”, and “Pancake Pile-On”. I get out lots of toppings and put them all on the table, and am continuously surprised at the “inventions” that my boys make from the offerings. The pasta night includes spaghetti, tortellini, or some other pasta, pesto and tomato sauce, cut up tomatoes, bell peppers, onions, and avocados, Parmesan and mozzarella cheese, and diced chicken or ground turkey. Pancake pile-on is made up of sweet potato or apple pancakes (I add sweet potato puree or applesauce), various fruit cut up in bowls, yogurt, turkey bacon or apple-cinnamon sausage, gouda or goat cheese, and scrambled eggs. The other night, we had baked potatoes, and my oldest came up with this: My younger son went a completely different way (no surprise there) but ended up with quite the food sculpture! Mine was a more traditional stuffed baked potato with cheese, sour cream, broccoli, and turkey bacon, with the tomatoes and avocados on the side as a...

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