See this:
This glorious piece of work is doing amazing things, amazing things!
What we have here is our small attempt at growing vegetables - actually, I should correct that and say that what we have here is my wife's, Kate, small attempt at growing vegetables - she should get all the credit, since my role has only involved the occasional plough.
It's obviously hard to tell from the picture, but we have arugula (lots of arugula: what is arugula?), green beans, carrots, lettuce, onions, cucumbers, a whole lot of tomato vines (but no tomatoes yet), and, of course, spinach.
The spinach is significant, because my son ate some the other day, and in no small terms, this is a huge deal. You see, my son (Ben) has got to be the fussiest eater on the planet (or at least in serious contention for that title). We're talking scenes of going out for dinner and ordering the "pasta, but with nothing on it, just plain." We're talking about a dietary palette that couldn't even fill out a top ten list. We're talking about the hot dog as necessary dietary supplement.
It's terrible really, and believe me, Kate and I have tried all sorts of things to expand his eating habits. Plus, it's also frustrating because our household is generally pretty adventurous with food, and mysteriously, our daughter Hannah is good to go with all sorts of cuisine - everything from candy to tripe.
So imagine my surprise when Ben decided to eat the spinach growing out of Kate's garden. Actually, it was a freakin' miracle!
Anyway, you always hear about the merits of eating local, or even growing local, but here you have it - this incident has really brought it home (literally) for me. This just illustrates that there's a lot of power that can come with knowing more about your food generally, and none more so than when our kids get involved.
- Log in to post comments
My kids aren't terribly fussy eaters. They eat what I eat, pretty much, minus the hot peper spices.
But if they can pick it out of the ground themseleves, I swear they would eat rocks. Ok, well, rocks only those few times. But foraging for food makes them incredibly happy.
Sounds good! I, myself look forward to eating from my own vegetable garden.
I was as picky an eater as your son (probably).... hamburger with just the bun and nothing else. Hated pizza and just about everything except macaroni and cheese with hot dogs (oh... and porkchops). Oddly enough the only vegetable that I liked was spinach. But now there's almost nothing I don't enjoy, so there is hope. What I can't say is whether or not I grew into my expanded palate or if it was the result of my environment (I had a rather uncompromising step-father... at least when it came to food)
Isn't this how Popeye came to be?
You're lucky. My kids complain whenever I try to add things from my garden to salads. They call mustard greens, chard, and arugla, "weeds from yard" and refuse to eat them.
There are a few programs here in the Rochester, NY area that set up little vegetable gardens as school projects in the spring and summer. At least anecdotally, they've found that when kids grow vegetables, they're actually willing to eat them.
I was a veggie lover from early childhood (think of a 6-year-old who eagerly devoured broccoli laced with crushed garlic!) and I really think it made a difference that my grandfather lived next door and grew quite a diversity of vegetables in his backyard garden. However, since I know people from gardening families who never acquired the taste for green stuff, I'm sure it's more complicated than that. Sigh.
There is a practically easy (but emotionally difficult) 'solution' to picky eating kids. Don't give them any choice in what they eat. They are highly unlikely to starve themselves.
Your story is pretty cool though. I can definitely see that effect working for a lot of kids (though of course not all).
the only problem with feeding your kids good food is that they turn into food snobs. My 21 yo really couldn't figure out why folks are so into localvore. As far as she and her friends are concerned that's what's normal.
The local school lunch lady went from a twinkies and coke diet to a real food diet losing 80lbs in the process. She's running a summer garden for the kids eligible for free lunches although if you show up and weed to her standards anybody can eat. This woman is great. She is a drill sargeant marching the kids through the gardens barking orders indiscriminately and, ultimately, getting 30 5 to 10yo kids to grow, prepare and eat such un kid friendly foods as cooked chard, beet greens, nasturtiums, and fennel.
Go Ben. Food always tastes better when you know where it's come from.
Growing your own food is an amazing experience. Watching something go from a tiny seed (or seedling) to a mature plant sprouting fruit that you can just pick and eat is simply astounding. Previous generations probably took this for granted. My parents talk about growing up with the vegetable garden, but I didn't have one until I was over 30. And now, just when I discovered the joys of growing food and when the benefits of local food are becoming well known, the whole experiment is on the brink of being wiped out. Well, at least my experiment is. Three words, home owners' association. My neighborhood's HOA is trying to tell me that I can't have a vegetable garden. You can see my response here.
I grew up in a home whose back yard was almost entirely dedicated to growing food. My parents decided grass might be a good choice only when my sibling and I set up an army boot camp in the dirt, and proceeded to ruin an entire year's potato crop as we hurled the tiny starch-nuggets at each other. I miss gardens - apartments suck.
There were a lot of plant foods I wouldn't eat until I actually learned about the plants that produced them, which oddly made me more open to trying them.
The local school lunch lady went from a twinkies and coke diet to a real food diet losing 80lbs in the process. She's running a summer garden for the kids eligible for free lunches although if you show up and weed to her standards anybody can eat.
What I can't say is whether or not I grew into my expanded palate or if it was the result of my environment (I had a rather uncompromising step-father... at least when it came to food)
Your story is pretty cool though. I can definitely see that effect working for a lot of kids (though of course not all).