Eat Your Vegetables

Every dinner plate I prepare for my son looks similar to the dinner plate that was prepared the night before, a protein, a stack of carrots, and a fruit. It’s essentially one of those plates that are sectioned off for the members of the food pyramid, that are typically made for very young children just learning to use a fork, my child is way past the learning to use a fork phase. If I didn’t add that stack of carrots and fruit my son would NEVER eat anything that grew out of the ground and he’s fourteen.

Vegetables were not well represented in my house growing up, raw vegetables were a rare sight on our table. The vegetables that found their way to our plates were emptied from a can, placed in a skillet with bacon, and cooked until an inch of its life. The green beans came to the table no longer bright and vibrant green but with a sickly hue of green and the mashed potatoes a pale yellow from the stick of butter that had been added to them prior to the mashing. My mom had a special way of creating vegetables.

Now as the matriarch of our house I bring the veggies, baby. I make cauliflower, broccoli, beets, all forms of squash, the rainbow of vegetables on my table is blinding in its freshness. My son eats none of it. I can trick him by cutting up onions and bell peppers into pieces so small that you would need a microscope to see them and then place them in a mix of freshly made pasta, like he was three and barely out of training underpants.

As you raise your child you see phases and changes. They stop using a diaper as a toilet and become afraid of the dark, they stop crying when they want something and start talking to you in a rude tone, and they stop throwing fits in the toy store and start being late to your planned pick up spot when they’ve gone out with their friends. Refusing to eat vegetables was one of those phases or was supposed to be, I thought, I hoped.

Years ago, as I was describing my nightly dinner woes to a friend, her eyes got narrow and she told me, “He eats what you’re making or he doesn’t eat.” Doesn’t eat would have been just fine with my already tall and skinny kid, but I needed him to eat before he wilted and blew away with a strong breeze. So, I continued to make him a kid friendly version of what we were eating and providing that stack of carrots with a side of fruit, every night, for going on eleven years now (and counting).

When I think about my son’s future I wonder if he will suffer from scurvy because a lack of fresh fruits and veggies or will he grow to appreciate the taste of a good vegetable?