Monday, January 3, 2011

Green Eggs and Ham...and Cauliflower

Benjamin's favorite bedtime story of late has been Dr. Seuss's Green Eggs and Ham. He helps by reading the "Sam-I-Am" parts. However, it wasn't until today that I realized I could use this book to my advantage.

Benjamin isn't really a picky eater. He'll eat just about every type of food out there, but he will only eat them in specific forms. Such as, he loves chicken, but only in the form of a nugget. You may trick him into eating a broasted or rotissie chicken, but never a baked one. He'll eat his fruit in any which way it comes, often getting histerically upset because I threw the orange peels away and he thought he could eat those too. He won't eat eggs unless they happen to be in the form of an omelette and on my plate, not his and not Daddy's plates.

But vegetables. Vegetables seem to be the nemisis of all small children. Not my son though! And, well, not for any children I feed. See, I don't cook my vegetables. I don't often purchase fresh ones either because of the expense. I feed children frozen vegetables,frozen. I grew up eating frozen vegetables, and I still occassionally grab a handful of frozen corn or peas or a few frozen green beans from the bags in our freezer as a quick snack. Frozen vegetables are much sweeter than the cooked version and the cold is wonderfully refreshing, and likely relieving to the teething children. However, today, I decided to cook some cauliflower...

I don't require Benjamin to finish his plate. I do ask him to please take a bite of everything on it though. Tonight was the battle of cauliflower. After 15 minutes of me trying to slip in just a tiny piece of the white stuff past his lips, I began to recite Green Eggs and Ham in my mind. Ahah!

"You do not like them so you say. Try them! Try them, and you may! Try them and you may, I say!"

And my son ate cooked cauliflower. :-)

No comments:

Post a Comment