Handy hint for anyone needing to make children cry: tell them next week is a vegan week.
Chez Zézette has been a poor prospect for vegetable spotters of late. What with Festivas, holiday travel, summer malaise and so on, our kitchen has not been the model of organisation our German heritage would have you believing. My body has started a slow clap and chant of "vegetables..... vegetables...... vegetables" and its mood leads me to think that jeers and stubby throwing are not out of the question. So at dinner tonight as the kids refused to eat a tiny sliver of snow pea each, their Mum -- my Little Sister -- suggested that a week of vegan diet would do us all some good.
I leapt onto the idea; I was vegetarian for eight years, vegan for two of those, and radiantly healthy for it, but in recent times vegetables and I have become increasingly estranged. I'm hoping to mend those fences. With enthusiastic hand-waving I told the little 'uns about all the yummy animal-free things I used to eat... they each responded by bursting into howling tears.
Little Sister and I tried not to laugh, we really did, but honestly, I wouldn't have expected any less distress if I'd told them the cat was dead and the house had burnt down.
No dairy + no meat + no eggs = a river of meat-scented tears.
14 January 2006
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7 comments:
Well, you could require them to trap and butcher their own meals. Perhaps having to chase down a rabbit in the back yard, wring its neck, and then skin and clean it would make them a little more circumspect on the issue? Skinning and cleaning a zucchini is a lot less hassle.
Our kid would cry, too... but I am not sure she would survive. She doesn't really eat meat now so she gets 99% of her proteins from eggs and cheese... (kids here can't take peanutbutter to school, so we don't offer it to her often).
That said, I did make a vegetable chart today to track her food choices.
Yeah, our darlings subsist on eggs and cheese, too. "Vegan" actually isn't too accurate a description of the Vegetables For Fun and Torture Week. We're just trying to temporarily get rid of the stuff they fill up on to avoid vegetation: eggs as a main ingredient, cheese, milk, pasta, rice, bread and meat. They skate around the plate picking at anything that isn't a vegetable, declaring themselves full once it's all gone. So, it's more that vegetable matter is going to be the main player for a while.
They do actually eat and enjoy a variety of vegetarian and vegan meals as it is; we regularly eat spanokopita, vegetable-based pasta dishes, Mexican-style bean stuff. My tip for some time has been that you can serve anything wrapped in filo pastry and keep them happy.
In the wake of the hysteria we've just decided not to mention it again and simply present the food without a fuss about it being vego. First off the rank is vege puffs, which are vegetables mashed beyond recognition with some self-raising flour and an egg, then rolled into balls and baked. They have a great texture and are served with a tomato salsa. We'll see how it goes. ;)
The chart sounds like a good plan, by the way.
Maybe you just didn't sell the idea well.... Maybe you made them think they were giving up something, when in reality it, of course as we all know, would be a treat. And remember - anything is good wrapped in some sort of pastry and served with special red sauce....
Maybe you just didn't sell the idea well.... LOL!! D'ya reckon? :D
You know I have been pondering this for a few days, and I have definitely decided that my first album will be called "a river of meat-scented tears" -- I'm thinking thrash metal as interpreted by accordion, knee-cymbals and harmonica -- a one-woman band of course.
Always glad to help out. :D
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