Eat Your Veggies! by Tina Clinefelter

As I write this, I have just returned from maybe the last trip of the season to Lewisburg Farmers Market, and a beautiful day it was in the company of a dear friend. Gone are most of the summer fruits and vegetables (I did find strawberries from California) and in their place is an abundance of root crops and green-leafy goodies. My friend, Verna, bought cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli, Romaine lettuce and apples and as there wasn’t much room left in my car I bought a light-bulb!
During lunch at the Country Cupboard with two other friends a discussion came up about how to prepare turnips and I offered my standard ‘boil’em and mash’em’ recipe. Verna suggested mixing the mashed turnips with mashed potatoes or eating them raw. Anybody else have some suggestions?
Anyway, I have been noticing that the Farmers Market clientele ranges from mostly middle-aged to elderly (I fall in between these categories) and I began to wonder how to get more kids and younger adults to ‘eat your veggies’!
The Internet is full of good advice on this subject – from psychological to practical, and I give full credit to the purveyors of this good advice because when my children were young I once served them liver and Brussels sprouts in the same meal, and they’ve never forgiven me…
The new government nutrition icon shows a plate half-covered in fruits and vegetables – well, lots of luck with that! But with a bit of ingenuity and sneakiness plus some bribery and parental examples, your kids may learn to eat and enjoy vegetables and fruits – and – no, French fries and potato chips don’t count!
Here, culled from numerous Internet sites are some suggestions:
Serve veggies cut into bite-sized pieces, before a meal, with a dip (yogurt, cream cheese, peanut butter, ketchup) that the child has helped to prepare and while said child is hungry.
Hide the vegetable by chopping it REALLY fine or pureeing and adding to soups, stews, meat-loaf, or mac ‘n cheese. This is the sneaky method! I just heard my daughter, Katy, say ‘Yuck’!
Have an all-veg night and put a lock on all other foods – not recommended without a lot of parental intestinal fortitude, or the ‘take one bite’ before ‘no!’ strategy, but this ranks right up there with the ‘no dessert’ option. I’m beginning to like the ‘sneaky’ approach!
One novel idea was to re-name vegetables, but I don’t think my daughters would have eaten Brussels sprouts if they were called ‘Hero Buttons’ or ‘baby cabbages’, however, I liked ‘apple moons’ and ‘banana wheels; but ‘broccoli trees’ didn’t jog the old taste buds!
Here’s another suggestion – toppings – brown sugar on carrots, ice-cream sprinkles on apple slices and a crumb-topping on vegetables – mix 2 tablespoons of butter or olive oil into ½ cup of breadcrumbs – this will make some (??) veggies more palatable.
Now, my parents employed none of the above suggestions and yet I relish most fruits and vegetables with gusto (exceptions: sweet potatoes, raw celery, and apricots). Some new vegetables I only encountered when I arrived on these shores, yet I love lima beans and sweet corn especially when combined into succotash! Some things you just have to grow into!
Final note: a band of migrating robins just invaded my lawn and have quite upset the resident Carolina wrens – bird wars! No casualties so far…