R has recently developed a liking for salad. This makes me ridiculously happy. Much happier than her adoration of all things ice-cream related makes me sad or guilty.
It is especially ridiculous because she is actually a pretty healthy eater, anyway, and has been eating most of the constituent parts of salad for a year and a half, at least. It’s just the leaves she’s shunned, really.
She’ll happily eat a bowlful of cherry tomatoes or cucumber sticks. Given the opportunity, she would devour two or three cans of sweetcorn a day. She’s perfectly at home with peppers, raw or cooked, and has even deigned to munch on a stick of celery.
But she’s never taken to the whole combination known as salad. Until a few days ago, when I chopped it up small and drowned it in mayonnaise. Now, her response to the question ‘Do you want salad with dinner?’ is ‘Oh, yes please!’ and, instead of uttering the universal condemnation of the under-10s, ‘Yuk’, when a bowl of salad is placed next to her dinner, she says ‘Ooh, salad! Yummy, yummy!’ and polishes it off before even glancing at the pasta.
Of course, my over-reaction may well be related to my being a die-hard vegetarian. In the veggie-carnivore (yes, I know, it’s technically omnivore) fight to dominate our daughter’s culinary affections, the green stuff is winning. Yay!
I know how you feel about the delight that comes with them eatng salad. It's like when my 3 year old says: please can I have some more broccoli, I don't want to eat the chips - my heart gets all warm and fuzzy. It's the little things that keep mothers going.
ReplyDeleteLOL we're so easily pleased, aren't we? At the hairdressers recently, my 2 year old shunned a lollipop and asked if they had any cucumber (a recent, and slightly disturbing phase).
ReplyDeleteIs R's father a meat-eater, then? Did you have a discussion about whether to introduce R to meat?
You guys are so lucky! When presented with anything green my teenager announces he's not a rabbit. At McDonalds he's the customer from hell who screws up the system by asking for a hamburger without the bits. Bits being everything except bread, meat and sauce.
ReplyDeleteHOM: On the day R refuses a chip, I think I will go out and buy a £100 bottle of champagne. One of our lazy meals is eggs, chips and beans, but we've had to change it jacket potato, eggs and beans because, even though she loves eggs and beans, they will not get a look-in when there are chips on her plate - or on anyone else's. She does love brocolli, though. We did baby-led weaning with her and it was one of the first things she ate properly.
ReplyDeleteEmpty Jam: Good for him. I remember being thoroughly shocked when R went for triple jab and they asked if it was OK to offer her a piece of chocolate as a reward. Chocolate?! She didn't know it existed, and I was hoping to keep that up until she was at least 12.
We did have that discussion, yes. In fact, I remember when I came close to calling off our engagement because C told me that (1) we would be getting married in a church and (2) our children would be given meat until they could decide for themselves. But we compromised. We got married in a registry office and R is offered meat and fish and will decide for herself. (Which, actually, when I thought about it a bit, is a good thing.) She does have a tendency to want what I'm eating, though, which makes me feel equally smug and sorry for C.
Caren: I'm sure our time will come. I have a (vegetarian) cousin, who wouldn't touch any vegetables until he was about 20. How he survived, I really don't know!
Take your smugness where you can. Salad-eating children are precious and rare.
ReplyDeleteHa ha ha. My word verification was cakevvyer
ReplyDeleteI love the weird things word verification comes up with!
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