My childhood bestfriend, her partner and a friends 3 kids she was looking after for a couple of days came to stay last night. We usually catch up around christmas time each year either down in Nowra, or like this year, at our place as she lives in Brisbane.
These 3 kids dont eat much other than simple meat and vegies - usually just mash potato because thats all they will eat. There has never been any encouragement from their Mum to eat what they are given, or given a colourful plate for dinner. At times its even frozen dinners. But they are guarenteed to eat hot chips. Katie was asking them if they like carrots. They answered with "nope!", "its got to be cooked", "what are carrots?". Ok, about broccoli? It was a chorus of "Yuuuuuck!!!!". Potato? "If its mashed I do". Zucchini? No. Cauliflower? No. Meat? Not really. Beans? No. Peas? Yuk!! Pumpkin? No.
"So what do you like?" If its brown, they will get it down. I must give them credit with bananas and apples though, and a few grapes.
So knowing they are from the city I gave them the experience of farm life. We first rode Brody, the shetland pony, which wasn't long enough apparently. Possibly not appreciating what they were experiencing? (Which seemed to be the theme of the time they were here. The kids were going to set the rules on what happened rather than accepting that being told something was exactly what was going to happen - or not happen!).
I gave them all a chance to get shoes on and get into the vegie patch. With our basket in hand we picked tomatoes, purple beans and lots of pumpkin, cucumber, mint and lettuce. I asked one of them where bacon came from - the answer was...."Chicken". Oh my goodness gracious me!!!! Are you kidding????? Apparently, chickens lay bacon. Bacon is yummy! Yes, it is, but not every day of the week....And then there were the tomatoes - he had never tried tomatoes, except for tomato sauce and pasta sauce. I asked him that if I took a bite would he?? It wasn't long before I had him holding the tomato and about to take a bite......HE DID IT!! But the look on his face was priceless to say the least. It was like he had sucked on a lemon - that sort of face. I thought there was going to be no chance for trying something else......but the next thing to come out of his mouth was "Soooooo yum". He tried more! And picked another and tried it, and another, and another. With each tomato his 'lemon face' became less and less as he became accustomed to the new taste which he had never experienced before - success.
The girls were a little more set in their ways as they were slightly older. The eldest is about 8. She was wanting to compromise on her terms. Like hell that was going to happen on my watch! When kids want to compromise it is natural for them to work 'the system' to get what they want, us adults do this too, but kids need to learn that you can compromise but the adult is in charge at the end of the day. She is yet to learn to navigate her way through this. So for every carrot piece she ate she got 1min ride on Brody in the morning, and that went for trying the cucumber too etc as I had cut up a bowl of very simple salad for them to look at, experience the smell and the look, and hope for a taste test. I allowed her to have her 'extra 5 minutes' if she had a good attitude to the food over the entire night.....spitting carrot on the ground was NOT permissable ever again!!!! She managed to get to 7 minutes plus the 5mins for a good attitude (which meant no: "Yuk", "I dont like that", "I don't eat that"). Thank goodness it was a busy morning - which meant no pony rides - 'but if you come up here again you can ok'.....IF being the operative word :)
The rest of the night was pretty good with gingerbread house constructing and decorating, then it was on to making bread - they experienced what goes into bread, watching the yeast activate in warm water. Then it was kneading time. They actually had a lot of fun - dont all kids love getting messy?! I finished the bread off as it was pretty late, they needed sleep and so I let the bread rise, kneaded it again and made shapes for them: flower, volcano, 'E', 'J', swirl, 'A' and a worm. They had these for brekky with golden syrup along with slices of the loaf I had also made.
It strikes me as insane that kids think chickens lay bacon, not know what the flavour of fresh food is like, how things are grown. These kids learnt a valuable lesson in their short time here. I hope it eventually instills a hunger for real food, fresh food, food their body needs, their brain needs, their arteries will love - the food that isn't in a packet or deep fried.
