First Steps in Cooking and Eating

[chromedome]

On 9/2/2024 at 4:07 AM, liuzhou said:

Reviving this just to show you one picture which made me inordinately happy. Yet another friend's daughter (who always makes me laugh or smile) went picking vegetables from her Grandma's garden.  So happily proud of her work!

 

 

 

It's great when the little ones start to take a live interest in it.

 

Right now our grandson (6) is hitting that phase. Asked what he wants at mealtime, he'll usually lead with "healthy stuff" or "veggibles from the garden,' instead of the convenience foods he used to ask for. My stepdaughter is just as mystified as us over this transition, as she hadn't been making any special effort to spur this fixation. Our best guess is that it's just the accumulation of everything he's overheard over the years.

 

The practical outcomes have been interesting. For one thing, he has an unlikely fetish for kale. I've given him carte blanche to help himself to a few leaves straight from the bed, any time he feels like it. A couple of weeks ago he noticed my lacinato kale for the first time (it's a couple of rows away, near the cucumbers, and gasped "Papa! Blue kale!" in tones of awe and delight. Of course he wanted to try it, and was crestfallen that it tasted like the other kind. I explained that the blue kind is more delicate and flavorful when cooked, though there isn't much difference raw.

 

The moment that really made my grandparental heart go pitter-pat was a few weeks ago when I was weeding my herb bed. The little guy asked what each herb was, starting with the mint that I was vigorously culling (I'd planted it in a sunken pot for containment, but had neglected to consider the pot's drainage holes). He tasted his way through two kinds of mint and then sage, cilantro, rosemary, summer savory, thyme, lovage and dill before we were through. That was a proud moment for me, but the highlight came after about the fourth herb. I don't recall exactly how he phrased it, but he said that he needed to take a moment and eat something else because the herbs were all starting to taste the same. So he helped himself to a leaf of kale and munched on that between samples.

He didn't know the term "palate cleanser," but he recognized the necessity and attended to it. Papa was so proud...