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Food Words for Children


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At some point in our childhoods, my little brother got into teasingly calling me "Ellen Ellen Watermelon." I hated it.

That reminds me, my friends called their child "Anna Banana" when she was a baby and toddler. At some point before she started Kindergarten, they realized she would not want that name when she was growing up, so the pet name was shortened to Anna B. Has a nice ring, doesn't it?

Nancy Smith, aka "Smithy"
HosteG Forumsnsmith@egstaff.org

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"Every day should be filled with something delicious, because life is too short not to spoil yourself. " -- Ling (with permission)
"There comes a time in every project when you have to shoot the engineer and start production." -- author unknown

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My wife is German and we speak German at home. Our four-year-old son has very fair skin. Especially when he was younger I would call his legs "Würschtelbeine," which is south German dialect for "little sausage legs." They remind me of plump Bavarian white sausages. Of course, the notion of loving our kids so much that we want to "gobble them up" is a bit sinsiter and has been the basis of all kinds of childrens' stories (especialy in German-speaking Europe).

Don’t you have a machine that puts food into the mouth and pushes it down?

--Nikita Khrushchev to Richard Nixon during the "Kitchen Debate" in Moscow, 1959

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The more formal name for our Peanut is "the legume" (coined by Hillvalley).

Someone once called her "Chicken Wing" because he said her tiny little legs looked like chicken wings.

If someone writes a book about restaurants and nobody reads it, will it produce a 10 page thread?

Joe W

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I had such a round face when I was a baby that my grandfather called me his little cabbage head. My parents and childhood friends still call me chou...short for petite tete de chou.

Shelley: Would you like some pie?

Gordon: MASSIVE, MASSIVE QUANTITIES AND A GLASS OF WATER, SWEETHEART. MY SOCKS ARE ON FIRE.

Twin Peaks

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I call my son, Butter Biscuit, Sugar Bun and Honey Bun.

My sister refers to her kids as meatballs or manigot (weird italian pronunciation for manicotti).

Sometimes, I'll call an especially chubby baby a "porkchop"

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Duh. How could I forget? My dad has called me "Sugar" my whole life! Guess I was thinking of LITTLE kids based on the topic title. :wink:

"I'm not eating it...my tongue is just looking at it!" --My then-3.5 year-old niece, who was NOT eating a piece of gum

"Wow--this is a fancy restaurant! They keep bringing us more water and we didn't even ask for it!" --My 5.75 year-old niece, about Bread Bar

"He's jumped the flounder, as you might say."

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Currently Emma is "Pumpkin Pie" and Ian is either "Chunky Monkey" or "Chunk-style".

weird, my name is Emma, and my boyfriend Ian.

Perhaps Ian's and Emma's are just meant to be.

I call kids peanuts, muffins, chickpeas, brats...

does this come in pork?

My name's Emma Feigenbaum.

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Well, my daughter's name is a food -- Madeleine. We served madeleines at her baptism celebration.

I also at various times have called her:

sweetpea

sugar or sugar plum

Madeleine sandwich (as in she's so cute and yummy I could have a...)

bean (short for Mexican jumping bean when she was in utero)

A Mexican friend calls her kids piglets in Spanish -- can't find the actual word right now.

Bridget Avila

My Blog

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No kids here either, but...

I have a co-worker who called her baby Tofu Avocado when she was in utero. :biggrin:

My younger dog, Bella, looks like a piglet and as a result is often called Hammie or Smith (for Smithfield Ham). Our ex-chef friend Mark calls her Porcellina (suckling pig). She even makes little pig-gruntie noises...

140038013203_0_ALB.jpg

Anita Crotty travel writer & mexican-food addictwww.marriedwithdinner.com

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Hey, if we're gonna branch out into non-human "offspring" ... :biggrin:

A roommate of mine when we were both in our twenties had a huge cat named Catsup - usually deliberately mispronounced as "Cat-soup." Catsup bore such a strong resemblance to the cats drawn by B. Kliban that I soon started calling him Meatloaf a la the Kliban definition of "cat" ("one hell of a nice animal, frequently mistaken for a meatloaf"), and the alternate name stuck.

Another cat in my life I named Orange Julius because of his markings: he was a gorgeous little orange-tabby-point Siamese, and his non-point body fur was the most amazing shade of pale orange. Only kind of food-related: Orange Julius also had a nickname bestowed on him by my brother (he has a knack for it)--Agent Orange, on account of this cat's propensity for defoliating all my mom's houseplants.

Oh, and another cat of mine was named Jimmy Dean, the Rebel Without A Clue--but that was equal parts reference to the actor and the sausage-maker. :laugh:

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Duh.  How could I forget?  My dad has called me "Sugar" my whole life![...]

Yeah, my fictive grandmother, Mrs. Carr, a black lady from the South, always called me "sugar." Of course, I think she called a lot of people "sugar." She was a really wonderful, sweet lady. :wub:

Milagai, pamplemousse as far as I know is simply grapefruit, not any particular variety.

Michael aka "Pan"

 

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And then there's the expression "yard eggs" which usually refers to children under one year of age.

Joie Alvaro Kent

"I like rice. Rice is great if you're hungry and want 2,000 of something." ~ Mitch Hedberg

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We've referred to my friend's daughter as "The Bean" since she was still in the belly...not even sure why, but I'll still ask "How's the Bean?"  :laugh:

I have called my niece Caroline 'bean' ever since she was born!

:smile:

Erica

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My dad, many many years ago, called me Chicken Licken. Don't know why, and I really didn't like it that much. I'd give a gazillion dollars to be able to hear him call me that again.

My daughter, Amanda, was conceived after a festive night - drinking many Margaritas :raz:

Hubby and I were tempted to name her that, but it really didn't go with our last name. While she was learning spanish in school as her second language requirement, her teacher assigned each student a spanish name. When she came home and said her teacher was calling her Margherita, we cracked up. Someday I'll tell her why.

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For a brief period I was referred to as gumdrop for no apparent reason. Perhaps why the nickname didn't stick.

I work in the fish world and for a while we referred to a friend's as-yet-unborn child by various fish life stages. When the kid was born, it became pollock which has stuck.

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my kindergarten teacher called us all her "petits chou-chous" … I guess 'cabbage' is a pretty common french pet name for kids; sort of strange once you think about it :biggrin:

Cutting the lemon/the knife/leaves a little cathedral:/alcoves unguessed by the eye/that open acidulous glass/to the light; topazes/riding the droplets,/altars,/aromatic facades. - Ode to a Lemon, Pablo Neruda

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We called my oldest son "Goober" until he got to be taller than us. We have stopped now. :laugh:

:biggrin: That's what we call our 3 year old daughter. She dishes it right back though. I love it when she turns to my husband and says, "You silly goober!!"

She also calls him butterfingers whenever he (frequently) drops something.

Perhaps we need a new thread of food names that our children use for us!

Edited to add: And my dad always called me Cookie. Now, it's been shortened to Cook. He sends me notes addressed to Cook, and when he calls, he always says, "Hey Cook..."

Edited by daniellewiley (log)

Danielle Altshuler Wiley

a.k.a. Foodmomiac

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