One of the things I pride myself on is eating and promoting healthy food. In fact, I'm a bit obsessed with it of late and maybe a little snobby. I eat chocolate but only dark chocolate. I drink alcohol but prefer red wine. The last time my granddaughter had a sleepover, I made stuffed peppers. Of course, I used ground turkey and added bulgar wheat, spinach, onion, carrots, tomatoes, and squash. Feta cheese melted on top while they cooked. I was sure my 4-year old granddaughter would turn up her nose to my healthy stuffed peppers, so I made her, although it killed me, Sponge Bob mac-n-cheese in a box :( I bought the boxed mac-n-cheese just for her because, once, several months ago, I took a long time and some expensive ingredients to make homemade mac-n-cheese and she hated it. So, boxed it was! To my astonishment, however, while the dehydrated Sponge Bobs were plumping up in the pot on the stove, my granddaughter looked at my turkey meat and veggie pepper sitting on my plate and announced, "I'd like some of that." "OK," I thought "but I bet she'll hate it...too many veggies." Her grandfather barely gags down my ground turkey and veggie stuffed peppers. He's looking for the nice greasy ones stuffed with beef, sausage and white rice. Love him deeply but we are are different planets when it comes to food some times. Anyway, after eating two servings, my granddaughter clearly loved my healthy stuffed peppers.As she got ready for bed after her tub swim (see previous post), the book of her choice was, Berenstain Bears and Too Much Junk Food. Mama Bear, noticing Papa and Baby Bears are getting a little chubby, locks all the junk food away and forces the family to take up jogging. Delighted, I read this book to my granddaughter with much enthusiasm. The educator in me is hard to contain sometimes. After all, I recently joined Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution to transform school lunches and I never join causes.
The next morning I drove my sweet granddaughter to preschool. I had given her a candy cane before we left the condo. She was quiet for a little bit and then announced to me 1/2 way to school, so she had been thinking about this for awhile, "Grandma, isn't this junk food?" Oh my....called out by my own little granddaughter. "Well, yes. Candy canes are junk food. But, we can have a little junk food now and again." Guess I should have acted like I preach and given her a banana :) Humbled once again by youth :)
So, my kids loved this book for a long time. we read it every day. But, then, I asked Ally why she liked it. "Because I like to look at all the junk food!!"
ReplyDeleteAlthough, Finn does ask, "Is this healthy for me?" before he eats new things now. That's a good step.
Rachel