Mini-victory: pepper bracelets and cucumber snakes

My daughters love vegetables. Crunchy raw vegetables of every color. It’s solely my doing: I've been pushing the vegetable thing and eating veggies in their presence and, in short, not offering them an alternative since they could chew. I beam at you contentedly from my tower of maternal achievement, flanked by my healthy, glowing offspring.

And then there’s my son.

B.A. was born into the same healthy home with a lot of the same genes as his sisters. But he didn’t get the memo, apparently. That boy hates vegetables with a deep and abiding loathing. He hates them so much that if he is so much as offered a sweet potato, he will hurl it to the floor and then hurl everything else after it: all the pasta and milk and cheese he has been enjoying up thus far, cast off the table as he howls in indignation. He tears off his bib and grasps for the runner and vase of flowers at the table’s center, desperate to make his point.

Our apartment is a block from a dream of an open-air market. He does not care. We live in a tiny country where the produce still tastes like produce and everything is local, fresh and abundant. He remains unconcerned. He hates his vegetables.

He does not like them raw and crunchy, like his sisters (and his lazy mother) prefer. He does not like them tossed with oil and salt and roasted to caramelized sweetness.  He does not like them coated in cheese and butter. He will not be fooled. He recognizes those flecks of orange in his pasta sauce, those spots of green in his eggs. No dice. He cheerfully slurps delicious dips of all sorts off his carrots, then thanks them for their service and tosses them, yes, to the floor.

B.A. models a pepper ring

But he will sometimes be enticed by food presented as a plaything. I’m not talking about elaborate veggie-sculptures of smiley faces or broccoli forests, etc. Those projects make me tired just thinking about them. What we do over here is cut colorful peppers into bracelets and rings. When B.A. sees his sisters wearing vegetable jewelry, he will usually join in the fun. And once the pepper is on his arm, well, there’s no harm in taking a nibble or two . . .

So there’s that. And I have also found that most vegetables are somewhat attractive if they are presented as menacing rattlesnakes slowly cutting a path across the table, hissing and biting hands and faces as they go. That one took me through fussy phases with the girls, and it’s a good way of introducing new vegetables.

These strategies will only get B.A. eating the tiniest bits. I hope his system can creep along on trace nutrients. I love these kids and I want them to eat well. Sometimes it can become a bit of an obsession, and I have to recalibrate. Especially because children are moving targets and every strategy grows stale eventually. But in the meantime, I’ll be in the kitchen, carving peppers into jewelry.