Monday, March 26, 2007

Caught in the act

I try to get my meat and potatoes man to eat a few healthy things every once in a while, with or with out him knowing it. I tried to sneak in a new experiment this weekend. I got the idea from the Parenting magazine. Surely their recipes have been tested and work as well as they claim right? Well Mr Bradley has an incredible knack for detecting anything that might be healthy that has been snuck into his tried and true favorites.
The article was how to get more fruits and veggies into your kids diet. I know we are in desperate need of fruit and a few more servings of vegetables wouldn't hurt us either. I opted to make "Purple Paste". This marvelous paste is the thing you put into your normal recipes and your kids are a little healthier but non the wiser. The paste is made of twenty oz cooked spinach, one and a half cups blue berries and a teaspoon of lemon juice all pureed together. My paste looked a bit more black/green than purple and smelled a little of ass, but I was ready to try. The chefs at Parenting suggested putting half a cup of the mix into your ground meat and making burgers for grilling. It mixed well but the color of the patties was off. To combat the color I cooked them a little longer than normal. To cover the smell of vegetables in the kitchen I boiled some fresh corn.
I had discussed my little coup with my friend Becky who said to tell him it was a new seasoning with parsley in it if he questioned the color. Now before serving this I did taste it, not bad but a little spinachy. Maybe I give myself away by the weird smile I wear or the way I stare at him when he eats a new concoction. He noticed on the first bite "What is this?". I tried the new seasoning/parsley story, he wasn't buying it. He went on to remind me that he doesn't like change and if it ain't broke don't fix it etc. etc. Turner and I on the other hand actually liked the green burgers. We ate them twice and Turner finished his whole burger on both days. Brad said it was because Turner was too young to have developed good taste.
I won't give up on trying to make Mr Junk Food healthy, I'll just have to get sneakier. Perhaps put some purple paste in his mouth while he sleeps. Yeah, his breath kind of smells like purple paste in the morning so maybe he wouldn't notice. Then he can eat his meat and potatoes and I can smile knowing he's had a small dose of good stuff.
My efforts to make Brad live longer are not fully appreciated. He once told me what was the point of living an extra ten years if you have to eat that crap(we were having grilled salmon, one of his most hated foods) everyday to do it? He said he'd rather die earlier and eat what he wants in the mean time. Well tough buddy, you married me and this was part of the package deal, look up section twenty three paragraph two. I am just now getting him broken in. We're just now really getting the routine down, so I would like forty or fifty years to enjoy the smooth sailing.
Brad has always been fine with the idea of living to his sixties and that's it. It makes me shudder. I want at least to live in to my late eighties still healthy and independent. Ideally I want to see one hundred. I don't want to have to date, marry and break some one in again. Brad's what I want, especially since he seems to get better with age. He better not crap out on me when he's sixty seven, just think how mellow he'll be then.
My sneaky cooking is also for my son. Brad was a tiny kid. He really didn't eat or grow til he was out of high school. He wants Turner to be the biggest and best at sports. That means he needs to eat good stuff. I handled the first year, he nursed. Now it's harder. My thought was that I can make up for not contributing size to Turner's gene pool by providing him with the best growing materials for his body. Thankfully what is good for the body is good for the brain, double bonus.
Tate gets benefited from this too. I eat the spinach blueberry compote and she gets the vitamins. Everyone wins, except poor sensitive taste bud Brad. He'll get used to it. He doesn't even cry anymore when he sees we're having baked or grilled fish. He whines yes, but it's less and less every time. I wonder if he were the one in full time control of what the kids ate if he'd feel the "mommy guilt" and try to eat healthier for their sakes? Would he worry about their nutritional needs or would donuts everyday for breakfast be more important. I can not see him sitting around planning out a weeks menu and trying to only have one red meat based meal per seven day period. That is why he is out there building power plants and I am here dong the thankless job of cooking. He may not love the crap I make him eat, but every year I get to watch him blow out more and more candles on his birthday cake, the sweetest desert is all mine

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