Homegrown Happy Valley

The other day my 4-year-old son spotted a rabbit in our backyard and asked for a carrot to feed it.

“We don’t have any,” I told him.

“Just make one,” he said, using that “duh, mom” inflection common in 4-year-old speak.

Clearly he has a lot to learn about food.

When he was a newborn I laid the foundation by stuffing him with smashed sweet potatoes, sautéed garlicky spinach from our favorite Italian restaurant, and diced avocados. I bought organic baby food and tried to find the time to make some of my own. But when my family and I moved to State College and realized our new home was smack in the middle of Farm Country, I started our most important lesson yet: that food comes from the ground, not the grocery store shelves. I bought a membership in Tait Farm, lugged him along to pick up my weekly produce “share” and regaled (or bored) him with details about how I’d turn those ingredients into dinner.

Unfortunately, around the same time I began buying more items that were locally made or produced, my son decided to start gagging on anything that wasn’t dairy, bread, and dessert. He was fine with Gemelli bread, Spring Bank Acres yogurt (he’ll do a dance of joy whenever I break out a bowl of the Strawberry), Creamery ice cream, Meyer milk, and most local cheese. He’ll devour a whoopie pie with gusto. But, with the exception of carrots, he regards every item that comes from the farm as gross grown-up food.

I wanted dinnertime to be a celebration of fresh food enjoyed by the people I loved most. Instead I got tears and vomit. My son hid under the table because he didn’t like the “look” of what was on his T-Rex plate. Meanwhile, I started sulking, wishing I hadn’t just spent an hour following some kid-inspired recipe that was “guaranteed to leave them asking for seconds.” I conspired to submit my own version of those recipes, “guaranteed to bring on an attack of throw-up.”

I convinced myself that I had the only 4-year-old in State College who didn’t eat fruit and vegetables. When my friends from Homegrown Happy Valley held a local night of eating, I watched in disbelief as their kids, ages 2 and 4, ate salad and asparagus.

“How’d you do it?” I asked the mother of the 4-year-old. When she told me he learned from watching them, I lost it.

“What do you think we eat every night? McDonalds??”

That night I decided two things:

1) I had to relax. If I didn’t stop stressing all the antioxidants from those fresh fruit and veggies would turn into free radicals and kill me, depriving me of my motherly right to witness my son eat his first salad.

2) I wouldn’t give up. My 4-year-old would take the Local Food Challenge.

I’m happy to report I’ve had success on both fronts. If my son doesn’t eat what’s on the table, I just take another sip of wine and smile. He’s 4, I tell myself. I’m lucky he isn’t demanding hot-dogs stuffed with macaroni and cheese every night.

As for goal number two, I’m pleased to report that—drum roll, please—my son ate spinach twice last week: once mixed in scrambled eggs and stuffed into a tortilla and another time mixed into jarred tomato sauce. I wanted to scream with joy. I played it cool.

Check back here for follow-ups on “A Preschooler’s Local Food Challenge.” I’ll tell you what worked, what backfired (kale chips–c’mon, even I didn’t love them), and Web sites that helped. And in case you’re wondering, I have no problem mixing a healthy, locally sourced vegetable with a supermarket staple, like jarred tomato sauce. And I’ll serve dessert five nights a week if it’s made with local fruit.

In fact, the very night my son polished off his pasta “with green stuff,” he ate a bowl of Meyer Dairy ice cream topped with homemade apple rhubarb sauce and declared me the “best baker.” I almost cried. This time they were happy tears.

I have high, yet realistic hopes. Just like he learned to pee on a toilet, he’ll eventually stop recoiling from the color green on his dinner plate.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 12th, 2009 at 2:03 pm and is filed under Eat Local Challenge, Food, Kids. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.