Are You Going to Eat That?

So, I went to the pricey, trendy grocery store that features organic, free range, gluten free and just generally higher quality stuff than my normal supermarket. I don't do it very often, because it is significantly more expensive, but we do enjoy a lot of their offerings. Plus, I know people who raise this sort of food, and how hard they work, and I'd like to see them make some serious money doing so.

I bought a bunch of organic carrots of assorted colors - red, orange, purple and yellow - to roast with a chicken for Sunday dinner. I was feeling pretty proud of myself; they're good for me, my money goes to a small, organic farm, and they'll look gorgeous on my table. A win all the way around, right?

My eighteen year old was in the kitchen with me when I took them out of the refrigerator. He made a sound of significant alarm - "AAAAHHHHH!" Coming closer, he poked and pinched them. "Why are they weird colors?" As I started to trim them, he was even more distressed. The cores of the purple carrots were yellowish with a green tint. "They're green! Purple and green carrots are just wrong!"

For crying out loud!

This is a child who has eaten snails and kangaroo. He has actually plucked green ants off of a tree in Australia and eaten them. "They're OK - they taste kinda like limes."

I have no worries that he'll starve next year at college. He routinely cooks at home - actual cooking,  not boiling water for ramen noodles. He'll make himself a bacon cheeseburger for breakfast, or a grilled turkey and cheddar sandwich on sourdough for dinner. One of the family favorites he made sure he knew how to make himself is a chicken and rice bake.

Yet brightly colored carrots alarm him? Really?

He also dislikes pasta, of any kind. He can't stand all beef hot dogs. While I love homemade chili, he will nibble it and say, "Can't we just get the good stuff, in cans?"

I shouldn't be surprised. He is my third child.

When my oldest was about 13, I picked some apples from the tree in the back yard and brought them in to make a pie. This, again, is a best case scenario for me. They're free, I know there have been no pesticides used on or near them, and they're the freshest of the fresh, going from tree to oven in minutes. It's one of my favorite fall rituals. Again, an all around win, yes?

No.

She literally squirmed with distaste. "You're going to eat those? After they've been (tone of horror) outside in the yard? With all the bugs and dirt and things?"

Sigh. "I washed them."

"Did you disinfect them?"

"No! I did not disinfect them! One of the best parts about eating them is that there are no chemicals on them!"

(Tone of horror again:) "And you expect us to eat them?"

My mother grew up on a farm. It was her job to pluck and clean the chickens before her mother cooked them. It was her brother's job to catch and behead them, but he was incompetent at it, so nine times out of ten, Mom caught it, killed it, drained it, then had to pluck and gut it. As a kid, I routinely snacked on raspberries, strawberries, carrots and plums from our yard, rather than go into the house and ask my mother to make me something. I would simply wipe a carrot on my pants before eating it. Now, I found myself standing in my kitchen having this surreal conversation with my daughter. My mind boggled.

"Where do you think the apples in the grocery store come from?"

She's very bright; I could see her engage the gears in her brain to come up with the correct answer. Still, she put on a hopeful grin and said, "A big, sterile warehouse somewhere?"

I can be gentle and tactful, really I can. I frequently choose not to. "You know how, on the way to Aunt Lynne's house, we drive by all those orchards alongside the highway?"

Wariness: "Yeah?"

"That's where most of our apples come from. Outside, with the bugs and dirt, not far from the California smog, right next to the relentless freeway exhaust. Plus, they're sprayed with pesticides several times a year." There. Mock my apples, and I will make you lose your appetite, so that I can eat your share of the pie. Reality check.

My kids, all of them, also have food preferences that are hard to understand. Take, for instance, their universal hatred of onions. They are all convinced that onions are the spawn of the devil. As children, they would scrape their McDonald's burgers to within an inch of their lives, to avoid any chance of getting a sliver of onion. They can find the tiniest, minced bit of onion in any dish, and would hold it up, speared on a fork, to proclaim, "You put onions in this!" I took to using only granulated onion or onion powder, but something like jarred pasta sauce would produce outrage. They hate peppers, all peppers, too, but not with the passion reserved for onions.

When my second born went away to culinary school, she came home on breaks, and began to make observations like, "Why don't you put any onions or peppers in that? Most people put onions and peppers in."

(Have you lived in your body for your entire life, child?) "Because you hate onions and peppers. All of you hate them. You would refuse to eat it if I added any."

"Oh. Well, I like it that way now. It's pretty good."

Moral of the story: we should, apparently, not feed our own children, but everyone else's. That way, they'll eat, and like, things.

Well, that and I set up my Sunday dinner so that I could have seconds on carrots.