Wednesday, July 1, 2015

Renaming Food For Picky Eaters

One of our little grandmonkeys is a very picky eater.  His mama fixed him a smoothie the other day for breakfast.  Normally you’d think this would be a great surprise, and so yummy on a hot day.

Nope.

It was new and therefore inedible.  Forget it.

Mama, however, has a lot of experience as head zookeeper, and knows just what to do with little monkeys who won’t eat.  “Did I say smoothie?” she asked.  “I meant Breakfast Ice Cream.  This is pink Breakfast Ice Cream.”

The Breakfast Ice Cream was gone in a flash.

Another mother tells of her daughter not wanting to eat ravioli.  She told Little Disgusted Daughter that ravioli were really Pizza Pillows.  Yum!  Disgust morphed into delight.

Didn’t all our parents tell us that broccoli were really trees, and we were the giants?  Didn’t they tell us that carrots would give us X-RAY VISION?  Wasn’t asparagus really Thunder Grass, and we were dinosaurs?  Of course, there is no better name for grapefruit than the French word pamplemousse.  My daughter was 15 before she found out it wasn’t called that at Safeway.

The Sugar Pops cereal of my childhood (pleeeeeease Mommy, buy this) became Corn Pops.  Healthier now?  I think not. The kiwi used to be called Chinese gooseberry, which sounds suspiciously like goose droppings. Around 1962, New Zealand growers rebranded it kiwi fruit, which is exotic and at the same time cute.  Perfect.  Canola oil used to be rapeseed oil.  Not buying THAT.  Orange roughy fish used to be slimehead fish, chilean sea bass used to be Patagonian toothfish, and sea urchins used to be whore’s eggs.  Sea snail can be legally marketed as abalone.

Not all picky eaters are children though, witness me and asparagus.  Hubby’s father, Opa, was not about to eat clam chowder.  “Pah,” he said. “I want good food!”  We told him we decided not to have clam chowder that night, so I made homemade potato soup instead.  Being a good German, he loves all things potato-y.  “Potato soup” was served and he gobbled it up.  Later we ‘fessed up and admitted our renaming.  To his credit, the next time we went to Red Lobster, he ordered clam chowder, saying it was his favorite.

So what are your renaming favorites?

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