Anyone for a little green and leafy

Vegetables. We have a good relationship now. Fresh, steamed, canned, raw. Preferably not over cooked. Mushy = blech! It was not always the way.

When we were introduced to spinach, hot and buttery. I stared it down until it was cold and coagulated. I got moved to the kitchen from the dining room. Hee Haw came on. Then off. I finally choked back the spinach. Gagging the whole time and then got sent to bed. I love spinach now. Cooked or raw. And now my boys loved it. Someone recently commented to Aidan that something was better than having to eat spinach. He looked at he like she had three heads and said, "I LUV SPINACH".

Eggplant, cauliflower, broccoli, B-R-U-S-S-E-L- S-P-R-O-U-T-S
It's all delish.

The line in the sand is drawn at the hideous little ball of hell known as the pea.

I remember as clear as day telling my parents that peas popped and oozed. I may have been three years old. They were grossed out. Thus was created the family rule of one elimination. Everyone got to have one vegetable that they didn't need to eat.

Mine was clearly the pea.

Fast forward:
We have the perfect school/afterschool arrangement. The kids can go on any day of the week and I don't need to plan for it, i.e. something runs late at work and they just go. It is attached to the school, run by the Boys and Girls Club (which incidentally is currently advised by Condeleeza Rice) only for kids at our little school. They feed the kids snack. They will feed them a (reasonably) healthy dinner if they are there late enough. And oh, by the way, it's free. exactly $0, every day, week, month, no matter when they go or don't.

Last week, they sponsored an ice cream social. It was also free if you brought a donation of cans to support the Torch Club, the little community action group. The boys stayed through dinner until the ice cream social. I went and, while eating homemade sundaes, I said, "what did you have for dinner?". Noah said, with a mouth full of hot fudge, chocolate chips and sprinkles, "we didn't eat". I posed the obvious, "why?"

We had plans to go out, had counted on the boys full and ready for bed for the babysitter. I was a little irritated, just until he responded, "there were peas". I may be a lot of things, but I'm not a hypocrite.

Oh-Kay! Grilled cheeses for dinner!