Conventional wisdom suggests that in order to get a
reluctant entity to ingest an object that is inherently good for it, one has to
use the ancient art of subterfuge.
Most commonly, this involves hiding or disguising the good
thing (be it medicine or carrots and celery) within something far more
desirable, which is then eaten. Pills can be crushed and blended into a
hamburger, or some carrot blended into a tomato soup: the unsuspecting
recalcitrant is none the wiser.
Mothers, in particular, are experts at hiding good foods
within bad ones. They’ll try to squeeze in as many vitamins and minerals as
possible — the way cereal companies do when they offer sugar-crusted candy corn
shapes which have been infused with micro quantities of the ingredients heavily
advertized in fun colors at the top of the package.
Occasionally, however, you get a Mom who is either
profoundly incompetent at this necessary skill, or who just doesn’t give a
fuck, and fails to appreciate the very notion of “cloak-and-dagger” nutrition,
and serves a sackful of carrots embedded in a translucent mold of clear jelly.
Under the impression of elegance, she will artlessly suggest
that her creation isn’t in fact what it appears to be; she will have you
believe that what are clearly carrot discs are some exotic orange fruit whose
deliciousness will be a revelation. “Look,” she will say, “would I have taken
such trouble to arrange all that flat-leaf Italian parsley around it if it
wasn’t worth it?”
She’s the sort of person who will insist you eat the garnish
too.
