Sunday, April 5, 2009

The Accidental Vegetarian

I was having a salad for dinner a few nights ago. It was 'leftovers night.' I'd taken a leftover steak, sliced it, reheated it a bit, added it to the top of a pile of lettuce and veggies, and topped it with some bleu cheese dressing and croutons. (Yes, it was good! Just ask Big J, who had his doubts, but was pleasantly surprised.) As I was eating my salad, Miss M pointed to my plate and asked for a bite. I pointed to a particular bite of the salad (you'll understand in a moment), and she confirmed that, indeed, it was the bite she wanted. I passed her a bite of the salad, which she put in her mouth and immediately took back out. Why?

"That's meat!" she said with disdain, handing it back to me.

Big J and I were surprised that she'd asked for a bite of meat, but after reflecting on the events, it occured to us that she may have thought it was a crouton since I had some pumpernickel croutons on my salad. But the point of the post is this:

How is it possible that we have a child who, for the most part, will not eat meat?

We eat meat at nearly every meal. If we eat fish, we typically serve chicken nuggets to the kids*. Miss M ignores them. I think I have served two (evening) meals without meat in the last year. At Chick-Fil-A, she eats the fruit and the waffle fries (I'm a fry kind of girl, so I can't blame her for that....). She will eat lunch meat, but that's not the healthiest thing out there. Neither are McNuggets (sorry, Mickey D's), and she'll eat about ONE of those out of a Happy Meal, followed by all of the fries, of course.

Last night, we had fettucine alfredo. She ate more than Mister J, I think.I offered leftovers of that for dinner tonight, and she wolfed it down - along with about 1/3 of a bag of steamed edamame. She can put away some edamame - even shells it herself! I'm comfortable with the amount of protein she's getting, but I still wonder...

How did we end up with an almost full-time vegetarian in the family?

*Miss M's allergist hasn't given us the OK to introduce fish into her diet. And, if we are giving her a chance to eat chicken nuggets as an alternative, we feel Mister J should be allowed to eat them as well.

3 comments:

Lauren @ Team Giles said...

Hey thanks for your comment on Team Giles about FPU. We're so excited to be taking these classes. My husband is definitely the nerd, I dont "do" budgeting. :) I'm learning from these classes AND him. He's totally got it down. that's so good you and your husband went through it and are putting things into practice. I actually blogged about tonights class (will post tomorrow).

p.s. I'm a vegetarian, so I totally smiled reading this post. ;)

Jess said...

That's funny.

Susannah said...

That's so funny about the meat thing. I think it must be different people's tastes. Parker has always been a meat eater & prefers fruit w/ his. Andrew has never cared for meat - as a small child, & even now - but scarfs veggies like there's no tomorrow! Meredith is kind of in between. Funny how it turns out that way w/ little or no provocation on our part... Proof positive to me that God gives us personalities right from the start! Great blogging, keep it up!