We were in a vegetable rut. Our kids, Meriel, age 9, and Gavin, 12, had a sadly limited list of veggies that they considered fit to eat. Over the years, my husband, Dave, and I had tried to introduce options that sounded great to us (cauliflower! spaghetti squash!), but without fail, the kids turned up their noses, and I landed back on the path of least resistance. As a result, our weekly dinners had turned into a merry-go-round of salad, broccoli, peas, and zucchini, while the kids' lunches were stuck on carrots, carrots, and … carrots. It was pretty boring, not to mention nutritionally lacking.
Something had to change. So, in an effort to add diversity to our menu and make trying new things a bit more fun, I invented the Mystery Vegetable Game. One evening before mealtime, I gathered the family together and announced that we were all going to embark on an eating adventure. The kids were a little apprehensive, but when I promised that it would involve playing a really fun game, they agreed to try it. A new era of dinners had begun.
The beauty of the idea is its simplicity. Each week I find a vegetable that's unfamiliar or that the kids have tried and rejected in the past. I then search out a tasty-sounding recipe to prepare in which the chosen veggie plays a starring role.
After Gavin and Meriel are seated at the dining table, I tie blindfolds over their eyes and place bites of the mystery vegetable on their forks. The kids always find the blindfolds slightly scary -- in a good way. It definitely adds a thrill to dinnertime. Next, they get to smell the veggie and describe the scent; then they taste it and describe the flavor. The whole time we encourage them to be as descriptive as they can, saying positive and negative things. Finally, they get to remove the blindfolds and name the new dish something wacky. If they seem to be having a hard time coming up with a name, I might suggest a theme to get their creative juices flowing. During the Olympics, for example, they named dishes after athletes.
One evening, I served marinated cucumbers. When I suggested a book theme, Gavin quickly came up with "snozzcumbers," after the disgusting vegetable in Roald Dahl's "The BFG." Interestingly, the name didn't stop the kids from eating it again. In fact, now when I serve "snozzcumbers," they just giggle and eat them up.
