What I Made for Dinner: February 23, 2009

Chicken and black bean tacos, guacamole, corn.

We eat a lot of vegetables, or at least I put a lot of vegetables on the table with most meals. I am totally aboveboard with my ingredients. I have a problem with Jessica Seinfeld's idea of hiding veggies in food so that your kid doesn't know what he's eating. If the kid doesn't know what he's eating, how is he supposed to know what he likes?

I mean, if a kid loves your meatballs, and unbeknownst to him they're 25% zucchini, he will be sorely disappointed, not to mention confused, when he orders meatballs in a restaurant someday on a date. And then there he'll be, on a date with some hot-but-toxic young temptress, too embarrassed to ask the waiter what's wrong with the meatballs, and he'll be starving but unable to eat this weird-tasting food, and his blood sugar will drop and his judgment will be impaired, and before you know it he's moving to California with a passel of kids and a daughter-in-law who won't take your phone calls.

So then, to prevent future problems, the trick is to get little kids to be familiar with, if not totally fond of, all kinds of food. They ought to knowingly eat something that grows on or in the ground. Tacos are a great way to accomplish this. Alex likes beans of all sorts, so black beans as filling works for him. Josh will top his taco with tomatoes and lettuce. They both like salsa and guacamole. Besides, just about anything is acceptable when accompanied by chips and/or covered in cheese.