My husband and I were talking about the weekend, because our weekends require more planning than they used to. The two oldest boys are going camping and I mentioned that I needed to pick up a snack for the Friday night cracker barrel, when everyone brings something to share. He rolled his eyes. "There'll be plenty of junk," he predicted. "Get a bag of apples. Or clementines." Apples, I expect, would come back home uneaten, or perhaps be used as projectiles. But the exchange sparked a memory.
My pal Anneleisa told me years ago about a granola preschool she had attended in California, where they served wedges of red cabbage to the kids for snack. At the time we had no children and I had just been waxing rhapsodic about red cabbage. ("It's such a fantastic color!" I had probably been saying. "It's so lacy when you slice it thinly!" I used to wax rhapsodic about vegetables at regular intervals. I even did it in a blog post once. Wonder when I stopped?) Anyway, in that context it struck me as a nifty idea. Why wouldn't you serve red cabbage to preschoolers for snack?
Five children later the answer to that question is obvious: because most of the preschoolers I have known wouldn't touch the stuff. Because they would hold out for the goldfish or the graham crackers and grow crabby from low blood sugar. That's why. Don't you think? How long would you have to serve wedges of red cabbage before the kids stopped hunger-striking?
It makes me feel a little wistful, remembering my youthful optimism. (I first typed "useful optimism." There's a lot to like about optimism but usefulness is probably not its strong suit.)
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