To the Four-Year-Old Gagging on Overcooked Brussel sprouts

 Vegetables are good for you right?

The Canadian Food Guide tells us to eat a huge amount of fruit and veggies, something like 5-10 servings a day.

 Tell that to the four year old gagging on overcooked Brussels sprouts.

At least we're not in the 1950's anymore; I remember sitting at the table and trying to shudder down cooked carrots.

 Now we know how to stir fry veggies so they are still crunchy but hot and the sauces they make now!!! The bought sauces often have too much sugar and salt but a little dab can entice reluctant taste buds.

Another secret is to grate cheese on hot food. It will make any vegetable palatable to even the most picky eater. Even thirty years ago we put peanut butter on celery with raisins and called it ants on a log and cut up raw vegetables to dip in salad dressing.

It was my adult children who demonstrated how to grate carrot or zucchini into everything from cake, soup to spaghetti sauce with no one being the wiser; any meal can be served on hot but crunchy bean sprouts or spinach. It's actually fun to create new ways to sneak extra vegetables into other meals.

 There are two facts that kept me sane in my early years as a little kid's chef

1. Something new has to be offered at least three times before it is trusted by cautious eaters. (My rule is that you must try at least a nibble.)

2. When toddlers are offered a whole table of different healthy food, they will instinctively eat a balanced diet. Now it might be 11 bananas on one day and mainly milk the next but after thirty day,  it will be a perfectly balanced diet! So relax moms; just exercise a few tricks without resorting to pressure tactics and add a huge dollop of humour.

 Oh I almost forgot. Kids love to grow their own vegetables, pick and wash them and eat them right outside. Freshly picked carrots taste like candy and even toddlers will walk over to pull a carrot for a snack.

Important mantra to repeat in the midst of a raging battle,

"THIS TOO WILL PASS!!!"

Actually, don't bother fighting; little people just dig in their heels. Get them to taste a nibble SMOTHERED IN DIP and then let them eat a healthy alternative. Food digests better when everyone is calm. Beside, kids do have more sensitive taste bus than we do.

I STILL remember those overcooked Lima beans that great aunt Maisie forced my sister and I to eat BEFORE we were allowed a sip of milk!!! That was almost 50 years ago!

There Is More Than One Way To Win A War

This post describes the war my family has waged against vegetable lovers such as muskrats,groundhogs, rabbits, raccoons and deer, bears and mice.

The      Our garden enemies  are sneaky and tenacious; focused on a single goal- to eat and store as much of our fresh produce as possible. Sometimes they will climb inconceivable obstacles to reach our garden.

For For example, one year our carrots were disappearing at an alarming rate. Every morning there were a few neat, long holes left in the clay soil where our carrots had been. They were disappearing without a trace. Finally we began to notice that there was a long worn down pathway from our back vegetable patch, over the front yard, across the road, through the neighbour’s property, down the hill and right to the bank of the creek. This long trail was becoming more trampled down each night. My husband and elderly neighbour finally solved the mystery.

 The creek had flooded a few weeks before and probably washed out the resident muskrat's buried winter supplies.

This particular muskrat was replenishing his storehouse with our carrots. We decided to share SOME of them with him. Since he was intent on stealing the entire crop, we quickly pulled almost all the carrots, even though they would have stayed fresher in the ground. The muskrats were never as desperate again and therefore never as much of a problem again but the groundhogs were constant pests

Groundhogs are voracious eaters for their size. They can devour an entire zucchini plant, vines, leaves and vegetables before we can get out of bed.( The operative word in their name is 'hog'.) Our war plan was to assign the early risers to patrol duty, making as little noise as possible.


The kids made a real game out of this spying mission. They would tip -toe through the house, peer out the windows , tip- toe back to shake Michael awake, while one of the older kids would silently raise one of the windows and prop it open in preparation for Dad's gun.


 (Wild pest lovers, read no further, please!!!) Michael shot thirty-one FAT groundhogs one year. After a fifteen year battle, the groundhog population seemed to decline. A trapper told us that a fisher (a fierce predator) had move in across the road and now we hardly ever see a groundhog.

expect our Our wonderful guard dog managed to keep the next group of veggie lovers away- raccoons and deer. Although deer can usually snack on apples at night from the apple trees that are at the far end of our acreage without alerting the dog, the raccoons can't resist corn near the house.

 Raccoons are not subtle.  They rip and tear their way through a patch of corn, bringing six foot corn stalks down. They make a terrible sound as well, a cross between a cat screeching and a baby crying. Needless to say, this racket wakes up our dog , who in turn wakes up the entire household while he is still inside AND while he is outside because he is acting like a tough guard dog.

A couple of years ago, black bears were a problem. When one such bear found our sweet corn, he was so happy, he rolled around, flattening a huge area before he settled down to eat the prized corncobs. I don't have to tell you that we left that massive vegetable lover alone. The dumb dog could smell the bear while he was in the house and he wouldn't stop barking but he did not have a clue what he would be facing if we had let him out.

Needless to say we loved our dog more than the corn, so he stayed inside

. In   In contrast to the huge black bear, mice and chipmunks might be little but a little nibble out of a tomato or a strawberry will rot the whole fruit.

Our cats do their best to keep the mice population down but the half rotted vegetables taste like fine dining to the pigs so at least all the spoiled food doesn't go to waste.

We finally realized that the secret to the war of the vegetables is to plant almost twice as many vegetables as we need.

We plant 75 foot rows of veggies-
Some for us
Some for the vegetable lovers

ome for our farm animals (who also like weeds, thank God)  

Some to either barter with or give away to our generous friends and relatives.

There is more than one way to win a war.