In Praise of Green Beans

Tonight's dinner was rice, rotisserie chicken and sauteed green beans. LK and CB love the chicken, but turned their noses up about green beans. That's not a surprise -- in my 10+ years as a mom, I haven't personally met many kids who love green beans or green peas, or any green veggies, for that matter.

In order to get them to try different vegetables and to make vegetables a regular part of their diet, I've set a rule since they were little. My rule is, they have to finish whatever vegetables I serve at dinner time (I mean the portion I put on their plate). It's OK if they don't finish their rice/noodles or protein (usually chicken or fish, which they love anyway), but they have to finish their veggies.

They both know that's my rule, and there's no way around it.

So, they'd complain (or whine) from time to time, but they do finish their veggies, and even learn to love some of them. For example, LK and CB love corns, carrots, snow peas, cabbages, Chinese bean sprouts, celery, cucumber, and spinach. They just don't like green beans and green peas. And broccoli is something they love sometimes and hate sometimes, depending on their moods.

Anyway, we had green beans tonight, and, not surprisingly, they both groaned when they saw that on the dinner table. Their mood was quickly lifted by the golden-brown honey rotisserie chicken, and they started to joke about how yucky green beans are. The other day, I shared with them that someone who lives in Indonesia sent me a special acrostic made from my name. That must have made an impression on them. Before I knew it, LK started writing an acrostic of beans on a sticky note, right at the dinner table.

This is what LK wrote:

Boring
Ew!!!
Atrocious
Never will eat
Salty

She even took out a dictionary to look up "atrocious", just to make sure she got the right word she was looking for. Then she read it out loud for us:

"Atrocious, adjective, very bad, outrageously cruel".

"Yup, that's the word", LK said, satisfied with her choice of word.

How can innocent little green beans be "outrageously cruel"? Beats me!

Now, CB always loves to follow his big sister's footprints. Of course, he'd have to write an acrostic too! So this is what CB came up with:

Black souls
Ewwww!
Astonishingly gross
Never'll eat, ever
Sardine-like taste

We were all cracking up!!! LK exclaimed, "You don't even know what sardines taste like!!!"

CB shouted back, "I imagine they would taste as gross as green beans!"

We laughed until tears came out!

"OK, guys, now it's time to finish your green beans!!!" I hate to break up a party, but we had to finish dinner and move on to other tasks before bedtime.

Much to my delight, this time, the kids finished their green beans without further complaints. :-)