babies and chilies.

So... I just popped dinner into the oven. About 20 more minutes and we'll be eating GOOD. Mmmm.

I decided to blog about dinner (or some aspect of it) while chopping up green bell pepper just a bit ago. I was shaking my head at myself because I was trying to chop up the bell pepper so very tiny. I mean really tiny. Ridiculously tiny. The reason I do this is below.



This is my daughter, Kaia. She's the cleverest little 5-year old girl you will ever know. Believe me. (BTW, she's one of three... the middle girl of my triplets.) And she tells me the most thought-provoking things... more on that later. But a while back, I served her dinner that included the yummiest bits of sautéed green bell pepper, which is one of my favorite veggies of all.

She REFUSED to eat it. I explained to her that the taste was sweet-like, not yucky. She shook her head at me and said so matter-of-factly, "You know, Mommy... Mommies really shouldn't feed their babies CHILIES. It's not a very kind thing to do."



Whaaaat?

So, since then, I've had to chop up bell pepper as small as I possibly can. Seriously. In the hopes that she will not notice it in her food, of course. No matter how good the food tastes, if she knows what those "little green things" are... it is all over. She will go to bed hungry if she thinks they are chilies. I have to tell her that they are something else... something like, "green healthy vegetables that help you grow strong!" Seems to do the trick, and she just gobbles it down.



So this was what was on my cutting board tonight. Practically PUREED bell pepper! It was pulverized. I really should have just put it in my blender instead of exerting all that energy! I just kept chopping and chopping and chopping, getting it as small as I could. Then it occurred to me that it was soooo silly. But necessary, at least for a while. I'm hoping that she'll grow out of this way of thinking very soon. But for now, a Mommy certainly cannot feed her baby chilies. It just isn't a KIND thing to do.

{BTW, I made Baked Spaghetti for dinner tonight... If I have time to post the recipe tomorrow, I will...} :)