Sugarplum Miso

It's winter. Yup. Well, alright, we're just a week shy of the official turn of the cog, but as far as I'm concerned, if my son is hacking up a lung, it's here.
Luckily, he's as husky as they come (the birth, his HEAD) and doesn't get sick too easily. And no, I didn't vaccinate. I didn't, but I still may. That's for another blog.
Here's the reason I'm bringing all this up. I firmly believe that living green inside and out help my little family of three stay as healthy as we are.
I was in Portland, ME a few weeks ago, shopping at Whole Foods as a commodified antidote to the boxed mashed potatoes of in laws I have, when a woman in my same aisle began lamenting. No, truly - she lamented. It was on par with Rossini. Oh, Ninetta, where is the golden spoon? For her, she would have stolen a spoon to make her son eat healthy food. Ah, here we are - my reason for writing: FOOD.
My 2 year old son was in the cart, happily eating some gim, or Korean sesame roasted nori seaweed, and this lady was just staring like she was watching him eat champolines (grasshopper/Mexican delicacy/one of son's faves).
"HOW are you getting him to eat that?" she asked.
"Well, I'm not making him..." I trailed off. I really couldn't think of an answer straight away.
As usual, lack of words only plagued me for a moment.
Well, for starters, I ate with gusto while pregnant. I had a midwife who gave me wonderful, colorful charts on nutrition in all kinds of whole foods that were headed with titles such as 'Did You Eat A Rainbow This Week?' It's hard not to love healthy food with that kind of unabashed hippie love of it all.
A baby in utero knows where you're eating. He or she can hear it. They can also feel your hormones change in conjunction - so if you're blissed out eating a tangerine, they get that signal, however oblique it may seem to you or me.
A synopsis of what I told "Ninetta": Everything is an adventure or journey. We plant seeds in the garden. If you don't have a space, call your city parks and recs to see where they might have one for you to use. If that's too much of a pain in the ass, buy some pots, throw some dirt in them and buy some seeds. Follow directions on seed packet. We call our seedlings "babies," but you can pick your own child friendly name. Growing things is one of the hallmarks of human evolution. Claim it!
Make a soup every week. Even if you don't cook, soup is your birthright. It's called H2O and stock or broth, garlic, onions, celery, carrots, chard or cabbage, and whatever else you deem worthy of your bubbling brew. Kids need veggies, yes, but most they cannot digest, not until about age seven. Cook it down well. Go fishing for carrots. If you must, put Elmo crackers in the soup and entice them at first with your shameless commercialism. The point is EVERY WEEK! No wavering. And, in the spirit of "Like Water for Chocolate," do it with love, lest they get a bellyache.
Try to get to the ocean and look at seaweed. If it's clean where you're visiting, let them lick it and see how salty it is. Kids love salty greasy things. Gim is salty and greasy, so that's not hard to figure out. Make a seaweed soup put fish in it. Buy a whole fish at the market and explore that fish together with your kid. Make a fish print on newsprint paper. Let them identify with the food in a way that is full of fun and nothing else. p.s. you can also do the water vegetation thing at the river or the stream.
If you make pancakes in the morning, let them help you. At two, they can crack an egg as well as you can, if you let'm. They're pretty proficient at stirring, too. You can use arrowroot powder, rye flour, whatever - pancakes are easy and forgiving, which any parent needs a good dose of, right?
Eggs are truly one of my beacons of light. You can make an egg into virtually anything! I take a ridiculous amount of fresh herbs, chop them until they resemble powder, and cook them into the scrambled eggs w/ sea salt. Voila! Green eggs! I haven't gone for the green ham yet, but my son hasn't caught on to the discrepancy, so that'll be our little secret.
If they have a sweet tooth, go for dates, raisins, B grade maple syrup, molasses, raw honey (after 1) there are SO many ways to appease that sweet tooth AND get vitamins and minerals. Plus, check in about the protein factor - I know I want sweet when I don't have enough protein. Kids are the same.
Pasta - I try and use rice pasta a lot, and that is another great place to add the herbs and almost every kid I know likes pesto.
I could wax poetic on this subject, but let me just say that the woman seemed to walk away with a little more allegro in her voice.
My son was covered in seaweed and promptly asking me for some almond butter on apple, please. Yeah, he's a Waldorf baby, no doubt about it.