“What’s for dinner?” several children asked at once. They had piled into the car at the end of a long day and they were famished.
“Garlic bread, salad, and soup.”
This evasive answer fooled no one.
“What kind of soup?”
“Mm, vegetable.”
“Which vegetables?”
” Ginger, garlic, and … butternut –”
A communal wail rose from the back of the car, from which one voice soared in especial outrage:
“Not butternut squash oh I hate butternut squash it is disgusting you promised you would never make us eat butternut squash again after that time it practically made me throw up because it’s so disgusting please say I don’t have to eat it I won’t eat it you can’t make me eat it can I have something else I’ll eat anything else just please not butternut squash it’s the most disgusting food in the world!”
Now, it takes a very composed cook to handle such vehement gastronomic criticism, and normally I am not that person. Like everyone who cooks for children, I’ve come to expect the occasional finicky customer. Moments of artless candor — “Yuck, what’s the red stuff?” — come with the job. But when a child yells blue murder at the prospect of eating a delicious supper that one has prepared, and which is in fact objectively delicious (despite its squash content), one’s composure sometimes deserts one. By amazing good fortune, on this occasion it didn’t.
“Gosh, you don’t sound very enthusiastic about your supper,” I said. I was so calm you could have balanced a ball on my head.
What do you know? The outraged child instantly became contrite.
“I don’t want to hurt your feelings, it’s just that butternut squash is grody to the max.”
“It really is,” and “I think so, too,” and “That’s right,” put in everyone else.
“Fair enough,” I said to them, “but in future, in life, you might want to find a more tactful way of expressing your objections. You won’t always like what you get for dinner but you can’t go around shrieking about it and being rude to the cook.”
“Let’s practice,” someone suggested.
“I’ll go first,” said the formerly irate party. “OK. Mummy, what’s for dinner?”
“Butternut squash soup.”
“Bleah! Disgusting!”
Everyone laughed. “Nice,” I said, “but it needs subtlety.”
The child tried again. “I really don’t like squash. Can we have something else instead?”
“More subtle still,” I said. “Try adding a compliment. Cooks like compliments.”
“Thank you for making the disgusting squash soup. Would it be OK if we had something else? Like, anything else?”
“You’re getting closer.”
“Butternut squash soup sounds tasty,” someone else said, “Thank you for making it. Do you mind awfully if we don’t eat it?”
“Bingo!”
We kept practicing all the way home. Someone would ask what was for dinner. I’d say “squid eyes” or “cheese curd flambe” or “cornflakes, with giblets.” After the appropriate sound effects, they’d tell me how delicious it sounded, and how grateful they were, but would I mind if they didn’t eat it.
As we pulled into the driveway, I felt we’d enjoyed a good etiquette teaching moment.
“What’s for dinner, really?” they asked, as we came in the house.
“Butternut squash soup.”
“WHAT!?”
The wail was building to a crescendo when they realized that I was kidding. Some foods are just impossible for the child palate. Tonight they could have scrambled eggs instead, for once.
Meghan Cox Gurdon’s column appears on Sunday and Thursday. She can be contacted at [email protected].
