Green is not mean

My green soup from yesterday,

with soup almonds and sprouts

I made the most delicious soup yesterday. Lots of different vegetables and big green beans boiled in a chicken broth, and the broccoli and parsley added in a late stage not to kill the chlorophyll. When it came to the kids, Yoram told me that I could be pretty bold with ingredients as long as the soup was homogenised properly, so that no signs of vegetables could be detected. This reminded me of all lost city-kids without any attachments to the natural sources of foods, who think that milk comes from the milk factory or that fish sticks are swimming around as fish sticks, and in this case, a soup that probably comes straight out from a machine.

However, I swallowed that thought and ran the soup through the blender to a thick and beautiful green soup and I added some cream towards the end to enhance the flavours (alas not a kosher soup ;). In Israel, it is common to eat soup with something called soup almonds, which are tiny mini-croutons that you sprinkle on top of the soup. The regular ones are of course made from white flour and hardly nutritious, but we found organic full-grain soup almonds that we served with the soup. Yoram and I also sprinkled broccoli and radish sprouts on our bowls.

We hoped that the soup almonds would be a good encourager for the kids to eat the soup. However, the kids promptly decided that a green soup is not edible, although it did not taste dominantly of any of the ingredients, rather not any different from any other mixed vegetable soup. The reason was simply the colour, which convinced me that these kids never ate a green vegetable in their whole life, which is very sad, since green vegetables contain many important phytochemicals.

White soup almonds are almost like candy, and after the meal Yoram said to me that he did not think that the full-grain ones were as tasty as the white ones, upon which I had to disagree. I loved these more natural ones. It also made me realise that taste preference is all about customs and routine, and that I have today shifted my own perception of taste into enjoying full and natural foods more than processed and refined foods. This also goes for children. If a child is brought up on natural and healthy foods, that is also what they will prefer. Kids normally eat what the parents eat. Simple as that. This does not mean that I promote strict absence of the other stuff. That would only make it more desirable, so it is important to allow a certain amount of indulgence. I rather promote a lot of education for the kids about the importance of a good diet. That is what I am slowly trying to implement on the ones I have at home, but it is a slow and bumpy road.

In the end, the kids refusal to eat the soup rendered me leftovers for today's lunch, but that is a small reward...

A curiosity worth mentioning is that the carnivore in the family is better at eating her vegetables than the omnivore kids. Goshen happily cleaned the soup pot after dinner.

Goshen chewing on a carrot