The Power of a Name

Genna doesn't eat anything nutritious I make.  Correction.  Genna DIDN'T eat anything nutritious I made.  That is, until I came up with the brilliant and desperate idea to find really special names for my dishes.   I've read in parenting magazines that calling carrots "x-ray carrots" and broccoli "trees" will help get your kids to eat.  That never worked with Genna.  Apparently she doesn't value x-ray vision and the abundance of real trees in our yard satisfies her enough that the idea of eating mini trees is just not appealing.

Then one night I was making a yummy beet pasta with the beets from my CSA box.  The pasta turned a pretty pink and the beets were a beautiful red.  Inspiration struck.  I told Genna we were eating "Pink Princess Pasta with Red Jewels and Green Ruffles (beet greens)".  She loved the idea.  That was the first time I saw Genna eat a beet.  She even tried the beet green ruffles.  The second time I made the pasta resulted in another feeding frenzy . . . and the third time.  "OK," I thought, "maybe this is just a tasty recipe.  The name doesn't matter."  But then we invited Genna's friend Macie over to see if she would eat Princess Pasta. And she did!!!  Macie usually doesn't eat the dinners I make because she says they aren't what she eats at home (how different can carrots and buttered pasta with cheese be from house to house?) so I consider this a valid test.

Princess Pasta with Red Jewels and Green Ruffles

Yummy!

Mmm, a red jewel!

Even Emily, who is not much of an eater these 

days, smiled for the pink pasta.

Next I tried Rainbow Soup. It is a kind of minestrone I concocted a couple of weeks ago when I wanted to use up some vegetables and give my sick family something good to eat.  It has tomatoes (red), carrots (orange), orzo pasta and potatoes (yellow - yes, that's pushing it), collard greens (green of course), eggplant (indigo) and Okinawan sweet potatoes (violet) in it.  I know I'm missing blue but blueberries won't work in soup and I couldn't think of anything else to add.  And guess what?  Genna ate every last color!  Yes, that's right she even ate the collard greens.


By now I'm patting myself on the back!  I'm thinking maybe I'm really onto something.  Having a scientific mind however, I am not content to rest at just 2 recipes.  Especially since Jeff declared the soup amazing and wanted to make sure I wrote down my made up recipe (of course I didn't).  The next time I make it I will write it down and if it turns out just as yummy I'll post the recipe. 

Continuing to test my theory I presented Genna with Treasure Shells last night.  It's a recipe from Giada de Laurentiis of the Food Network for - get this - Swiss Chard and Sweet Pea Stuffed Manicotti.  Tubular manicotti didn't give me any exciting ideas for names so I substituted large shells instead.  Genna had one shell with extra marinara sauce in it and one stuffed with the cheese, chard and peas.  I told her she had treasure shells and would be able to taste the shell's different treasures when she ate.  At first she balked when she saw the filling but when I reminded her it was treasure she tried it . . . and ate it all!

I hope to keep this trend going and welcome any recipe and name ideas you might have.  

Mr. Shakespeare said a rose by any other name is still a rose and maybe that's true for flowers.  But Princess Pasta with Red Jewels by it's real name is uneaten.  Maybe there's more to a name than old Willie thought.