I don’t generally identify myself as a vegetarian because, while it’s not a daily–or even a weekly–occurrence, I do eat some meat now and then. You will never, for example, see me turning my nose up at bacon, and upon occasion I’ll eat some turkey breast. In the spirit of full disclosure, I might as well confess that I sometimes eat hamburgers as well, but only from McDonald’s, which the carnivores I know and love assure me only barely counts as meat. So yeah, I guess I’m not one-hundred percent averse to pork, turkey, or beef. What I don’t eat, EVER, if I can help it, is chicken.
I suppose it’s worth mentioning as well that I also don’t eat fish or mutton or wild game or horse or goat or any other sort of animal flesh, but this is not about that. What this is about is chicken, or more specifically, how I can convince my son that he should dive heartily into the plate of roasted chicken that is his dinner. Or should I even bother? I can tell him that it’s tasty and nutritious and all the usual blather about strong bones and teeth, but I’m totally at a loss when he asks me why I’m not having any. The truth–that just the thought of chicken makes me shudder a bit in revulsion–is right out if I hope to succeed in getting even a little of his dinner off his plate and into his belly. Even a simple “I don’t like it” lets him off the hook, because if it’s a reasonable excuse for me not to eat something, it should be just as good an excuse for him, right?
Right?
Perhaps you could institute “polite bites” – as in, well mannered people eat at least two bites so the cook won’t feel bad or get hurt feelings and then let him pick around it. It may be that he shares your revulsion of chicken…
Here i was going to send you a recipe for peach glazed chicken. I just couldn’t figure out how to send you the plastic gloves as well. If he doesn’t like it don’t make him eat it. You don’t eat it cause you don’t like it. Yep, you’ll have to cook him something else.