the vegetarian who doesn't like vegetables

Everett has gone vegetarian. It's been a few months now so it seems that he's really going to stick to it. I'm a little surprised that he's lasted this long, but mostly impressed that he thought the whole thing out - that animals are killed for food and he doesn't want to be part of the reason. And he's only eight. I think my major concerns at eight revolved mostly around Barbies and cabbage patch kid dolls.

I'm fairly sure that this is a result of the "funeral chicken" and the fact that it actually resembles chicken, or at least, resembles chicken more than the boneless skinless chicken breasts I usually buy. I went to a Samoan funeral a while ago and, as the custom is to give gifts, I was given a huge box of chicken leg quarters, not so affectionately referred to as funeral chicken at our house. It has bones and skin and veins and all those things that pampered palagi kids like mine don't usually see. We were planning to have a big barbeque to use the funeral chicken, but we slowly made our way through it all by grilling it here and there.

Whenever I'd mention that we were having chicken for dinner, the kids would ask - funeral chicken or regular chicken? And if the answer was funeral chicken they'd wrinkle their noses and pretend to be unhappy until the grilling smell got to be too much for them and they were salivating by the time it was ready to eat. But then, when eating, they would inevitably come across veins and bones and be thoroughly disgusted and refuse to eat anymore (which I think is crazy. We are so separated from our food's original form that seeing reminders of it is enough to ruin appetites!? Clearly my children would not survive farm life.).

After a few weeks of this, Everett announced that he was vegetarian and not going to eat meat anymore. Simon agreed. Simon lasted less than 24 hours, even though he does tell people that he used to be a vegetarian. Everett has stuck with it, which is great. He's got conviction and he wants to do something about it. It makes me proud, except for one small detail... he doesn't like vegetables. He even wrote his own version of Green Eggs and Ham about broccoli in school this year. Fortunately, the broccoli book led to the same result as the real book - he tried broccoli (many different ways) and now he likes it (only when boiled). But that is about the only vegetable he'll eat.

Boiled broccoli is fine. It's just that I generally like a few more options when I'm considering what to cook for dinner. Nevermind the fact that boiled broccoli with pasta/rice/whatever is hardly a balanced vegetarian diet. So we've been doing our homework - figuring out all the stuff that the kid needs to eat now that he won't eat meat and eating much less meat ourselves because it's just easier to only cook one meal. There's just one thing left to do: figure out how to make the vegetarian eat his vegetables.