I mean, sure, if you cover eggplant in breading, deep-fry it, and then drench it in tomato sauce and cheese, it’ll come out fine. But that’s not a credit to the eggplant.
I still remember an old episode of either Doctor Kildare or Ben Casey back in the 60s where a young kid in the hospital for a minor surgery died. The doc was being blamed, and the parents were threatening to sue. But it turned out that the dad had bought a box of candy for the kid as a treat after the surgery. It was coconut candy, and the kid was deadly allergic. He’d never eaten coconut before so the parents didn’t know. Really made a strong impression on me as a kid, and I was always afraid I’d eat something and DIE.
Heh, I don’t think I’m allergic to anything.
I still fondly remember a bite of eggplant that had been simply roasted with a balsamic reduction. I don’t need all the goop if the eggplant is cooked properly.
The vegetarian sandwich option included eggplant and peppers, and some other stuff, and it was great. I always waited until all the real vegetarians got their food to take one, but I preferred it to the turkey option - which was still good.
I don’t know how the law regards it, but IMO, if someone says they’re allergic to X, and someone else decides to test that by concealing X in a dish served to that person, that’s some kind of assault.
I volunteered at a concession stand when my kids were in band.
Everything we had was procured through a Food company that had nothing without peanut allergy warnings on it. All the candy we bought through a candy vendor had peanut allergy warnings. We had exactly one thing without it. Water.
At every home game we were completely out of candy and mostly out of everything else. How many kids do you think we sold candy to?
The school made us have big signs saying everything was labelled peanut allergy food in this concession stand. Not one kid ever said “what do have that’s safe?” Not one. No parent ever asked us, buying their kid something. Not one. They bought and bought and bought.
The school said fully 1/3 of kids had allergies of some sort. Couldn’t tell it by what we sold.
We had a mother bring a lawsuit saying we nearly killed her teen daughter with popcorn(popped in butter flavor peanut oil) and a snickers bar.
First they checked the concession stand band group for money. Found there was not an appreciable amount. Dropped that. Tried to sue the Athletic dept. Found them lacking.
Tried the school board and system. Well they had a good lawyer but they had hardly enough to answer a million dollar lawsuit.
The State board of Education got involved. They had a hearing. The teen girl who was now a senior totally caved. She told them she knew she was allergic and ate it anyway. They had an allergist who tested her. She wasn’t even allergic, afterall. Her Mom just told her she was.
The moral is, after Do Not Eat at concessions, is tell your kids what they can or can’t have. Make it clear in your own mind what you, yourself are allergic to, and ask if you’re not sure what’s in a product.
Don’t try to fake out people by just saying you’re allergic.
And, don’t try to fool someone if you think they’re untruthful, about their allergies.
And in this case, get Mom a good psych evaluation. Hoping she hasn’t reached the Munchausen by Proxy level, but telling the kid she has allergies she doesn’t, thus restricting her life unnecessarily and causing undue “OMG being anywhere near this will kill me” stress is pretty toxic.
I thought that very thing.
My husband has some texture issues with food, in addition to certain dislikes. I add carrots to pasta sauce / lasagna and I add canned black beans to meat loaf and other meat heavy dishes. He knows I do this and he agrees with it, as he knows it’s still tasty and healthier.
He also doesn’t like soupy foods, and he prefers stew to soup, but he loves pasta e fagioli. His parents are/were bad cooks and cooked vegetables to death. He’ll eat broccoli, but only the florets. So I choose recipes that I know he’ll eat.
My parents tell the story that I loved mushrooms until I went to kindergarten and learned I shouldn’t like them. I now eat mushrooms readily, but hubby doesn’t like their texture, so I’ll cut them large so he can pick them out.*
I only learned recently that we never had black olives, actually very few olives at all, at my parents house is because my mom doesn’t like olives. And she really doesn’t like black olives. Hubby loves both, so I tried them on pizza and now enjoy them as a snack. His nephew loves them as well, even from a very young age. His mother enjoyed ordering a child’s pizza at restaurants and asking them to put black olives on it, which wasn’t a standard option. They were always happy to oblige.
When I was in my 20s, a coworker had too much pizza and asked if I wanted a slice of their vegi special. I was happy to help them out, and then I tasted something really yummy. It was eggplant. My parents tried cooking eggplant once and neither of them liked it so I didn’t even have to try it. They still don’t like eggplant. I find it amusing to order an eggplant dish and have them both say, “Yuck”.
- On Wednesday the canteen at work had some dish which had big chunks of mushrooms. When I bussed my tray I saw a few plates which had a pile of mushrooms left on the plates.
Cooking food in ways that they aren’t very obvious doesn’t feel like “hiding foods” to me. If you hand someone a loaf of zucchini bread, they know there’s zucchini in there.
On the other hand, if you want your children to learn to enjoy vegetables, and not just sweet pastries, you should probably offer them recognizable zucchini sometimes, too.
Have care when choosing fake chicken nuggets. I grabbed a box once, just to give them a try, turned out “fake chicken nuggets” shoulda been classed as false advertising, they were made out of cabbage, shredded, molded and breaded to look like a chicken nugget and thats where the similarities ended. I like cabbage, but those were nasty.
Vaderling was raised with the rules of taste it once, and take smaller portions and get seconds if needed. We never snuck food into meals. That lasted until about age 7, when he started taking more direct control of his meals, by taking advantage of being raised in the kitchen. He’d make his own food. Made dinner, interesting, many evenings.
When my kids were little I served them okra once. It was hilarious for all of us. I warned them ahead of time about the slime. They knew they had to at least try it, and I told them all about gumbo and its use there. I taught them the term mucilage and they got a kick out of that.
They ate a surprising amount, but with each bite they had to describe the slime. We sat there eating and laughing. I think that was the last time I served them okra.
I see vegetables as an ingredient in the main dish. It makes the dish more nutritious.
I hate raw onion. I don’t particularly like finding big nuggets of onion in a cooked meal. (Forks are great for pushing onion aside) Finely dice that onion and it’s fine in a meat sauce.
Seems like every skillet dish starts with browning the hamburger and add chopped onion. I want it finely diced. I’ll usually add chopped carrot and peas to a skillet dish. I’m less likely to eat them as side dishes.
I agree, Okra is nasty. My grandmother fried it in cornmeal. I could barely tolerate a few bites.
And what’s the point?
Guess what? Ultra processed cabbage nuggets are neither good for kids nor is eating them serving the end of developing long term healthy nutrition habits.
Spent a lot of time sitting at the table because I wouldn’t drink my milk. It got even worse as it got warm. Despise milk to this day. Fortunately, now I’m conveniently lactose intolerant 
That would’ve been super-helpful to know eight years ago! Fortunately she did grow out of it and is now a cheerful adventurous eater and a great cook. But we felt like heels for compelling her to eat, against all the parenting advice out there.
Cabbage has never been a hard sell for my girls. Turns out that if you rough-chop it and fry it up with butter and salt until it gets brown caramel spots, it’s amazingly tasty.
My best story about hiding vegetables consists of Mac and cheese and broccoli. Back when my daughter didn’t eat much, I made stovetop Mac and cheese and spooned it over broccoli. To entice my daughter to eat it, I told her a story about when a witch cast a spell on me and I woke up in a field of yellow tubes and green trees, and I realized that I had been shrunk down and placed in a bowl of Mac and cheese and broccoli, and the only way to escape was to eat my way back to my normal size. The story was highly repetitive, in the way that small children love, and I kept stopping mid-sentence and saying, “Eat a bite!” and she’d gobble a bite just so I’d continue the story.
It worked like a charm–except that for about two years after that, every time we made Mac and cheese, she’d demand the same story. It was definitely a hoist-on-ones-own-petard situation. Goddamn did I get tired of that fucking witch.
I used to mash my spinach into a thin layer all over the plate, then pretend I was a horse grazing in a field as I ate it.
My parents put up with it. I was eating my spinach, and even properly using a fork to do so.
(I didn’t detest spinach; I just wasn’t all that wild about it.)
If you were eating your dinner, and not making a mess outside your plate, it all sounds good to me, speaking as a parent.
I was the third kid. I think that by then that’s how my parents saw a batch of things.
Though I don’t know that they did meals much differently with my considerably older siblings.
I’d kill for my kid to eat spinach.
Honestly I’m not wild about it myself. I keep buying spinach because you’re supposed to eat it** but I never eat it. It goes nicely in salad but beyond that I’ve never been too impressed.
**See also: kale
I stopped buying vegetables I didn’t like just because they are said to be nutritious. There are plenty I enjoy eating which are also nutritious.
But it is easy to add hidden vegetables to curries, pasta sauce and meatloaf. I don’t know why you wouldn’t, though actual misrepresentation is unethical.