The Grass is Always Greener

So, the thing I hear a lot from my sister and other parents I know is how picky their kids are when it comes to food. Sometimes, even, their eyes become all misty and they wish aloud for a kid who would eat what's put in front of them, let alone for one who's adventurous in the food department, and doesn't solely rely upon nourishment gained from mac and cheese and hot dogs.

This is that kid. Can you imagine how green this kid's grass is to other parents?

On a visit to Boston last summer, just before our son’s birthday, my wife and I gave him the gift he most desired: we allowed James to eat his first raw clam, thus ending three years of simmering frustration for him.

True, he was only turning six, but that meant he had spent half his life pining for a taste of uncooked bivalves. His reaction, when the moment finally arrived, was unsurprising: he loved the clam, so much so that he proceeded to help himself to the five others on my plate and declared that henceforth I would need to order double the number so that he and I could each get our fair share. Between slurps, he reiterated his determination to eat that other long-forbidden fruit of the sea, raw oysters.

We had held him off raw shellfish out of health concerns, which in retrospect was probably silly. We were certainly guilty of inconsistency. When James was three, we let him try sushi, and ever since he has been ordering his own sashimi (early on, he decided he had no use for the rice and wanted the fish straight up) whenever we went out for Japanese. Were raw clams and oysters really any riskier than raw tuna? We had also given in to his pleadings and allowed him to eat unpasteurised cheese, and it was not as if raw-milk Camembert – his favourite, although he is also fond of Époisses, Comté, and Langres – was without potential hazards. And if we were worried about polluting his young body, we certainly would not have permitted James to get in the habit of taking a sip from my wine glass every night.

On the other hand, all that sniffing and swilling has served him rather well. He has become a very able blind taster, with a particular knack for identifying Burgundies and Beaujolais. He has a good nose for herbs and spices, too, and can often pinpoint specific seasonings in dishes. It probably helps that he now keeps his own herb garden during the summer, which he very much enjoys. He would doubtless be even happier if we bought him a lobster trap, built a pond and stocked it with sturgeon, and filled the yard with ducks and geese; James has a prodigious appetite for lobster, caviar, and foie gras.

{...}there were indications that he was to the table born. At 10 months old, he sat through a long lunch at a three-star restaurant in Paris without so much as a moment’s fuss, astonishing us and the wary waiters, too. Barely out of the womb, Tiger Woods was mimicking his father’s golf swing; James was jealously eyeing my mille-feuille. The greatest athletes come by their talent naturally, and it seems reasonable to assume that the greatest eaters do, as well. Great eaters, like great athletes, possess a certain ruthlessness. James loves his pet goldfish and hopes to have a dog. But for him, animals exist mainly to be consumed. On a visit to an aquarium when he was two, he startled me and the people nearby by pointing to one tank and asking: “Can we eat them?” A few months ago, watching a documentary about giant squid, James turned to me and said: “I’m getting kind of hungry. You, too?” (He was disappointed to learn that giant squid is not very tasty; he adores squid and octopus and orders them whenever possible.) Last year, his kindergarten class read Charlotte’s Web. One evening, when we were two-thirds through the book, I asked James if he was worried about what might happen to Wilbur the pig. He shot me an incredulous look. “Of course not; if Wilbur dies, that means we get hot, juicy bacon,” he said, elongating the last three words to underscore his delight at the thought.{...}

Too bad he's only six, because a kid who can read Charlotte's Web and instantly think "hot juicy bacon" would undoubtedly grow up into a man I could love.