Sweetness and Lightning – 04
Not your father’s cup.
No pepper, no problem.
Veggie Police
God is dead.
This week’s Sweetness and Lightning is essentially a strategy guide for getting little kids to eat their vegetables. Various tried-and-true methods are presented, from pairing the nasty greens with other food to hiding them among ingredients that a child might prefer instead. There’s even the “spartan” approach of just forcing the poor kid to deal with it. Of course, none of them work on Tsumugi as the wily little bugger is just too smart for her own good. But as Kouhei says, she can just get used to the things she doesn’t like little by little over time. If it were up to me, I’d investigate if there are any alternative ingredients that offer the same, or at least similar, nutritional value as the things that Tsumugi doesn’t like. Then again, the show puts it best: every family does it differently. And Kouhei’s way of getting Tsumugi excited by helping prepare the meal gives us a chance to see her at her cutest. So I won’t argue with his approach.
Twin Tails
I see she is a fellow big eater.
We also get to see a little more of Kotori’s life at school. She’s kind of a loner, with the other girls in class hesitating to call out to her because she’s always eating by herself in between classes. I’m not sure how seeing a big eater snack on her own naturally leads to the conclusion that said person wants to be left alone during meal times. But at least those girls have good intentions in mind and aren’t just alienating Kotori. Seeing as she has a cheerfully loud friend in the form of Shinobu, I think the girl will be just fine anyway. Even if Kotori herself may be a little shy, I’m sure that Shinobu’s outgoing personality will encourage the other girls to open up to her. Speaking of Shinobu, I already like the feisty twin-tailed friend. Not only does she bring more energy into the show, she also serves to develop Kotori as more than just that weird high school girl who got herself into an unusual relationship with one of her teachers and his child.
Tsumugi’s troll faces this episode absolutely killed it for me. I couldn’t stop chuckling whenever she pulled one of them after deviously avoiding the green peppers that Kouhei tried so desperately to get her to eat. Heck, not even Kotori’s machinations succeeded in winning over the little troublemaker this time around. Perhaps it really just takes time for children to get used to food that they don’t like. I know I’ve come to not mind some things that I used to hate, though there are certain others that I will still never touch.
Le troll face.
About Sumairii
POWUH: and LOLi Defender with 10998 comments
I don’t like onions and peppers all that much. If they’re cooked to within inches of their their little veggie lives then I’m usually fine with them. But the texture is something I dislike in them. But other veggies I can eat from raw to cremated. I damn near tackled my screen when Sensei cut the squash, I wanted a piece so badly…
POWUH: Meta Resident with 1692 comments
In my family when I was growing up the strategy was, “It’s on your plate and you’re going to eat it.” I guess that’s what you get when your parents lived through the Depression.
Although I’ve never minded green peppers. I remember that when I was 7 or 8 that’s what I chose to plant as “mine” in our garden. But nowadays I prefer the red, orange or yellow ones.
I’ve got to hand it to Tsumugi for not being fooled about the green peppers being in her food and tricking her father into eating them. He’s right–she really is smarter than you’d think.
POWUH: Meta Team and Spammy Tamer with 7115 comments
Someone else can eat the green (and red, and orange, and yellow) bell peppers, because I don’t like them. My mom even had some gastrointestinal reason she didn’t want to eat them. I just don’t like the taste of them. It’s different from mushrooms, where I don’t mind the taste, but think the texture is just awful awful. But pretty much everything else I’m good with, including lima beans and kale and spinach and brussels sprouts.
POWUH: Meta Resident and LN Informant with 1529 comments
Translated interview with the Japanese VAs of Amaama:
https://seiyuuplus.wordpress.com/2016/07/11/123-amaama-to-inazuma-nakamura-yuichi-hayami-saori-endo-rina/
POWUH: 400-499 with 445 comments
tsumugi is the sithlord; the moment she tried to feed her dad, i knew something was up
POWUH: and LOLi Defender with 10998 comments
It’s funny we think of that as being cheeky, and it is, but…it’s an imitation from her point of view. And kids really are imitation machines….
POWUH: 400-499 with 445 comments
haha and just where did our little rascal learn to imitate delegating things you dont feel like doing or in this case eating?
POWUH: and LOLi Defender with 10998 comments
Could be anyone, but her dad is a good guess…
POWUH: and Athenaeum Châtelaine with 2212 comments
It’s funny that in my child psych class, they did go over the fact that kids have much more sensitive well, senses, than adults do. Babies having much more sensitive hearing, smell, and taste than any adult, and because of this they can pick up on certain tastes that are in vegetables that the plants actually use to protect themselves, that adults are pretty dull to.
In terms of my childhood experience with veggies, my family is all about health and stuff, so there was no question about eating veggies. You could choose which one you preferred but you were going to eat some sort of vegetable with every meal. Good thing I was never a picky eater. 😛
My family even had degrees of vegetable.
I kept talking to the screen, informing Kohei that cherry tomatoes are not a vegetable, and my family would never have counted it as one when I was a kid. You could eat tomatoes sure, but you had to have broccoli too or spinach. Certain vegetables weren’t “vegetable” enough for my parents, so you could never eat them as a substitute for something green. Corn? That’s a starch. Tomatoes? That’s a fruit. Squash? Depends on which kind, but most were considered starch. Potatoes? Starch. ALL of the peppers? A weak vegetable that can be added, but cannot be your main vegetable. Carrots you might be able to get away with, but you probably needed to add some broccoli or greens or something.
POWUH: and LOLi Defender with 10998 comments
…it was the green things, with stuff* that I enjoyed the most, with carrots being an honorary green thing. Potatoes were fries, or friends of fries, so no problems there. But raw onions, tomatoes, and peppers that were as I used to have a mild allergy to them (you can’t convince an 8 year old to eat anything that makes the mouth feel numb).
*I followed my dad’s lead so it was white vinegar with collard greens, and ham hocks/fat with spinach.
POWUH: Meta Resident with 1692 comments
Even as a kid I liked broccoli and spinach. But for us corn was considered a vegetable. Unfortunately for me, green beans also were often on the plate.