posted by Lisa
Finn is my picky eater. As an infant, he ate everything, then one day, he refused everything green. And orange and red. For a year, he ate mostly rice and vitamins and fruit. I did what the books tell you to do–I offered him the same food we were eating, in the hopes that he would slowly reincorporate those foods into his diet.
It mostly worked, but he still had the habit of taking one look at something new and proclaiming: “NOT I like that,” and zipping his mouth shut.
Then:
Day 1 in Kauai, Finn and his sister spent hours in the ocean: swimming, snorkeling, trying to surf on their boogie boards, digging in the sand, collecting hermit crabs, feeding any number of tropical fish that swim around them. They’re easily engaged, generally speaking, but they’re in their glory when water and sand come together.
Dinner, Night One in Kauai: I set down in front of Finn a plate of ono, which is sweet, white fleshed fish and which lives up to its name in every way, and a small amount of seaweed salad.
The seaweed–ogo, I think, or ogi–was blanched fresh by our local market, and to it I added a few drops sesame oil, some soy sauce, and rice wine vinegar, and red salt. My husband and I love ocean salad, and this one was decent, but nowhere near as good as what we get at our local Japanese restaurant. This was fresh as the ocean, and slightly crunchy. Finn & his sister regularly eat nori strips, but that dried seaweed is more like a crunchy seasoned snack; it doesn’t look like a plant, and it doesn’t feel like a plant in your mouth. Especially not a plant with a whole lot of feathery tentacles in your mouth, which is what I put in front of him.
I told Finn, “This seaweed came from the ocean you were swimming in today.”
His eyes opened wide, he gave a little gasp of astonishment, then he actually popped the seaweed in his mouth. Then, as we watched, he gave it a thumbs up. “I LOVE it,” he exclaimed.
