WATERMELON GIRL:  Hunter knows her way around a melon

  • Kat Robinson
  • WATERMELON GIRL: Hunter knows her way around a melon
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  • Kat Robinson

I’ve been having this discussion with reader William D. Lindsey about hamburgers and how they’re accepted in our culture today as a meal, and the topic of children came up. Not that children make a good meal… but a simple idea. I think I can boil it down to this: why do our children favor things like chicken nuggets and burgers, anyway?
So I have to relate to you about my daughter, Hunter. She likes food, that’s for sure. At 21 months old she’s 31 pounds and nearly three feet tall. She looks like a three year old. She’s scary to me, way smarter and way more advanced than I could have imagined. What does she eat? While she does ask for pizza, her favorite foods are broccoli, sweet potatoes, cucumber sushi rolls and yogurt. If I eat it she has to try some of it, and so far the only food she’s shown a serious distaste for is grapefruit. She loves to dip hummus with chips or crackers, will eat a bag of grapes in a single sitting if allowed, and once came home from Star of India to announce to her father “Daddy, I’m full of tikka!”

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  • Grav Weldon

Now, granted — Hunter’s mom has an unusual job that means there’s always some mysterious Styrofoam box in the fridge with some strange concoction or another from an Arkansas eatery within, something new to try at the drop of a hat. But I can’t help but wonder if other children would have the desire to choose vegetables over fried things, broccoli over burgers and whatnot, if they were just offered these sorts of choices on a regular basis. And I wonder why more Arkansas restaurants don’t tear away from the chicken-nugget-and-French-fry kids meal and offer smaller items from the adult menu for the smaller set?

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I’d love to hear your thoughts on the matter.

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