Giving New Meaning to Parenting

Last night, fully half of my two-year old girl’s dinner came from our yard — blackberries and blueberries and fennel that I’d picked while I was grilling food for the rest of us.

Since my wife brings home the mastodon after she’s hunted it down, I guess it makes sense that I’m the gatherer of the family.

I’ve been letting Boo eat various sidewalk plants since she was about one and we found the blackberry vines alongside our playground. It’s progressed from there to the point where she noshes on fennel and rosemary regularly, and each spring she has sucked on sourgrass until it soaked all the calcium from her bones.

Sure, she’s probably ingested a little road grime, but as long as we pick from higher than the dogs can reach I think she’s probably safe from anything too nasty. A few germs are good for her.

Heck, for a little while she wouldn’t eat anything (even, say, grilled cheese sandwiches) unless I pretended to pick it from a tree.

I asked myself the other day as Boo nabbed berries from the roadside: Is this healthy? By encouraging my daughter to snack on “found plants” am I ensuring some future ambulance trip to pump out the liver-destroying trail mushroom she’ll try some day?

I sure hope not.

Showing Boo what’s safe to eat feels thrillingly primal — it’s like I’ve become a gorilla in a nature video, watching serenely as my cub (what do they call them? gorillalings?) tests out different plants for edibility, hooting a warning if she gets too close to a poisonous shrub.

So we’ll keep noshing while we’re walking down the street, being careful to stick with only the plants we know for sure are safe and tasty. The biggest advantage is this: on days when Boo rejects every other meal option, when the same old macaroni and cheese bores her to tears, gathered food is always exciting for her, and she never says no.

Now, if I could just figure out a way to get roast chicken to grow on trees…

Roast chicken plants are always safe.

by Doodaddy

Photo graciously provided by Enoch Ross, through a Creative Commons license, some rights reserved