My Apologies to the Humble Spud
Somewhere along the way, I got the idea that potatoes were not, in fact, overly nutritious. I think the main influence in this was my indoctrination into the cult of anti-carbohydrates, an obsessive, desperate weight-loss mindset that basically insists that carrots and doughnuts are pretty much equally bad for you.
Which in practice kind of meant that I would carefully pick potatoes and carrots off my otherwise well-balanced meal. And then later, when I was hungry and carbohydrate-deprived, I would eat cake.
But enough about me. The point is that I got the impression that potatoes were basically filler - the thing you use to pad out the plate once the meat and green vegies are all settled. Even once I started peace talks with the carbohydrates, I was mainly biased towards the “Low GI” examples of the breed, to make myself feel better about the whole thing.
Anyway, when I started this crusade to get Little Miss to eat her vegies, something at the back of my weird carbohydrate-related programming piped up with “Except potatoes.” Not that I was planning to deprive the girl of potatoes, just that I didn’t consider potatoes to count as part of the challenge because a) they obviously had no nutritional content whatsoever and b) getting her to eat potatoes is kind of easy.
Last night, I did a bit of investigating (okay, I googled the word ‘potato’) and discovered to my amazement that potatoes are BRILLIANT. Not just the skins, either. The whole potato. Vitamins, fibre, minerals, basically the cute little things are packed with nutrients from end to end.
So I do not need to feel guilty about that fact that Raeli’s dinner last night was two bowls of mashed potato. Nope. I should feel proud. Proud, I tell you!
I should probably still feel guilty about letting her eat chips, though. If it’s deep fried, it doesn’t count as a good vegetable…
Tonight, I’m going to hide other vegetables inside her mashed potatoes! But if she only eats the mash, that’s okay too.
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