“I’m full” says Hank as he pushes his plate across the table to me. It’s funny how every piece of meat has been picked out of the surrounding vegetables and eaten. It’s funny that he has put about a quarter cup of meat into his tummy and now, he is full. It’s funny and it’s a lie.

Hank’s diet is really all meat and carbs. I cannot get a fruit or a veg into him for the life of me. I have to do it in sneaky ways. I mix dried squash and zucchini into his nugget breading. I mince veggies super fine and throw them into his curries. I use vegetable broth instead of meat broth. But I can’t get him to eat a veg, even with money tied to the completion of the serving. Seriously. Yesterday, I cut up three small bell peppers in red, orange and green – peeling off the outer skin. I did the same thing for zucchini and squash. No peels, no seeds, nothing but yummy goodness. I brought him the plate and switched to my announcer voice (BTW, both boys hate that voice).

“Today in Café Price, Henry plans to defeat the mystery food challenge. If he can complete the challenge of five bites, he wins $1.00 and bragging rights. If he cannot finish, he gets… NOTHING.”

He’s looking at me and laughing. He may be expecting something slightly different than what he is about to get.

“So, Henry, do you think that you can complete this challenge without complaining. Without whining. Without spitting out your bites? If so, the win will be all yours!”

He catches sight of the plate and realizes that there isn’t a cookie, meat or even a bread crumb before him, but instead, the colorful array of veggies.

He INSTANTLY stops laughing and starts looking … mad. Like, really mad. Over the course of the next five minutes, he does try the zucchini and the squash. He spits out each bite of pepper. He doesn’t win his mini Hank V. Food game.

I failed. He didn’t. He knows what he doesn’t like. Even if he has never tried it before.

For dinner, I make a beautiful dish with buffalo, yams, zucchinis, squash, carrot, garlic, onion and broccoli florets. I shred the veg and brown the meat and mix it all together with a vegetable/beef broth. I loved it, Hubs liked it, Dave liked it. Hank picked the meat out and then passed me his plate. Full. I deny his statement and give him the whole, “Five more bites of veg and you can be excused.” He grumpily eats it and gets ready for bed. Funnily, when I went to look into his bowl, I saw that he nibbled the tops off of all the broccoli.  At bedtime, he tells his dad that he’s super hungry. He’s not telling me; he knows I saved his bowl from dinner.

For lunch today, I made him vegan pasta with a tomato sauce. Completely out of his wheelhouse, and he … HATED it.

For as long as he lives in my house, I will continue to try to force good foods into his system. The alternative is medical food. He will drink it, but it doesn’t taste good and he doesn’t prefer it. So, here I am, trying to figure out how to hide and how to present more veg. And here he is, pushing against all of my efforts. Maybe I need to get a t-shirt printed: “I battled veggies and I won.”