Last night we went to Carpo's for dinner since they will be closing down the westside location in a couple of weeks. Ezra said he wanted chicken nuggets and I tried to explain to him that they didn't have chicken nuggets, but they had chicken tenders. I've tried to cut back on allowing him to eat chicken nuggets since often he doesn't want to eat REAL chicken. If he eats the real chicken when we're eating dinner, sometimes I'll let him get the nuggets when we're eating fast food, but that usually just gets him into the "I'll only eat chicken nuggets" mode.
Well, after one bite of the chicken tender at Carpo's he realized it wasn't chicken nuggets and put up somewhat of a fuss. However after showing him how great they were with the ketchup he reluctantly ate a few. Nevermind the fact that we told him if he ate the very last one, we'd go down to the Boardwalk to ride a ride. He did, well actually, the last bite fell on the floor and he tried to eat it, but we got it away from him and told him we'd still go down to ride the ride.
After driving around for about 15 minutes, we finally found a parking spot down at the Boardwalk and Ezra was able to ride his beloved airplane ride. Then, he, Justus and Matt were able to ride the Pepsi truck ride (Justus' first ride at the Boardwalk).
Amusingly enough, the section I was reading in The Omnivore's Dilemma last night was about the chicken nugget. Here is an excerpt about the author eating a meal at McDonalds with his son:
"When I asked Isaac if the new nuggets tasted more like chicken than the old ones, he seemed baffled by the question. 'No, they taste like what they are, which is nuggets,' and then dropped on his dad a withering two-syllable 'duh.' In this consumer's mind at least, the link between a nugget and the chicken in it was never more than notional, and probably irrelevant. By now the nugget constitutes its own genre of food for American children, many of whom eat nuggets every day. For Issac, the nugget is a distinct taste of childhood, quite apart from chicken, and no doubt a future vehicle of nostalgia- a madeline in the making."
Did you know that there are 38 ingredients that make up a McNugget?? Even after they've made the switch to all white meat in their nuggets. It is a bit scary learning of all those ingredients (13 of which are derived from corn, which goes back to my last post. I never knew that CORN is in pretty much everything we eat!). So, it is all very fascinating.
I'm seriously considering the things we eat and Matt is a little scared that I'm going to go all hippy on the family. Don't worry if I do, it will be gradual. Wouldn't want the boys to go on a food strike or anything like that!
