Wednesday, June 20, 2007

Sophisticated toddler in Tesco



In the supermarket today I heard a mother say to her toddler, who was in the child seat in the shopping trolley: “Do you want asparagus tips or baby sweetcorn with your mange-tout peas?” He said, “’Sparagus.”

And I thought: not a question my mum ever asked me, back in the days of austerity. As I trudged 100 miles to school, barefoot, dressed in cast-offs…

I’m exaggerating. But our vegetables were potatoes, carrots, turnip. And cabbage, peas and leeks in season.

Gosh, I’m cold – must go and have my bath and heat up a bit. How can this chilly weather be June?

12 comments:

  1. It is bleak & cold here today. And our house looks so mangy with it's cut-out patches of missing carpet. No sign of an assessor yet. I am feeling very grumpy! I have to go & have a mammogram too, so it will probably make me even grumpier!
    Loved the toddler story!

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  2. Anonymous1:20 am

    Did you see the Jamie Oliver series "School Dinners" ? It was horrifying! He held up vegetables and asked a group of children (roughly 12 yrs old) what they were called. Apart from potatoes and carrots, they didn't know! They had clearly never seen some things.

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  3. It's even colder here, lots of snow on the hills surronding us. I'm freezing in my little office attached to the workshop.

    Funny story about the little toddler, quite different when we were young.

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  4. Cold and wet here too. This time last year it was unbearably hot. Sigh.
    I remember a time when the only mushrooms you ate came from a tin. Back in the old days.......!

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  5. What are mange-tout peas?

    Give me the corn every time!

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  6. To Aunty-Evil; mange-tout are what we here in Australia call snow peas.

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  7. lucky mother to have a child who voluntarily eats vegetables. No matter what I do I can not get the FB to try them.

    My mother keeps complaining about the cold up there and has even put the central heating on. I hope it warms up soon as I'm going to be on a flying visit to Edinburgh in a couple of weeks.

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  8. You forgot the bit about "uphill both ways!" I had no idea what asparagus even was when I was growing up. If we got fancy we had cauliflower or Brussel sprouts. Sending you a cyber chunk of hot, humid Florida weather....enjoy!

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  9. Maybe it's sympathy pains.. your weather.. mirroring ours in Australia? Funny Tesco incident! Now I was tagged for the first time ever the other day and to participate in it I had to tag 7 others, so I'm tagging you. As per the tag rules, the instructions can be found on my blog along with my "Seven Random Facts About Me". Up to you if you participate of course!

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  10. I hope for her sake the toddler was out of napppies if she was feeding it asparagus!
    I like being invisible too.

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  11. You're kidding!!! Really?? What makes British babies so much more well versed in vegetables than Aussie kids...

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  12. Amazing story of offering tiny children far too many and too sophisticated choices.

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