This morning my flight was canceled leaving me to while my day away in Asheville.
Today we put some raspberries in Noodle's lunch. She eats them, they are raw and fruit and have anti-oxidants. They also taste great in champagne. Noodle would know nothing about that but I do.
Due to my client's remarkable paranoia, I cannot access my client's database remotely. This left me with a wide open day, thus I decided to waste my day by joining my daughter for
lunch. While at lunch one of the kids in her class couldn't tell us what a raspberry was. A raspberry. He thought the berries in Noodle's lunch were strawberries. He actually was quite proud to tell us they were strawberries and was crushed to learn they weren't. Raspberries, clearly not something he gets at home. Raspberries, something we always have after we go to the market. It's just one of those things we always get (like toaster strudels, pickled eggs, pork rinds and pattios). Raspberries, cheapest as Sam's clubs.
Raspberries, one of the class divides of Asheville.
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Alice Waters (yes, of Chez Panisse)was appalled when she found out how little schoolkids knew about live food, even in Berkeley. She started a program combining gardening and food preparation which she got so enthused about she's now started a national organization to promote it. There's an awful lot of kids that think food is from boxes. Thank gawd my kid now wants to take lunch with her rather than the novel school lunch (ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww). The school enforces the rule that you have to eat your sandwich first...I'm going to start packing lunches w no sandwiches just to make it tough. I hate rules.
~Hell (obviously, ranting about food, authority, and schools).
Perhaps if you breaded them and added a dipping sauce they'd be recognized...
I used to LOVE raspberries growing up, and this is the season for them, too. Poor kid. I'm assuming you've got some champagne handy, right?
Considering that at least one third of American children eat McDonalds every day, yes EVERY day, this shouldn't surprise me. It's sad though, isn't it?
I read this entry this morning, and it's been bugging me all day. Can you explain how not recognizing a raspberry is a class issue? Because I live in Grove Park (if it makes a difference), and I just asked my almost 8 year old son to look at the accompanying picture and tell me what fruit it was, and he didn't have the first clue. So I'm curious to know why you chalk it up to "class" and not "being a typical little boy who doesn't pay attention unless it's a dinosaur or shoots things, preferably a dinosaur that shoots things."
I would like to say that a picture of close up raspberries looks very different than inside a tupperware container. I didn't pick the photo because it looked like her lunch, I picked it because I thought it was pretty. The child I wrote about hasn't grown up in a home where raspberries are the norm. When a half pint of raspberries cost $3-4 at the North Ingles, a person buying fruit is going to go for something with more bang for the buck: apples, bananas, oranges.
My husband and I decided a long time ago that if we were willing to spend $7 for a 6 pack of beer then we would be willing to spend $4 on a container of raspberries (her favorite) but we have the disposable income to pay for either of these items and not think much of it. There is where class comes into play.
BTW - I know plenty of little boys who know what a raspberry is, even in a picture.
Sorry-- I was aiming for humor with my last remark, but that obviously didn't come through. I guess I still don't really understand why you consider it a class issue, but I appreciate your taking the time to respond just the same.
I was trying for humor too. We will have to start doing the little emoticons in the future.
To me, disposable income is a class issue. We have disposable income so we buy raspberries so much that my daughter doesn't think twice about them. But they aren't much bang for the buck, I could go so far as to say a luxury (like a $7 six pack of beer). This little boy's world doesn't have raspberries (or strawberries), probably because his family doesn't have the disposable income to purchase (poverty vs middle class).
Does that help?
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