9.23.2008

What's Cookin'?

A bag of produce showed up on our front steps today. Thanks, Lisa! Yordanos wanted to cut up some of the little tomatoes. I gave her a very sharp serrated knife and showed her how to use it carefully. (I've got plenty of other examples of poor parenting, and I'll share those later!) Because it involved cutlery, Habtamu was immediately interested, so they took turns chopping some of the little tomatoes. They cut the tomatoes so small, they may have been splitting atoms at the end there.

I continued to make dinner, not hearing any screams or seeing any blood spurting. Suddenly, Yordanos presented the finished product, and it looked like salsa... and there was a lot of something green in it. I've showed the kids several times the things in the garden that they can eat: mint, rhubarb, oregano, chives, and sage. They've pointed them out to me, so I figured it was one of those. I tried a little bit of leaf and it didn't taste like any of those. (My only excuse for tasting it is that I was not in my right mind and harried from making dinner.) I asked her to show me which plant she used. She went directly to the rhubarb, and showed me the leaf she'd ripped off. Yes, the LEAF. I said, "Oh, good. That's poison." Then I had to interrogate the children to make sure THEY hadn't eaten any of it. I don't know how much it takes to make one sick... I'm assuming quite a lot. They hadn't eaten any and I feel fine.

Any day you don't have to call Poison Control is a good day.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

ha, too funny. i didn't know the leaf of rubbarb was posionous. of course, I'd never use it as a garnish either :)

Megan said...

I didn't know the ruhbarb leaf was poisonous either. I just knew that i don't really like the pie that the stems make.

Katherine said...

You might want to keep the poison control # handy! 8-)