Birthday parties with whole foods!

Dear GreenSmoothieGirl: What do you do for birthdays?

So it’s my kids’ birthdays (yes, all of them–within three weeks of each other–go ahead and make your jokes about me and November).   And last night I had a family party.   Dinner was taco salad without the taco meat (though my mom brought BBQ chicken for those who wanted it).   I provided sprouted-wheat tortillas as shells, and I cooked brown lime rice, and black beans cooked in veg broth and salsa, plus all the fixings (lettuce, tomatoes, onions, cilantro, shredded cheese if you want it) and homemade dressings and guacamole and salsa.   And a big fruit platter.   It was easy.

You can see here I made a chocolate beet cake (see Ch. 11 of 12 Steps), containing pureed beets, no refined sweeteners, no white flour, and only high-nutrition coconut oil.   I also made a regular cake-mix with tub-o-frosting cake.   Check out my two oldest kids (and my niece, Macie) in the photo above, blowing out candles on both cakes.   Everyone had both options, and I told them exactly what each cake was.

Now check out what happened.   The cake that not a single person chose was . . . drum roll please . . . the cake mix.   Everybody loved the beet cake and some wanted seconds:

See, what happens when you become the nutrition guru, the health food nut, the earthy crunchy, is that people learn that WHAT YOU MAKE TASTES GOOD.   They expect yummy food of you that doesn’t make them feel regretful.   They make the healthy choice at your house because they trust you.   I influenced my family in no way last night, didn’t say “This beet cake is really good,” or anything like that.   I just said, “This one is a cake mix, and this one is beet cake; which one would you like?”   It’s not that you’ll NEVER make anything that doesn’t taste good.   (Read the dedication in my new book for evidence of that!   No one is perfect.)   But you’ll learn a repertoire of things people really like.   And the people you love will appreciate that.

And then here’s what you’ll do with the junk.   This is where the entire cake-mix cake ended up, an ignoble end, but a fitting one.   Nobody ate propylene glycol and partially hydrogenated fat and refined sugar and vegetable oil and a dozen chemicals and preservatives I can’t pronounce.   (I’m so proud of my family.)

Posted in: Relationships, Whole Food