One of the best things about working with kids is watching them try new things. Especially healthy, new foods from the garden. Maybe their willingness to try new foods from the garden is so big because of the excitement of harvesting your own food. The joy and surprise when a child pulls a beet from the ground and yells "Look at this! It looks like a giant spider" is so great to watch. As we were thinning out the beet crop the other day, one of the kids asked what a beet tasted like; he had never tasted one before. I was shocked and amazed to find out that many of the other surrounding kids had also never tasted a beet. Without missing a beat (no pun intended) the kids asked if they could try tasting the raw beets. I warned them that raw beets had a pretty strong and earthy flavour and that they may not like them on their first try. Fortunately, they still went on to taste them, and surprisingly many of them really loved them. They loved the way it made their mouths bright red. One kid exclaimed "it looks like we ate blood", while another announced that "beets taste like dirt... But in a good way".
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| Tasting beets for the first time |
