Coney Island Everything

I feel pretty vindicated on the food front after Colum devoured his lunch today. A couple weeks ago I had a hankering for some chili and made an enormous amount. I know that Colum’s not especially big on the meat, but chili is tomato-y and he does like beans. Still, I served it Cincinnati-style over some whole wheat spaghetti to make it Colum-friendly. We sit down at the table and he announces, “I hate chili.” Wow. I’m not sure if I’ve ever heard him use the word hate before. And I had chili for at least two more meals that week and some for the freezer. Just then, my brother (who was joining us for dinner) rang the doorbell. So I said, “Shane’s here now and he really loves chili. He will be upset if you don’t like the special dinner we cooked for him. I’m going to go let him in and you should just start eating.” I don’t know how I came up with that, but it worked! He started eating, and even though he ate mainly pasta and left the chili, I was satisfied. We had it a couple more times and he would grudgingly eat enough of his dinner. Today I cracked out a small frozen serving and heated it up and served it over spaghetti and topped it with cheddar once again. And he loved it. So there you go: repeated exposure, and some trickery, and a good dose of hunger really do work wonders. And man am I sick of chili.