Jefferson High Math teacher, Jovita Correa, nearly slipped from our grasp yesterday. She came to watch our Youth Leaders making our homemade ranch dressing as part of a Healthy Food Tasting for a parent teacher meeting. The kids were using their best tactics to try and convince Jovita to taste a red bell pepper and she refused. She HATES peppers, she claimed. Executive Director and Renegade Nutrition Educator, Megan Hanson heard the resistance and stepped in with some supremely overbearing veggie pushing tactics our Youth Leaders are still sometimes too polite to employ. One Youth Leader told Jovita - "You're in trouble now!"
Hanson asked, when was the last time Ms. Correa had tried a bell pepper? NEVER We try to remind people they may have simply had a bad experience with a veggie so OF COURSE would despise that veggie today. In this case, Ms. Correa simply assumed that a red bell pepper would have the same heat of a hotter chili pepper or not so desirable (to her) flavor of a green pepper.
Us TOO! We assured her. We ALL have ideas about certain foods that keep us from trying them or giving them a second chance.
Ms. Correa relented to Hanson's pressure tactics at last and tasted a bell pepper. She winced at first (they always do) as she took a bite, but then her face softened. "This is good!" She said. YES! we said, now try it with our homemade ranch dressing. She LOVED it even more, and took the recipe. We warned, bell peppers out of season can be a little pricey but she was adamant, she was going to get some.
And that's how it goes, the RootDown LA way. Another veggie aversion taken DOWN!
