Being vegetarians we try to make the distinction between meat and the meat substitutes that we eat for A-chan so that hopefully she will understand a little bit when at a friend's grill out and I won't let her have a hot dog.
We try to remember to say 'soy dog' or 'soy burger', something that gets the idea across and indicates that it's not the same thing as a 'hot dog' or 'hamburger'. When A-chan plays with her wooden food toys we also make the same distinctions. She has in her little basket a 'soy sausage' and a 'soy dog'. Yesterday she dropped the 'soy dog' and it rolled under the couch. "What happened to the soy sauce dog?" she asked. It was so cute.
To further explain, though...we love soy sauce. It is hard to describe the amounts of soy sauce that we typically go through every week. A-chan won't eat any meal that comes with rice without her beloved soy sauce. We adults, having everything nicely compartmentalized in our heads already, never made the connection between 'soy sauce' and 'soy meat substitute' since obviously the twain have nothing to do with each other in normal daily life. I think it's so very neat how children make those leaps that adults minds automatically reject in most cases!
No comments:
Post a Comment