Healthy Snacks

I have one child who would prefer to eat only fruits and vegetables. She tells me after a few bites of ice cream that she has had enough. She would agree that sugar is not good for you. I know. She really can't be mine. This child definitely belongs to Pun.

Then I have another child. He's a sweet boy. He wakes up in the morning with a silly grin thinking about candy. He will warn me not to eat all of the cookies (ice cream, cake, candy, ...) so there will more for him later. For him, there is only one food group--sugar. The rest is complimentary. Now, this is my child.

Children in Thailand typically do not eat sweet things. Or at least they do not crave them the way my son does. They eat things like seaweed chips or squid-on-a-stick as seen being sold by this lady.

Just seconds before I took this next picture, the little boy behind the girl in a pink dress was tearing into his squid stick. Seriously, I thought he was going to growl. My kids watched in shock, not convinced that it was as delicious as these children made it look.

So imagine my surprise when my children (both the responsible one and the one like me) began eating Taro. What is Taro?


Well, it is made of flour and fish and pressed into long, thin, dry strips. It tastes fishy. Apparently, this package is Bar-B-Q flavor. My kids don't like fish, they tell me. But they love this stuff. I think some of it is made from squid. These days it is not uncommon for me to hear:

"Mom, do we have any 'quid'?"
"Yes."
"Oh, good!"

I watch him tear into it with a big sweet smile, but I am not so convinced that is as delicious as he makes it look.