The Bribery and Corruption method of bringing up a child

Now I know what you’re thinking, so don’t just start in on me, as to be honest, I really don’t have a leg to stand on. The thing is, you have to work with what you’ve got, and at the moment, all I have to work with is chocolate.

I mean, when did you last go down on bended knee to your child, beg, plead and implore to them, to just take a little nibble of chocolate ……..and then they can get down from the table? Not recently I would venture to suggest.
Rather you had whip your hand back quickly before they bit your fingers off. Me? I have to restrain mine in his chair to prevent escape. Actually, three of my other ones would be the latter category too. We only have one true deviant about these parts. Well maybe two, but leave me out of the equation.


The fact that he eats chocolate at all, is something that I relish, because in theory it opens the door to a myriad of possibilities. Did you know that they make such a thing as chocolate covered pretzels? Unlikely I know, but it’s perfectly true. There are other more obvious choices, such as chocolate covered peanuts and raisins. Then there are lots of different varieties of chocolate itself. I have a big pool to draw upon here. Thus far, our success rate is a big fat zero. As noted in previous posts, the issue of texture is always our downfall. There again, appearances can be deceptive. Merely changing the shape of the 'food' in question is enough to upset the applecart.

He eats pretzels, ergo he should be able to eat chocolate covered pretzels, ditto chocolate covered raisins, but unfortunately these happy combinations have evaded him. We’ll gloss of the chocolate covered poison packs for obvious reasons. [translation = peanuts are in their own sub category of poisonous foodstuffs, even though I’m fairly confident that technically speaking, he is not allergic to them]


The idea in principal, is to pick a desirable food, such as broccoli, where the ratio of chocolate covering to vegetable matter would be beneficial and then get him to eat it. That is what we’re aiming at. I know that goal is a long way off, but it is better to travel hopefully than to……….. something or other, I forget.


I think, realistically, that since he eats chips [translation = fries] that a chocolate covered potato might be a good starting point. However, that might be a biased Irish gene providing undue weight in the decision making process. Spouse, another non vegetable eater, pointed out that we might be better fixing our sites a little lower. He was wise to avoid mentioning chocolate infused pasta and expose his own gene pool bias. Hence, as always, heeding to his superior grasp of the situation, I managed to hunt down a variety of different shaped chocolates as a stage one. Remember if a food changes shape from cube to stick, or quarters to halves, it effectively changes category too. It becomes 'new food' as a result. Stage two would be to try different types of chocolate such as Ghiradelli’s or Hershey’s.





Thus far the prospects are not propitious, but we’ll keep you posted. I will be the one in the kitchen trying to make chocolate trapezoids as a dodecahedron is way beyond my skill set.