Earning Young Cultivator Merit Badges

Farm Kitchen

8. Palate Pleasers

Beginner Level

• Ask your parents if you're a picky eater. Find out why.
• Using a cookbook or the Internet, pick out a food to taste that you have never tried before. Something unusual-the stranger, the better! If you're stumped for ideas, here are a few: dragon fruit, sardines, vegemite, seaweed, oysters.

Intermediate Level

• Shop for your new food. Is it small or large? Sweet or savory? Cooked or raw?
• Once you've tried your new food, be honest with your farmgirl mentor if you liked it.
• Pick out two new foods to try, whether at the grocery store or the next time you're in a restaurant.

Expert Level

• Out of the new foods you've tried, which was your favorite? Decide, and convince a fellow picky eater friend to try it, too.
• Learn about some different ethnicities of food. You may have had pizza from Italy, or tacos from Mexico, or egg rolls from China, but what do people eat in Africa? Or Denmark? Or Germany? Using your library card, check out some cookbooks from different areas of the world and design your own exotic dream restaurant, complete with menu ideas. If your family is game, dedicate a whole dinner to one area of the globe and help your family cook it.

January, 2018 Edition