When Georgia and I go to the grocery store, I’m lucky that she’s generally patient sitting in the cart until we get to the produce aisle. At that point she knows she can get out and help me choose fruits and vegetables, which she takes very seriously, and approaches with grand curiosity.

“Mommy! What’s this thing?”

“A tomatillo.”

“Can we get one?”

“Well, we don’t know how to use that yet, let’s only buy what we’ll eat so we don’t waste food.”

“Do we need mushrooms? I can pick them!” She does a really good job looking over the mushrooms for dents — if I remind her over every mushroom.

“Howzabout this one?”

“Good choice!” I encourage.

“This one?”

“Well, it has a little mushy bit over there.”

“This one?”

You can see why grocery shopping can drag on and on. But I do want her to learn about produce, and she’s interested in vegetables even though she doesn’t eat too many of them. We talk a lot about pesticides, and what is organic [0], and what’s in season.

“I want an apple!” She says as she grabs the keystone apple that will make all the others topple. I save the pyramid and explain that apples aren’t good right now.

“Why not?” she challenges.

I put on my ratty, ragged Explaining Hat and try, “These are from far away, and they are mushy and don’t taste very good. All the fruits and vegetables have a season, and it isn’t the season for apples right now. Sometimes the fruits that are in season in other places in the world are shipped here on a boat or a plane, but often they aren’t very good once they get here because it’s taken a very long time.”

She didn’t really believe me until I started having her taste the grapes in February. She wants grapes all the time, and there they are on the shelves, why wouldn’t they be good? Even in the stores where this is frowned upon, I grab a grape, wipe it off, and have her taste it. I’m not buying grapes at $2.99 a pound if she’s not going to eat them. It’s “Yucky.” I explain to her:

“This isn’t the time for grapes. The sun hasn’t had time to ripen them all up.”

Or, “Even though those [Chilean] grapes seem good, they aren’t good for you because they have pesticides on them, which kill bugs so the grapes stay nice, but they also aren’t very good for humans. The pesticides can make the fruit taste bad, and we’re not even sure how sick they can make people.”

The other day she had a non-organic grape and said, “Yuck! It tastes like metal!” I don’t know if she’s really able to tell it from an organically grown grape, but since her taste buds aren’t so jaded, it’s possible! Not that we eat 100% organic, but when we can’t we try to be mindful of pesticide levels [1].

So anyway, we have heavenly, sweet, and fragrant Oregon strawberries that have a season of three or four weeks. Even though they aren’t organic, our produce lady assures us this grower is conscious and careful, and they are a rare treat that we savor. Georgia saw the strawberries in the store and they were red and ripe and she was excited to get some. But I noticed they didn’t smell like anything.

“Smell them. Do they smell good?” We do a lot of sniffing [2] at our store, since the fruits aren’t routinely refrigerated.

She sniffed. “I can’t smell it.”

“I wonder if it could be good? Taste one and tell me what you think.”

“Yucky!” And they were yucky, completely tasteless. “It must not be strawberry season.”

Well, it is strawberry season, but for some reason these weren’t good. But I was really happy that she is thinking about the seasons of things, and is learning that just because something is there doesn’t mean it’s good. I get tired of teachable moments, but it does reinforce my resolve as I try to explain all the details to Georgia, in child-friendly terms. And I’ve kept some of your positive posts in mind whenever I feel a little foolish and repetitive, those of you who thank their parents for giving them the tools and knowledge to make healthful choices. The lessons of the grocery store help my larger mission: there are lots of things out there to want and buy and acquire, but there are good questions to ask about wanting, buying, and acquiring.