MarketingMom vs. Eggplant

My experience working in marketing has served me well as a parent. I've written about how to successfully market healthy, unusual or otherwise suspicious foods to kids and consider myself an expert at creative wordplay to avoid altercations:

Example:

"Mom, can we paint my room tonight?"

"Yes, but only if we have time after dinner, homework, a quick trip to the store and showers."

"All right!"

(Notice how I never said, "no.")

Well I may have soon outdone myself.

We've had Movie Night every Friday for the past several weeks. Generally we get pizza and hunker down in the family room for a flick, but this week, I've got something special up my sleeve.

I'm planning to prepare a special meal for a special movie, Disney's Ratatouille. I'm going to make ratatouille nicoise -- a recipe straight out of the New York Times Cook Book. The kids are totally psyched, but then again, they have no idea what's actually in ratatouille.

Here's the recipe:

Ratatouille Nicoise

• 1/3 cup olive oil
• 2 or more cloves of garlic, peeled and chopped
• 1 large onion, sliced
• 2 zucchini, well scrubbed
• 1 small eggplant
• 3 tablespoons flour
• 2 green peppers, seeded and cut into strips
• 5 ripe tomatoes, peeled and sliced
• salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
• 1 tablespoon capers

You basically cook all these ingredients down until they're a thick, bubbly concoction. Sounds awesome, right? My mouth is watering already for the garlic and capers.

We'll see how the kids react when I hand them a steaming bowl of vegetable goo instead of a slice of pepperoni pizza. (I'm totally hoping the veggies are unrecognizable -- and if they aren't, we're dimming the lights.)

If I can pull this off, I may just start myself a little consulting biz on the side. I can see it now:

Quit pandering to your picky eaters. MarketingMom is here to help. Let her turn your least kid-friendly recipe into your family's new favorite meal.

It's probably safest if I wait until after Friday night to print up my business cards.