This story begs to be told and someday will stand as proof as to why our son will end up in therapy!!

My husband the chef made a wonderful Sweet Potato Soup for dinner. Sweet potatoes, white potatoes, leeks, very simple soup. Puree. Served with a dollup of creme fraiche and sprinkled with candied pecans (which he made himself!). Yum. It was so sweet & rich.

As always at dinner, we give our son a little serving of whatever it is the grown-ups are eating. Our theory is that if he at least is exposed to the new food he may be inspired to try it, but will still have his grilled cheese, or in the case of that night chicken fingers, to fall back on. So we gave him a small bowl of sweet potato soup, complete with nuts & creme. We're talking about 1/4 cup of soup, but the howling that came from that kid was amazing: "NO! I don't like this soup! I won't eat it! You can't make me! It's not fair!" Yikes.

So all through dinner we made a big deal about eating our own soup. "MMMmmm....this tastes like candy...." or "mmmmmm.....this tastes like pie...." Refused to try it, but at least he stopped screaming at us.

Next attempt at the end of the meal had my husband making jokes about what "gross" things were in the soup. He told him it was worm soup and I added that if he ate the worm soup, we would immediately call gramma and tell her he ate worm soup. Well, this didn't get him any closer to trying it, but he was laughing hysterically. At one point he said: "I can't stop laughing!" which got us roaring too!

Final attempt this time was initiated by me. Normally, I don't push him to eat when he doesn't want to (I had enough issues with food as a kid to know that pressure is not the way to achieve anything at the dinner table) but it just seemed like this was a meal he could really enjoy.

Here's how the scene unfolded:
Me: "Did you know Sweet Potato Soup is Luke Skywalker's favorite soup?"

Padawan: "It is?"

Me: "Sure! Remember when Aunt Beru is in the kitchen cooking? She's actually making sweet potato soup. Luke goes off to find R2 before it's time to eat and the storm troopers show up because they smell it cooking and it's their favorite soup, too!"

His eyes got wider and wider. "Storm Troopers like potato soup?"

Me: "Yup! They liked it so much they asked Aunt Beru for the recipe and she said no way, this is a secret family recipe and I'm not about to cough it up so the emperor can eat my soup any time he wants."

Then hubby chimes in: "This is why the storm troopers burned down the house, because Aunt Beru wouldn't give them the recipe. It was Luke's favorite - he rushed back from the dead jawas to get some soup before blasting off with Obi-Wan but found his aunt & uncle torched."

Padawan: "The Storm Troopers wanted the soup?"

Hubby: "Sure! Luke was so sad when he got home and saw that not only was his aunt & uncle dead, but that his soup was eaten by the storm troopers. That's why he went off with Obi-Wan in the first place, to get even with the storm troopers who ate all his soup."

Padawan: "Wow! Does Luke want my soup?"

Of course, insert adult laughter here - we can see Padawan's plan unfolding. We continue....

Hubby: "You know what this soup is called? Star Wars Soup. I made it just for you so you could be just like Luke."

Padawan: "Star Wars Soup?" He looked at the orange soup and the tiniest of tastes I had put on the spoon and gladly opened his mouth and tried it.

The soup hadn't been on his tongue for more than half a second when he started gagging! Up came the soup, up came a little peek at his chicken fingers into his dish. I tried to give him a drink of water but he gagged into the cup and now we had pieces of potato soup floating in his water. Of course he started crying and my husband & I felt terrible for tricking him into eating the soup.

To this day, we are still laughing about the whole thing. Here we were thinking we were so clever to trick him into eating the soup by telling him it was Star Wars soup, but really, the joke was on us. We all lost our appetite for the rest of our soup after we saw it regurgitated. Joke's on us.