Skip to content
Join our Newsletter

Ribs... the perfect finger-lickin' food

I have a theory about child rearing. Chances are I have a theory because I don't have a child. If I had a child, I wouldn't need a theory, I'd have an uncontrolled experiment in progress and no time or ability to theorize.
opinion_maxedout1

I have a theory about child rearing. Chances are I have a theory because I don't have a child. If I had a child, I wouldn't need a theory, I'd have an uncontrolled experiment in progress and no time or ability to theorize. But having procrastinated procreating past the point of my own best-before date, I'll stick to theories.

My theory is this: no child under the age of 16 should ever be fed anything they don't want to eat. If that means a childhood fuelled exclusively by hot dogs, pizza, tater tots and macaroni and cheese, so be it.

Of course, I also have a theory that kids should be packed off to boarding school but that's a different column.

There are, surprisingly, sound reasons supporting this theory. For starters, while children's palates are finely-honed enough to discriminate between, say, red and yellow Smarties, or gummi worms as opposed to gummi toes, their nascent tastebuds don't really register the difference between a hamburger and filet mignon. Their childlike minds do, however, understand eating with their fingers is way more fun than eating with a knife and fork, so any parent forcing their kid to eat filet as opposed to burgers is either wasting time and money, needlessly torturing their child or shamelessly social climbing.

Besides, just suppose you have a mutant — gifted — child. Suppose the little squirt actually develops a taste for grilled lobster tail sauced in a reduction of herb-infused fish fumet and rare sturgeon roe. What an insufferable little simp he or she is going to be next time you stop at White Spot for a quick nosh. Introducing kids to food like that is an act of parental over-reaching that can only lead to no good.

Kids should "discover" food completely by accident. Or at least driven by their own curiosity led, in turn, by their sensitive little noses and growing sense of social shame.

The benefits of this theory are manifold. First off, you save dough on food costs. Second, the words "meal planning" disappear from your vocabulary. Third, the inevitable mealtime Mexican standoff is eliminated and you both save face. Fourth, you don't wind up raising some weird little Poindexter who doesn't fit in with the rest of his taste-challenged buddies.

And finally, maybe even most importantly, the thrill of serendipitous discovery — at whatever age — is the fuel of creativity. Forcing a kid to eat kidneys is just money in the bank for some shrink 20 years down the road. Letting him discover he's eating kidneys in a funky pub in Munich because he's hungover after two days of drinking high-octane beer at Oktoberfest and doesn't know the German word for kidney, well baby, that's an adventure he may write about someday when he becomes an accidental columnist. Don't ask me how I know.

The potential for the thrill of discovery — gustatorially speaking — is rife this weekend 'round Creekside when the Canadian National BBQ Championships sets up shop at Dusty's for the annual festival of smoke-n-meat. While not specifically for kids, it is a kid-friendly event certain to touch the kid in all of us.

I would generally run the other direction from anything even remotely called kid-friendly. But my own first barbeque experience — a serendipitous discovery, naturally — was so soul-defining, even I am not curmudgeonly enough to deny the little monsters the same chance to expand their food horizons and catch a glimpse of wonders that can be wrought with a little bit of spice and smoke and a whole lotta love and pork.

Truth be told, barbeque is, in fact, kid food. Sweet, sticky, succulent, finger food. Anyone who eats barbeque without makin' a mess of their fingers and mouths and faces, anyone who even thinks of eating barbeque within sight of a knife and fork, anyone who doesn't suck a polished-clean rib bone just because to do anything less would be an affront to the swine who gave it all up for your personal pleasure, well friends, that's a person who has some serious issues to talk out with a mental health professional and five'll getcha ten those issues have something to do with toilet training.

My own first barbeque experience came at the tender age of single digits, the exact single digit being lost in the fog of childhood. Coming at a time before Max's Theorem, my folks encouraged but did not force me to try a rib, about which I was singularly indifferent, surrounded as it was by plates of corn on the cob which is most certainly the seminal kid food.

As it turned out, little encouragement was needed. Ribs — and how many cuts of meat, as opposed to fowl, are named after their anatomical roots — had at least two outstanding qualities kids find irresistible. First, the smell. Ribs smell like ribs... but they don't smell like other meat and they certainly don't smell like other food. Pungent, inherently sweet and wonderfully smoky, ribs simply seduce kids into trying them. They suggest a secret adults might not understand. Part entree, part desert, ribs bridge the gap between food and candy. They are the elusive food your parents want you to eat but you want to eat even more, despite the internal struggle raging over whether you should resist just to piss them off or dive right in.

And if the smell doesn't pique your interest, the socially acceptable method of eating ribs is enough to make your kid heart turn cartwheels in your tiny chest. Adults — the British notwithstanding — eat ribs with their fingers. The most sacred rule of mealtime falls off the table when ribs show up. Finger food. Not just finger food, MESSY FINGER FOOD. Face-smearin', hair-stickin', clothes-stainin', sister-torturin' finger food.

I'm sure the first ribs I ever ate were, compared to competition ribs, indifferent. That they changed my life and gave me a whole new insight into heaven on earth speaks to the power of even indifferent barbeque. I can hardly imagine what might have happened if the first rib I ever ate had been a slaved-over, pampered, cosseted, competition rib.

That's what's in store for some lucky kids this weekend at Dusty's. Having come from miles away to compete for braggin' rights and an entry ticket to bigger competitions, the folks cooking ribs and butt and brisket and chicken this weekend will cook a whole lot more than they need for the judges. The rest? The rest is up for grabs by kids of all ages and, bonus, your ticket to eat helps Playground Builders help kids who won't be there to discover ribs.

But you've got to be there... and you've got to be fast.