Conventional wisdom holds that when children cook their own meals, they will eat anything—lima beans, Brussels sprouts, sweetbreads (which, my 6-year-old was horrified to discover, are not sticky buns). The magic of transforming many ingredients into one dish means children glom on to food preparation in a primal way; the under-eighteen crowd is a significant Food Network audience. But children tend to view cooking as separate from eating, which is actually pretty logical.

The act of cooking—imagining, creation, presentation—is something children are primed to do. Sit a kid down with a box of Legos and ten minutes later his creativity has physically manifested. He has fabricated the car with three steering wheels he’s been talking about all these years. (Which is one reason why I soured on Legos for marketing Lego sets that make an airplane or fire station or motorcycle, the block equivalent of a boxed cake mix.)

Children are not