Well, I may be a dad and this may be 2002, but I can sure relate to that cartoon mom. Not long ago, I started cooking for a whole passel of kids at The Puget Sound Environmental Learning Center, an outdoor-education facility where youngsters learn about nature. Every week, it's a different batch from a different school, but they're all kids, and they're all dubious about vegetables — especially green ones.

It's the first night. The first group of kids is entering the dining hall. They look easy enough to please. In fact, they look wonderful. They're smiling, they're rippling across the dining hall like the happiest little wave of humanity anybody ever saw. And after a day exploring the woods and the lab, they're hungry. As my Mom always used to say, hunger is the best seasoning, so I've got nothing to worry about. Cooking for a hundred kids will be a piece of cake. At least that's what I tell myself as I pull the chicken out of the oven and pile mashed potatoes into bowls for each table.

I tinkered with a recipe from Christopher Kimball's "The Dessert Bible" to develop a sturdy, no-nonsense carrot cake that would feed a bunch of hungry kids. This is a big carrot cake that's perfect for a crowd; it will make 24 large servings or 36 smaller ones. Take it to a potluck. Leftovers freeze beautifully. Makes one half-sheet pan 15 by 17 1/2 inches
1 1/2 cups (3/4 pound) butter at room temperature 3 cups brown sugar 1 tablespoon vanilla extract 8 eggs 4 cups pastry flour 2 tablespoons baking powder 1 tablespoon cinnamon 2 teaspoons salt 8 cups grated carrots 1 1/2 cups toasted walnuts, chopped 1. Grease and flour the sides of a half-sheet pan and line the bottom with baker's parchment. 2. Cut all the butter into 1-inch chunks. Put half the butter in the bowl of an upright mixer. Put the rest in a saucepan and cook over medium heat until it is melted and beginning to brown. Pour the browned butter over the cold butter and beat until all the butter is smooth and creamy. Add the brown sugar and vanilla and continue beating until smooth. Beat the eggs together and add all at once to the butter mixture; beat until eggs are well-incorporated. 3. In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, cinnamon and salt. Add the whipped butter mixture, the grated carrots and the toasted walnuts all at once to the flour mixture. Fold together just until dry ingredients are moistened; do not overmix. 4. Transfer the batter to the prepared sheet pan and bake in a preheated 350-degree oven 20 minutes, or until the cake feels firm in the center when pressed lightly. Cool the cake on a rack. Frost the cake when cool and cut into portions.
Makes about 4 cups
1 1/2 pounds cream cheese 1 pound powdered sugar 1 cup whipping cream, whipped 1 tablespoon vanilla extract Soften the cream cheese by whipping it in an electric mixer with the powdered sugar and vanilla. Stir in half of the whipped cream to lighten it up, then fold in the rest of the whipped cream. Spread the frosting over the cooled cake. Keep cold until serving time. Print friendly version.

Still, the trepidation is palpable. How did the executive chef at Canlis, a very fine dining restaurant, get himself into this? While I'm still the Canlis chef, I'm also the de facto mom three nights a week at the learning center. Tom Douglas has three restaurants — each a gem; Christine Keff has two. Surely I can maintain the high standards at Canlis and handle running the dining hall at the learning center.

As the kids settle in, one of the instructors is reciting the menu. At Canlis, she would be speaking softly beside a table draped in white linen.

"The seasonal soup tonight is Nettle with Dungeness Crab in Cream," she might say. "And the salad has a walnut-crusted goat-cheese fritter on a bed of tiny greens with a sherry vinaigrette." Here at my dining hall in the woods, she's almost yelling so the kids can hear her. "Tonight we're having roast chicken with rosemary!" she shouts, and all the kids cheer. They really are very hungry. "Mashed potatoes!" They cheer again. "And peas!" They all boo, a loud, continuous boo.

I should have listened to my boys at home. My 8- and 12-year-old warned me: "Kids don't really like peas, Dad. Having been just a dad all these years, I'm new at this mom thing. But trying to get kids to eat their vegetables has been going on for a long, long time. I suspect it started in the Stone Age, when a mother put some foraged greens in a skin bag full of hot rocks and water and tried to pass it off as something tasty to her toddler. The toddler probably responded like that kid in the E.B. White cartoon.

Still, these are good peas; frozen, but organic and sweet. I'm sure the kids will eat them if only they give them a try.

Halfway through dinner, I'm proven right; a couple kids are at my kitchen window asking for more peas. I'm so happy; but already I'm worried about the next night. I'm planning to serve broccoli, and that could go either way. I can't help thinking about George Bush and his memorable remark.

It was 1990 when George the First uttered those immortal words, "I do not like broccoli. And I haven't liked it since I was a little kid and my mother made me eat it. And I'm President of the United States and I'm not going to eat any more broccoli."

Night two, I'm rewarded once again; the kids have wiped out an entire case of broccoli, and if I'd had more, they would have eaten it, too.

Just to make sure they ate enough vegetables, I slipped some into their dessert with that old trick known as the carrot cake. When dessert was announced, a few of the kids wore expressions that said, "You're kidding me." One of them said, "You can't make cake out of carrots!" I halfway expected somebody to quote E.B. White. Now I'm thinking that next week, I might try serving some spinach.

Greg Atkinson is executive chef at Canlis and chef at the Puget Sound Environmental Center. He is also author of "The Northwest Essentials Cookbook" (Sasquatch Books, 1999). Whitney Stensrud is a Seattle Times news artist