All-white meals -- a tale of two plates

I've written before about all-brown meals (or sometimes all-white meals) -- something the thinking cook strives to avoid.  But there's all-white and there's all-white.

Here's an all-white meal that I fixed the other night and saved from total invisibility on its white plate with a little parsley at the last minute.  Very nutritious, with fish, potatoes and parsnips.  If you closed your eyes while eating you would be so pleased at its variety and healthfulness.

By contrast, here's an all-white meal that people should be ashamed to be in the same room as.

The happy diner is my nephew Robbie, who had a good time eating off the buffet on our recent cruise, ignoring most of the lovely vegetables, since his parents didn't give him a hard time about his menu choices.  This struck him as a fine plate of food, and its whiteness was a plus, not a minus, for him.  Robbie's father suggests that when he turns 12 next week it would be a good time to start eating vegetables like a grown-up.

Maybe he would like parsnips or cauliflower; they would fit his favorite color scheme.