"Brooklyn1" wrote in message
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My mother grew up in a house where they had to eat what was served. Therer
were 8 kids, they were poor and probably didn't have a lot of food outside
of what they grew or produced themeselves. They had a farm. My grandma
hated to cook. She did like to make desserts but hated to cook. From what
I've been told, she turned the cooking over to the kids.
As such, my mom never really learned to cook much and she wasn't a very good
one in many cases. We did eat out quite a lot! When we did eat at home,
she usually allowed us to choose the meal or at least the vegetables being
served. Exception being when they were on Weight Watchers (both parents)
for over a year.
In those days they pushed white fish which she didn't know how to prepare,
liver and hamburger patties. We always seemed to have canned peas with the
hamburger patties, French cut canned green beans or occasionally stewed
tomatoes. There was usually a wedge of iceberg lettuce with those meals.
Once in a while there was canned asparagus. For dessert? Blueberries taken
straight from the freezer on most nights. When you get those same things
over and over each night with precious little to no seasonings (sometimes
she put dillweed on the poached white fish), you quickly grow sick of
eating. My friends didn't want to eat at my house during that time period.
And neither did I. I found ways to get rid of the food without eating it.
I just went hungry night after night. There was no food to sneak because it
simply wasn't in the house!
Oddly one of my daughter's favorite foods was canned green beans. I gave
them to her when she first started on real food. For years she had to have
them with every lunch and dinner. I did vary the cuts of beans, the brands
of beans and also sometimes served waxed. To this day though her favorite
always has been Del Monte cut green beans. She did go off of them about a
year ago and just flat out refused to eat them for a while and then she
started eating them from my plate. Now she asks for them again. Now I do
not get sick of the beans. As a child, I did. But perhaps it was because
the rest of the menu never varied.
I am always on the lookout for new recipes. We only seem to have "standard"
meals for a while. For a long period of time we ate quite a lot of pasta
with red sauce. Husband is Italian and I do try to give him what he is used
to. That is not one of his favorite foods though. But his mom did serve it
a lot. Then I got really burned out on the pasta. So we stopped eating it
for a while and now I can eat it again.
We might have a more limited diet than most given our food allergies and
pickiness. But I do try to vary what we eat. Often a recipe is tried only
once and then never again. Either because we didn't really like it or
because it was too time intensive. Some things are only made a few times a
year. Like pierogies. Or stuffed potatoes. We all like them but they take
too long to make.
I learned when Angela was very small that most little kids are picky and I
learned what most of them would eat. I often made dinner for not only her
but some of her friends. I did not do chicken nuggets or fries at home in
those days although most kids will eat them. I did macaroni and cheese,
pierogies (I bought frozen in those days), pasta in red sauce or lasagna,
meatballs either in red sauce or Swedish, plain breakfast sausages or
patties, quesadillas, plain pizzas made on English Muffins and tons of
finger foods like raw veggies (most kids like Ranch dip), also hummus for
dip, black olives, cheese cubes, melon cubes, other cut up fresh fruit.
They also all seem to like pretzels and applesauce. I would put out several
of these things. If a kid didn't like one thing there was always something
else they could eat and it would still be a balanced meal.
My daughter goes shopping with me. I let her pick out what looks good. She
can choose from whatever whole foods are there. She is old enough to read
recipes. She helps pick out what we have for the week. If my husband is
with us for the shopping he sometimes picks something out. But I don't
usually let him because he will usually pick out some cockamamie thing that
we won't/can't eat. Or he will pick huge thick steaks. He doesn't
understand cooking at all and as soon as we get in the door he will want
said steaks. He can't wait till we put the rest of the groceries away and
he doesn't understand that it takes a while to cook steaks. At home he
always wants the steaks well done. This is not how he orders them in
restaurants but it is at home.
I guess it would be tough if you had a bunch of kids to feed. Especially
kids of wildly different ages. For the most part I think what a teenager
would want to eat is not what a toddler is going to want to eat. That would
be difficult to please everyone.
Even brussels sprouts and lima beans! I still hate lettuce and dislike