Food stories: Conflicts Sur la Table from when you were Very Very Young

[Shelby]

I remember loving all kinds of "exotic" foods when I was little.  I don't know for sure how old I was, but around 4 or 5 my family took me to Red Lobster.  I was in heaven.  I ordered shrimp and lobster and ate like a little piggy.  

 

However.

 

Put a steak or a roast in front of me and I wanted nothing more than to shove it down the garbage disposal.  Around the same age I remember being allowed to eat off of a t.v. tray in the living room while watching Escape From Witch Mountain (I'm pretty sure it was that movie).  Anyway, it was all good until the plate of food placed in front of me held a steak.  My GOD that steak was huge (or so it seemed to me--in reality it was probably like seven or eight bites).  I remember my mouth getting salty and feeling like I was going to be sick.  I refused to eat it.  I was told that I will eat it and I will sit there until I do.  Luckily, I was in front of the t.v.......

 

Then, I got a brilliant idea.

 

I hid all of the meat around the underside of my plate.  HA I was so smart!!!  

 

Until my mom lifted the plate to take it to the sink.

Edited November 7, 2014 by Shelby (log)

[rotuts]

Id like to start a thread about the Table when you were very Young.

 

this idea came to me when in the Dinner thread, Franci made something for the 'Childs Table' Id

 

gladly gobble up, much faster than any 7 YO  

 

all kidding aside, I cant tell you what to write nor why.

 

Id like these stores to be memories that still linger.

 

Id like them to come from your emotional side, and perhaps be unique to you and how you grew up.

 

Id like to hear how they effect you now, perhaps in ways you have not thought about,  and if they effect your

 

own children if you have them.

 

Children, even 2 YO 50 % brats, have razor sharp minds, and remember a lot more than I can now.

 

Tomorrow Ill get an interesting book out of the lib about J.Pepin and The Vegetable.

 

I have at least several stories to tell my self.

 

my stores have value to me, and no story, told thoughtfully, does not have less than infinite 

 

merit.

 

I look forward to your stories.

 

if your Brats are now old enough to think about this, ask them !

 

BTW  I am not a Psychiatrist, do not plan to write a book etc etc.

 

I have been interested in children for most of my life.

 

the idea, that  my interest in children, that they know what Ive forgotten, or buried deep,  came to me after working

 

for over 48 Hr at a

 

time, with children each with there own stories.  some of them told me a bit about it.

 

i think they all know things we have forgotten.

Edited November 7, 2014 by rotuts (log)

[Franci]

"" 

I wonder if they get a little bit of that Red Wine in water also.

 

We tried! No luck, there, yet...

I didn't expect to find all this talking about feeding children today. As Rotuts was saying it's not just about food. The social aspect of food it's very important to us.  We love food, they are member of this house. They will grew up loving it too and they will learn to cook. I do not worry about it. We lived in many places and we are a multicultural family, they have been exposed to many foods that most children could not even imagine. It takes 0 effort to me to cook that extra piece of salmon. I value more they get what is good nutrition in my mind.

[rotuts]

""   I value more they get what is good nutrition in my mind. ""

 

fair enough.  thats wonderful

 

but priceless is the time they spend  " at the table "

 

if I might ask :  how long do your dinners take at the table ?

 

etc.  I think you know what I mean.

 

children engaged at the table, cements interest in their food.

 

good new  // bad news   : you have a few years until they are 16.  !

[Honkman]

No. I have no children. I'm 23 and I suppose fairly opinionated. I do not think it is a one size fits all approach, obviously. However, I would trust the judgement of someone like Franci to feed her children foods they are comfortable eating. No one knows their children better than a mother.  And if any children could develop tastes for some of the more unusual foods and flavors, it will be those who are constantly surrounded by them, as is the case in this circumstance. 

 

Nobody is judging Franci but this is a discussion board and I think interesting to see the different opinions on topics like that - there is no wrong or right but a lot of potential for discussion and nobody is using a sone size fits all approach. (And yes, I think having children might change your view. Before we had our daughter i also had certain thoughts how to raise a child but once you have it a lot of previous opinion don't matter anymore.

[Anna N]

Strangely enough a table rarely played a part in meals when I was growing up. I cannot conjure up a single occasion of sitting around the table with the family eating a meal although it must've happened occasionally. The meals I recall most clearly found me sitting on the hearth and my Gran sitting in the chair. The only light in the room would be from the coal fire. We had electricity but it was metered and required a shilling coin to feed the meter. Gran was surviving on a war widow's pension from World War I. Shilling's were not plentiful. We would each have a pudding basin and a doorstop of freshly made bread. In the basin would be a stew which had cooked all day in the hearth oven. The Archers might or might not have been playing on the wireless. No celebrity chef could ever make anything that tasted so good.

Food was still rationed while I was growing up so many of my memories are of less magnificent meals than this. Bread and pork or beef dripping often made up our evening meal. And you could have bread and butter or bread and jam but never jam on buttered bread. Sugar was especially scarce in the house but once in a while my Gran would tire of the scarcity and defying all would throw a hand full of sugar onto the coal fire where for a brief moment it would spit and sparkle and flames of every color would appear.

I have few recollections of ever refusing food. I ate tripe and liver and blood pudding. Although I recall one morning baulking at porridge. It appeared again for my lunch when I came home from high school and again for my dinner that evening. The following morning I managed to choke it down for I knew it would continue to show up but this is the only time I recall there being any dispute over food.

[Honkman]

"Children, even 2 YO 50 % brats...." - I complete don't agree with your view on childrens behaviour. Children are no xx% brats - if children don't behave like it is expected it is normally their parents who never showed them how to behave. So 2 yo 50%^ are actually parents 50% brats

[rotuts]

Im very sorry

 

I wrote badly

 

2 yo are full of themselves  as the age demands

 

sorry

 

brats are what we put on the Grill

 

if we have good ones.

 

thank you for the insight.

[Smithy]

When my extended family (grandparents, parents, aunts, uncles, cousins and friends) gathered for Thanksgiving or Christmas or Easter dinner, we crowded my grandparents' house. It was exactly as my grandmother wanted it. When We Were Very Young, we children were exiled to the Children's table - meaning a card table or two set up separately from the main table. It wasn't meant as a pejorative, but it was recognized that we would have different conversational interests than our elders, and there wasn't room for everyone at the table. As we grew older, room was somehow found for us at the table anyway.

I don't remember squabbles or differences in food, in particular. I remember some of my cousins racing to finish so they could go outside and play hide-and-seek, or football, declaring that they weren't hungry. 15 minutes after they'd gone outside, they'd be back demanding more food.

I do remember thinking that pumpkin pie and mincemeat pie and sweet potatoes were appalling. I haven't changed my mind. I also remember my nearest cousin insisting that I had to do what he said because he was 2 weeks older than I. That didn't go down better than the detestable desserts, and he usually didn't get his way.

Is this the sort of thing you mean, rotuts? Maybe some of your stories will spark others. I think you're looking for something much younger than what I've just related?

[gfweb]

I recall slipping a good bit of food to the Airedale at my side.

 

Some things don't change.

Edited November 7, 2014 by gfweb (log)

[BeeZee]

I don't think my parents forced us to finish everything on our plate, at a certain point where you are sitting there with congealed bits that you obviously are not going to eat...they would just release us from the table. My sister went through a stretch where she didn't like a lot of vegetables (ironically, she was vegetarian for much of her young adult life...) so my parents allowed her to eat pickled beets as an alternate. Nobody else ate them, just kept a glass jar in the fridge. I always liked veggies, except maybe lima beans. Mom made one meal for the family (meat, veg, starch). That's probably one thing that got drilled into me, meat/veg/starch. When I make a meal that is just meat/veg, I feel like I did something "wrong" or that the meal is incomplete. Although I'm perfectly fine just eating veg/starch as I do most of the time now.

Unrelated to food, but related to the table...when I was mad at my sister and it was my turn to set the table, I'd lick her plate before setting it down when nobody was looking!

[Deryn]

I have several memories that are 'food-related' from my childhood.

My first memory is of, before I could walk on my own, being encouraged to stand and hold the playpen rail and inch my way around it to pick up morsels of cheddar cheese.

At home, my father always brought a dictionary to the table and required us (from probably age 3 or 4 on) to spell the names of all the foods on our plate before we were allowed to eat it. Once we got good at that, he would open the dictionary to a random page and select 'words of the day' for us to spell and use in a sentence before the fork hit the plate. I also often sat there long after everyone else had left the table. I loved vegetables of all kinds (although many of them were canned and grey looking back in those days) so they were quickly downed but I usually left the meat, especially if it was fatty - and was not allowed to leave until the plate was clean. Fatty meat, to this day, does not appeal to me - and even bacon must be cooked to a crisp before I will eat it.

At my grandparents' house when we went to visit (from Toronto to New York), I rarely remember 'supper' with the adults. The grown-ups always had 'cocktail hour' with nibbles before their dinner, but, we kids were usually made to sit down by the fireplace to eat 'milk-toast' before being ushered off to bed. I didn't like milk so I gobbled up the toast as fast as I could before it got soggy. On the other hand, the only place I ever had meringues or lobster was there too - generally at lunch, which was for us kids the largest meal of the day - and it was great fun to be taken to the market to pick out the lobsters. My aunt (who lived with my grandparents) built a cinder block 'cookout shack' and would take us kids down the back garden to have burnt marshmallows on sticks whenever we visited.

My grandfather loved burnt toast and (despite being a very educated, cultured gentleman) to lick the ice cream cartons. Once in a while he would spread the carton flat on his plate, and hand each of us a spoon and let us have a taste of the sticky remains. He grew asparagus and strawberries in a stacked circle behind the house and I loved to sneak strawberries before they were quite ripe - and had many a stomach ache as a result. My grandmother used to know someone at Lord & Taylors in Westchester and so another special treat was to be taken for lunch (all dressed up) at the Bird Cage.

I also recall well being taken back to Britain when I was 8 (my father was Welsh and I was born in England but left as a baby and I don't remember the milk rations that were the reason we supposedly left). On that trip we were exposed to what to me then were many strange foods - cold toast kept in a rack, orange squash (I fell in love), many different kinds of penny candies (different in each of England, Wales and Scotland), haggis, bubble and squeak, faggots and peas, lava bread, welsh cakes, cockles, and squab are some I remember.

[Ann_T]

 

the emphasis would be on" What I Learned While Still Very Small "

Well I know what I learned as a child. I had to eat what was put in front of me, whether I liked it or  not. Meals were not  that enjoyable.  So  I learned I would never make a child of mine eat something that they did not like.  Life is just way to short.

 

We had a rule that our son (who is now 33)  had to at least try something before deciding that he didn't like it.  My son didn't like lamb and he didn't like fish.  So if that was what my husband and I were having for dinner, it was easy to cook a piece of chicken or a small steak for him.  I wanted him to enjoy eating as much as we did. 

 

I would be happy to eat at Franci's table.

 

Ann

[JoNorvelleWalker]

I came here to start this thread but I see rotuts beat me to it.

 

Myself, I am a child of the 40's and 50's.  Some of my memories:  I liked my mother's cooking, but some dishes more than others.  When I was about five I expressed my preference for turkey rather than for chicken.  My mother said:  "You can't even tell turkey from chicken!"  I replied:  "Yes, I can -- turkey is drier than chicken."  To this she had no answer.

 

In school I was required to eat canned asparagus (remember this was the early 50's) and salty creamed chipped beef.  Which I threw up.  I never tasted asparagus again till I was twenty one.  After which I became very fond of hollandaise.

 

I did not usually get to go to restaurants.  I do recall one time when a steak was ordered for me and I refused to eat it.  I wanted hamburger.  My mother said if the steak was cut up it would be about the same as hamburger.  The waitress apologized that they did not have hamburger on the menu.  I had quite a tantrum.  It is not surprising I did not get taken to restaurants more often.

 

When I was a bit older, many nights, the adults (there were three of them -- my father was Cherokee and multiple women was a cultural thing) ate a late dinner by themselves and I had a TV dinner in front of the eponymous appliance.  Though as far as I can remember this was by my own misguided choice.

 

Not long after I found myself an orphan.  The food in the orphanage was OK as to quality (except for the maggots on the meat), but a bit lacking as to quantity.  I never went to bed starving but often a bit hungry.

 

 

[Franci]

if I might ask : how long do your dinners take at the table ?

etc. I think you know what I mean.

children engaged at the table, cements interest in their food.

good new // bad news : you have a few years until they are 16. !

I paid attention tonight, they stayed at the table for 40 minutes.

And tonight lazy dinner: steak, salad and a plate of crudités. I was able to find the freshest, best fennel at TJ's today that I ever got in the US. Everybody loved them, I need to buy more. I also sliced a little home made roll for the kids, my son learned in the US to dip bread in oil...I found it amusing he asked for it. It's not really typical in Italy or France.

Edited November 8, 2014 by Franci (log)

[c oliver]

I paid attention tonight, they stayed at the table for 40 minutes.

And tonight lazy dinner: steak, salad and a plate of crudités. I was able to find the freshest, best fennel at TJ's today that I ever got in the US. Everybody loved them, I need to buy more. I also sliced a little home made roll for the kids, my son learned in the US to dip bread in oil...I found it amusing he asked for it. It's not really typical in Italy or France.

image.jpg

So they liked the fennel?  Cool.

[JoNorvelleWalker]

Another young food memory.  One day I wanted pie for breakfast.  My mother of course said no.  Then she added:  "Actually in New England, where I come from, people do eat pie for breakfast...but this is not New England."

[gfweb]

I paid attention tonight, they stayed at the table for 40 minutes.

And tonight lazy dinner: steak, salad and a plate of crudités. I was able to find the freshest, best fennel at TJ's today that I ever got in the US. Everybody loved them, I need to buy more. I also sliced a little home made roll for the kids, my son learned in the US to dip bread in oil...I found it amusing he asked for it. It's not really typical in Italy or France.

image.jpg

The whole oil-dipping thing is irritating to me. Restaurants would have us believe its what classy Euros do with their bread...dip it in garlic-doused oil.  I've never seen it in Europe. Butter is not a bad thing.

[Darienne]

The childhood eating memories are amazing, wonderful, terrifying. 

My earliest memory (probably about 4 years old?) was of an English woman, taking care of me over a meal, forcing me to eat a partially soft-boiled egg, telling me of the starving children, etc.  She was paid back in full and to this day I am very wary of every egg I am served that I don't cook.

 

And I remember the Canadian war coupons, blue heavy cardboard, with a center hole.  (If I can remember correctly??)

 

My Mother and Father were vegetarians but the pediatrician refused to care for me unless my Mother fed me meat.  Almost every meal was a T-bone or Porterhouse steak for me broiled to shoe leather.  Never willingly have I eaten steak.  Or sausages burnt to tough casings with gritty bits inside.  Yuck.  (sorry) Ditto for sausages.   My Mother hated cooking and TV dinners became the meal du jour as soon as they were available in Canada.

Believe it or not, I was not a fussy or willful child. 

[gfweb]

I came here to start this thread but I see rotuts beat me to it.

 

Myself, I am a child of the 40's and 50's.  Some of my memories:  I liked my mother's cooking, but some dishes more than others.  When I was about five I expressed my preference for turkey rather than for chicken.  My mother said:  "You can't even tell turkey from chicken!"  I replied:  "Yes, I can -- turkey is drier than chicken."  To this she had no answer.

 

In school I was required to eat canned asparagus (remember this was the early 50's) and salty creamed chipped beef.  Which I threw up.  I never tasted asparagus again till I was twenty one.  After which I became very fond of hollandaise.

 

I did not usually get to go to restaurants.  I do recall one time when a steak was ordered for me and I refused to eat it.  I wanted hamburger.  My mother said if the steak was cut up it would be about the same as hamburger.  The waitress apologized that they did not have hamburger on the menu.  I had quite a tantrum.  It is not surprising I did not get taken to restaurants more often.

 

When I was a bit older, many nights, the adults (there were three of them -- my father was Cherokee and multiple women was a cultural thing) ate a late dinner by themselves and I had a TV dinner in front of the eponymous appliance.  Though as far as I can remember this was by my own misguided choice.

 

Not long after I found myself an orphan.  The food in the orphanage was OK as to quality (except for the maggots on the meat), but a bit lacking as to quantity.  I never went to bed starving but often a bit hungry.

 

Wow, Jo.  If you fill in the spaces between the paragraphs you'd have a novel.

[rotuts]

from :  The Apprentice : My Life in the Kitchen  Jacques Pepin

 

several paragraphs describe food shortages and the difficulty of obtaining food during WWII near Lyon. His mother is in her mid 20's and Jacque has two brothers.  His fathers whereabouts are unknown after the fall of the Maginot Line :

 

he describes his mother making a sugar substitute from boiled down beets:

 

"I loved the stuff almost as much as I hated another one of our staples , Jerusalem artichokes, which we consumed "natural." with

 

no butter, oil or cream.  Their smell made me gag.  But when I grimaced and said " I dont like these," Maman would say

 

"Too bad, Tati, that's all we have."  and I would eat them, though I haven't put a Jerusalem artichoke in my mouth since."

[gfweb]

great book, that.

[Arey]

When I grew up in the 40s and 50s the family dinner table was a very tense place.  Dad didn't really enjoy the company of his family and Mother wasn't happy in the kitchen and didn't enjoy cooking.  One of my earliest memories of food is sitting at the table for what seemed like an eternity refusing to eat lima beans. I hated lima beans as a child and I still do.  I tried them once as an adult, and it reminded me of how much I disliked them.  On Thursday nights when Dad went to Kiwanis, I could have what I wanted for dinner, and Mother would have half a dozen little refrigerator dishes in front of her eating things that there weren't enough of to serve at another meal, but it would be a shame to waste.  On Sundays my brother and I had to sit at the table until Mother and Dad were finished eating. Of course, my brother and I would be done first, then Mother, and after what seemed like forever Dad.  He was a very slow eater, and if it was ham for dinner, it'd take forever for him to get done.  He really enjoyed ham, especially the big white glistening globules of fat.  As an adult it was years before I'd eat ham for dinner.  I rather like it now, but that took a long time.  I still remember as a child thinking he was finally done with dinner and then he'd say "I'll have some more ham".

[gfweb]

Though a loving parent, Mom hated cooking and did it badly.  Jello molds came out for big occasions. Garlic was a foreign and distrusted spice. Veg were cooked to death. Meat incinerated. It was a revelation when I ate out and had a  hamburger that wasn't a hockey puck.

[Ann_T]

Gfweb,  I think we had the same  mother.

 

~Ann