Food Which Has Been Prepared For My Offspring Which They Have Refused To Eat This Week

[pegkerr]

1. homemade beef stew

2. Shepherd's Pie (sorry, naomikritzer; yes, they are ingrates)

3. Squash, stuffed with a cottage cheese/parmesan cheese/apple mixture

4. Crescent rolls, topped with cheese/tomato/bell pepper mixture

Comments

[naomikritzer]

Out of curiosity, what were your eating habits like when you were a child?

I would happily eat shrimp, clam chowder, and deep-fried liver, but turned up my noise at tuna noodle casserole, and macaroni and cheese. I didn't much care for cheese as a kid, and didn't like anything where it was a central ingredient. I finally acquired a taste for cheese when I was in college.

It was macaroni and cheese (my mother made a really good baked kind -- I actually liked the fake Kraft stuff, which I sometimes got for lunch) that precipitated the applesauce-on-the-head incident. Have I told you that story? I can't remember.

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

If you have ever told me the applesauce on the head story, I've forgotten it, so tell it to me again.

I think I was a pretty open-minded eater as a child (although I didn't like beans or broccoli). I had two instances where I had abrupt shifts in my tastes.

The first occurred at age twenty-one, when I was studying in England. I remember distinctly thinking, "Hmm, I wonder what I should make for dinner. I know. I'll make broccoli. That sounds good." And then I stopped in shock and whacked myself on the head, and said, "Who are you? Since when have you liked broccoli?" But it was true: suddenly my taste for three specific foods switched on: I went suddenly from hating to loving broccoli, grapefruit and peas, and I have loved them ever since.

The other was when I became pregnant, and I abruptly started craving beans for the first time. That taste, too, has remained strongly in the "on" position.

Weird.

[naomikritzer]

When I was pregnant with Kiera, I suddenly developed an aversion to all things fishy. I normally love shrimp, but while pregnant, I couldn't stand them. It was bizarre. I regained my taste for fish and seafood after the delivery.

Here's the applesauce story. When I was ten or thereabouts, my parents my macaroni and cheese one night, and my mother gave me a look of death and told me that if I couldn't come up with anything nice to say, I was not to say anything at all. Since I have always been a smart-ass, I said, "Fine. Ooooooh, my favorite kind of milk. Oh, yummy, the best kind of salt. Oh, and we're having applesauce with dinner...."

My mother was serving the applesauce into bowls, and as I said this, she'd just scooped up a big spoonful of it. And instead of putting it in the bowl, she dumped it on my head.

I stopped dead and then shrieked, "You put applesauce on my head!"

"Yes, I did!" my mother said. "Now eat your dinner!"

"But... but... but... I have applesauce on my head!"

My mother started giggling and dabbed at my head with the napkins. "You can go take a bath after dinner. You needed one anyway."

So I wiped the applesauce out of my hair (it had started dripping down the back of my neck) and ate dinner, much subdued. And -- here is the kind of stunning thing -- I never complained about the food again. I didn't always like dinner, and frequently picked at it if it wasn't something I cared for, but having provoked my mother into completely uncharacteristic behavior once, I was afraid of what might happen if I complained again.

Not that I'm suggesting this as a remedy or anything. But the applesauce did wash out, no harm done.