The fussy parent variation on the fussy eater theme

Growing up, I was as fussy an eater as one was allowed to be in a large family where you ate what was put in front of you.

I recall only two incidents where I had to sit there after everyone else had left the table to finish my meal up.

One was a breakfast, where my mother was forcing me to finish a fried egg that was not fried to my liking. I.e., it was not completely unrunny, as firm as leather. When her back was turned, I managed to get rid of that oogy egg by shoving it down the broken eye socket of my baby doll. That showed her! (My mother, not the baby doll.) I suppose that she eventually discovered my ploy. Surely the remains of a fried egg entombed in a plastic baby doll would smell at some point. But there were no repercussions. Generally, my mother accommodated my requirement for a tough fried egg. 

I outgrew this requirement, of course, and an egg over-easy, with plenty of yolk to sop up with toast, is today a real treat.

The other mother vs. child food incident I remember was sitting there until I finished my creamed corn. Now who in their right mind would make a child eat something with the look and feel of vomit? The inevitable happened, and I don't remember ever again being forced to eat creamed corn.

I did not outgrow this one. The very thought of creamed corn can summon up a bit of a gag reflex.

But mostly my mother went with the flow. She mostly made things we liked, and if once a year I had to gag down creamed chipped beef - a favorite of my father and my sister Kath - or a bit of liver (yuck!), it was fine.

There was no choice when it came to the meat and the potato. But my mother was somewhat flexible when it came to veggies. When there was something nasty on the menu - like cooked spinach (which at the time I despised) - there was always another vegetable on offer (liked can peas), and all you had to do was eat one vegetable and be done with it. 

Then there were the items that were completely optional. Although we always had tomatoes around - those pink pulpy winter ones, the gorgeous farm stand summer natives - I never ate a tomato until I was in my teens.

For anything I found objectionable - I was never a roast beef/roast veal/roast lamb fan - I developed a knack for filling my mouth with milk and sluicing down something whatever it was I didn't like. This came in especially handy when we were at my Grandmother Wolf's lake house, and every meal seemed to feature the tough and fibrous waxed ("vaxed") beans she grew in her sadismo garden. 

While my mother wanted peace in her time, she would never have done separate menus. I know people whose kids, well into their teens, only eat "white foods" - chicken, pasta with butter, etc. That would not have flown in our house, that's for sure.

But my mother wasn't an especially adventurous cook. My father was a meat and potatoes man, and while she ventured out a bit - she made great spaghetti sauce, for one thing - she mostly stuck to the basics. (One time, for her birthday - yes, you read that right, her birthday - she made chicken jumbalaya with rice and okra. We refused to eat it, and my father jumped to our defense. He was suspicious of it, as well. My parents got over this little set-to - they adored each other - but after that my mother stayed completely on the straight and narrow, cooking-wise.)

Somehow, through all this, I grew up to be a fairly adventurous eater. Not Anthony Bourdain adventurous, mind you, but Main South Worcester adventurous for sure. While there are foods I prefer over others, I'm mostly okay with anything. 

As a kid though...

Once in a while, someone's birthday party would be a lunch. We all went home for lunch anyway, so no big deal to go to another kid's house. Ellen Walsh's lunch party fell on a Friday, and her mother served us tuna sandwiches. Which would have been fine by me, but Mrs. Walsh put green pepper in her tuna salad. The horror. Milk sluice to the rescue. 

Years later, at age 14, I was given a BLT - now one of my favorite sandwiches - and had a moment of crisis when I had to decide whether to take the tomato out or just go with it. By that point, I was too embarrassed to admit I didn't eat tomatoes, so I took the plunge. 

In any case, I was completely cracked up by a question that was sent into the Dear Prudence column on Slate:

Q.  My son, “Chris,” is 9. A few weeks ago, we decided to open our bubble to include the family of “Neil,” Chris’s best friend. Both of Neil’s parents are doctors, so this seemed like a safe decision. Both parents were born and raised in India. We let Chris have dinner at their place the other night since both boys were having a great time together. When we came to pick up Chris, Neil’s mom recounted to me how much chicken curry and lentils and vegetables Chris ate. I couldn’t believe that they served my son spicy curries without even calling to ask us if that would be OK! I was taken aback and gently mentioned that spicy foods can be hard on small tummies, but it didn’t seem to register. Thankfully Chris didn’t get sick. My wife says to drop it because any conversation will look racial in nature and to only let the boys play at our place. Please help.

Please help, alright.

You're saying your kid ate Indian food for the first time, and apparently liked it enough to eat a lot of it, and you've got a problem with that? Huh?

You should be congratulating yourselves on having raised a kid who's a bit adventurous and plenty polite, rather than a sniveling, whiny boo-boo baby crying about how Neil's meanie parents made him eat nasty "foreign" food.

This reminds me of the night when my mother served spaghetti when my aunt and uncle and their kids were up for dinner. They usually came on Friday, which meant fish, but this must have been a mid-week special of some sort. Pretty bold of my mother to serve her (excellent) spaghetti to folks who were even blander food-wise than we were. 

Anyway, when he saw the spaghetti, my cousin Rob, who must have been 13 or 14 at the time, turned to his mother and asked her, "Do I eat this?" At age 7 or 8, I was a bit shocked by this question. How could you get to the advanced age of 13 or 14 and not know if you ate something?

Anyway, my Aunt Margaret's answer was pretty much "you do now."

Which was, of course, the right answer. 

And here's Prudie's right answer to the idiot-stick father who only wants the kids to play at his house where, presumably, he'll be spooning them pabulum for dinner.

A. At the risk of taking the bait, you must realize that millions of people (presumably both of Neil’s parents, not to mention Neil himself) regularly eat lentils and vegetables as children in perfect safety. There’s something so grotesque about the infantilizing language of “gently informing someone”—especially when that someone is “two doctors”—about “small tummies,” coupled with the racist horror that your 9-year-old ate and enjoyed a few servings of chicken curry, one of the world’s most popular and adaptable dishes. Not all curries are spicy, and not all spices pack heat; your son ate a meal he enjoyed (one you didn’t have to prepare or clean up after ) and continued to enjoy good health for the rest of the evening. Neil’s parents didn’t take him to a ghost pepper festival and turn him loose. Your kid was not endangered by chicken curry, and your problem is not one that Neil’s parents can fix for you. Take your wife’s advice and let this go.

I love that "your problem is not one that Neil's parents can fix for you."

This guy's got to get over being such a fussy parent.