I remember not being a particularly fussy eater as a child. I believe the only problem with me was that I didn't eat much. This may have been because I wasn't very well until I was about five years of age. After my antrums were drained my health was restored but, judging from childhood photos, I remained a string bean. Boarding school made me a fussier eater but hunger drove me to eat all but the most gross offerings. These included beetroot and junket. To this day I can't stand either. I gave beetroot a good try when it was served with salad three days in a row at lunch. I forced it down the first two but on the third I gagged too much and gave up.
I hadn't run into a fussy eater until my son came along. As a baby he was just so easy care he was a dream and remained that way in all but one respect. He was a fussy eater. Once he went onto solids there was a repertoire of foods he would stick to and from which he would not vary. These were: eggs, sausages, fish fingers, corn on the cob, salami, cheese, noodles, bananas, ice cream and spaghetti without sauce. He did eat cereal with milk and may have eaten toast, I can't remember. Straying outside these lines just wasn't worth it as he would just stubbornly refuse to open his mouth. I told my doctor about it and he said that my son was getting enough protein and sustenance and not to worry.
I would give my son his dinner early when he was young and cook for my husband and I and we would eat later. Eventually son developed a liking for my Spaghetti Bolognese, a passion he retains to this day now he and his wife make it. We lived in Hong Kong when he was between the ages of two and five and a half. We would take him with us to restaurants and one of my favourite memories is of watching him eat a bowl of noodles with chopsticks. His head would be just above table height and he would use two hands to stick the chopsticks into the bowl then bring the sticks together and grip them in one hand, raise them up high with their clump of noodles, bend his head to the side and then lower the noodles into his mouth. He enjoyed doing this and didn't want help. To me it remains a sign of his tremendous self reliance that has endured and I admire to this day.
I remember being five years old and having breakfast with my parents. My mother, father and I would sit at the dining table and eat poached eggs on toast. I used to have cloudy apple juice to drink with mine. I would watch fascinated as Dad would cut the egg that sat atop his toast into nine squares by slicing two lines one way and another two the other way. This left the nice, soft, runny yolk sitting on the middle square and that was the best bit. He always did it this way and for years I did too. Over time, however, I realised that to get some yolk with the other parts of the egg I had to be less tidy and after that I carved mine up so I can get some in every mouth full but I am still nostalgic for Dad's method.
As I grew older my father would become very frustrated watching me eat a roast dinner accompanied by vegetables. Dad would put meat with gravy on his fork, add potato, pumpkin or whatever and then squeeze some peas on it as well. I ate everything separately. One night he took my fork over and made a compilation and asked me to try it. I did and went straight back to eating everything separately. Mum told him not to worry. Eventually I ate the way of adults. It all comes around in the end.
This brings me back to son. There is something particularly galling about trying to encourage your teenage child to try some salad with dinner. Once he began to eat the same meals as we did, I would put out salad with certain dishes like spaghetti or steaks and urge him to try. I gave up pretty quickly and the salad remained untouched by him for years until one day when he was about fifteen. We were eating and, all of a sudden, son puts some salad on his plate and, lo and behold, begins to actually eat it. I gazed at him in wonder and said, "And when did you start to eat salad?"
"Oh, I tried it at a so and so's place," he replied. I can't remember his friend's name now, hence the 'so and so'. I was pleased I suppose, but also a bit miffed. What had so and so's mother or father done to make salad so appealing? My thought is, however, that it wasn't the appealing look of the salad but the fact that another teenage boy was eating it. I think that was why he deigned to try it or was shamed into it and then discovered that he liked it.
The worst experience his father and I had making him eat was on our return journey from living in Hong Kong when he was five and a half. We arrived in Perth, Western Australia on a weekend. Now Perth was a bit backward about opening anything on weekends and that meant we had to rely totally on the kitchen of our upmarket hotel to feed us. I think the chef was deeply insulted at having to create dishes for our son that were to be delivered to our room. In fact we didn't want him to create anything. When we ordered an apple and some cheese that's all we wanted but, not only did it take an hour but what arrived was a cored apple with cheese grilled in the centre. Guess who wouldn't touch it? We sent a message: simple please, no embellishments. Next time we ordered a bowl of spaghetti noodles. Please don't add anything. Either the chef was brain dead or toying with us. He melted butter over it and then ground fresh parsley on the top. Again son starved as he wouldn't touch it. I think he survived on milk the entire weekend. There was simply not a shop open where we could buy him anything.
I also spent years trying to get him to spell properly. You know how parents have to go through the spelling exercise at night with their children on the words they are learning that week. This went on into high school and, brilliant as son was in most subjects, his spelling was never perfect until year four of high school and then suddenly it was. I will add here that I was a brilliant speller from the get go. Son, however, was like a chrysalis in regard to things such as food and spelling. At some stage he just emerged from the pupa and did it properly. Actually I think he just made the decision to do so and before that happened he just went with the flow.
Having a child is like being handed a self drive car that comes with absolutely no instructions and is designed to be self autonomous and take no passengers. First you have to figure out what fuel it takes, and it spits quite a few types out, then you must maintain it until it can start its own motor and begin to steer itself. Having then put your heart and soul into looking after it until it reaches self sufficiency, you then watch it putt putt off into the distance and hope it comes back to visit.
Of course it's not just children that sometimes prove difficult to feed. My ex husband had a grandfather who used to demand a roast lamb dinner every night of his married life from his long suffering wife. Apparently he put her in a mental home for a few years but she eventually returned home. He was eccentric and my guess is that he had driven her to a nervous breakdown. It's not always the nuts who end up in the nut house.
I live with a Polish man and have for many years. He is lovely in so many ways and so utterly perverse in others. So many meals I used to make are now off the menu as he simply refuses to eat them. I ask him what his ex wife used to cook and tell him to get the recipes. But it's not just that. In his world and his past he could open the refrigerator door and find all manner of goodies to eat. You know, pre-cooked meals and so forth as well as smoked meats, sausages and cheeses. It never occurs to him that food goes off and also that it costs money. My fridge always has the necessities but I'm not going to keep it fully stocked with different meals to fancy someone's hunger pangs at any hour of the day or night. When I dare to ask him in the morning what he wants for dinner so I can get something out of the freezer to cook he grumbles. I then tell him that he's lucky he doesn't have to go out and hunt for something to bring back to cook.
As for Polish food, some is good and a lot of it is not. I recall a meal at his friend's house that began with an entree made up of a boiled egg around which was wrapped a herring, both of which sat on a potato, carrot and pea salad in mayonnaise. As for Bigos, well it's basically a hunting stew that, in the past, you would keep adding to as time went by. Modern versions have smoked sausages, pork and I honestly don't know what else but it always tastes distinctly suspect to me. My partner will bring things home from his ex's house that she has kindly cooked. We all get on famously. I love her pirozhki and some of her desserts but some things I leave to him to consume and there is always so much.
He also loathes lamb. I think they used to get mutton in Poland that wasn't very good when he was growing up and nothing will make him eat it. There is also one other thing I simply can't get him to try and that is a prawn. I don't much like fish but I love crustaceans. A prawn does not taste like fish but he just says they are the cockroach of the deep and won't touch them. I love lobster too but when I realise some are boiled alive, I'd have to be pretty sure they were killed humanely. Even so they can live to be one hundred and I would just feel like a spoilsport if my desiring to eat one cut short a long life.
My partner also just goes off things at a whim. One moment he'll like my curry, the next he won't. I make a pretty mean Chili con Carne but, no, it's too spicy and besides, like Bolognese, there's tomato in it. He hates tomato in cooked dishes and there aren't many stews and sauces that don't have it. My one staple for him, pork rissoles, he decided the other day I was making too thick so he formed the patties next time I made them. They were just as thick but smaller in diameter.
Now I come to my grandchildren. The eldest boy lives on not much but noodles and wraps, sometimes with chicken in them. Oddly they all love my Spinach Pie. Granddaughter likes Taco boats with sour cream and she also likes noodles. Youngest grandson isn't picky yet but I'll bet you anything he'll like noodles too. The Chinese really came up with a winner there.
Children usually grow out of their choosiness but I am blessed with an adult who is like a child but he makes up for it in other ways. Aren't we lucky to be able to be so choosy? Imagine if we had to hunt and grow things to eat to survive without any farmers or supermarkets to help us. Also imagine the time when humans ate what they caught raw. Apparently cooking food led to us being smarter but what on earth made us so picky when we have so much choice?
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