Family meals growing up were always interesting, and they happened almost every night. My mother made dinner. With a meat and potatoes husband, most of the time, and 3 particular daughters, I am sure that it wasn’t easy to make something that everyone liked. This is still the daily dilemma for many Moms today. Although now, if your child doesn’t like something, you can open the freezer and hand them something to pop into the microwave. But not then.
My mother never forced me to finish a meal or clean my plate. When I was a very young, and naturally too-skinny, girl she would tell people, “She eats just fine and when she wants to.” Mom was responsible for most of my good eating habits, and a few of the not-so-good ones, too. She used to take me to the bakery for a treat (remember those black and white cookies?) at least once a month as I recall. She let me walk to the candy store and buy whatever I could afford, which usually wasn’t much. She never made much of a big deal about either activity.
But what my mom really did for me was just let me be the eater that I was, and offered meals with vegetables daily. My best meal memories actually have to do with another Mom, and that was my grandmother, my mother’s Mom.
My Nana, as she was affectionately called, was an excellent cook. She loved cooking and really knew how. My grandfather had a heart attack in his mid-40s (he lived until he was 78) so she had him on a special diet based on the Kempner rice diet. She cooked “special” things for him. It was those “special” things that I looked forward to tasting when she’d come to visit us for dinner. I am sure that my Mom could have made the same food as my Nana but it was Nana’s domain and she wouldn’t let anyone else do it. She carried a little cooler filled with what I deemed “the good stuff.”
My grandfather’s food was perfect for me — baked potatoes, special tomato sauce, vegetables and usually chicken or fish, which I didn’t ask to eat. It was only recently that I realized that I ate all the vegetables that Nana brought with her whether it was eggplant , broccoli or green beans. I ate plenty of vegetables at home, too, but Nana’s always tasted better. Maybe it was the special love that she put in for my grandfather that made the food taste so good.
My very special memory of my Mom, who is alive and doing well, is in the summer when I was 4 years old. She bought, or maybe grew, English pod peas. I don’t remember eating them before but when I tasted them, I loved them. I recall her giving me an entire bag to shell. I went to a neighbor’s house and while sitting on a swing, I was shelling peas and eating almost as many of the small, sweet rounds as made it into the bowl for my mother. She would add them to macaroni salad. (Yes, this was pre “pasta salad” days). I am sure that I ate macaroni salad because of the peas, and not the other way around.
After I left for college my mother tended a garden. One winter I came home and my mother cooked kale. I didn’t recall ever eating it before – maybe they didn’t sell it in the supermarket. The flavor of those sweet greens still lingers in my mind today —one of the best vegetable eating experiences I’ve had, and lead to me eating kale and other greens often.
Food issues with my mother didn’t exist since she let me eat what I wanted when I wanted without ever thinking that it was strange. When I left home and packed on some extra pounds more than once, my mother didn’t say a word, likely knowing that I had the inner wisdom to eat what I liked, and regain equilibrium and return to my natural weight.
I find it fascinating that I have turned into the quintessential mother in my professional life as The Veggie Queen™. I repeat the Mother’s war cry: “Eat your vegetables every day” although I don’t say it quite that way.
So, I have my mother to thank for good eating habits: eating when I am hungry, never feeling as if I need to finish the food on my plate with a strong desire to eat my vegetables. And when I see my mother we can share a piece of pastry or chocolate, and that also feels like a natural part of healthy eating.
Note: After writing this post I took my dog for a walk, and realized that there is indeed another Mother to which I owe complete gratitude, and that is Mother Earth. For no matter how we treat her, she still continues to provide nourishment to millions of people. She knows how to nurture each plant to provide for each person, and it’s our job to listen and learn. For without Mother Earth, we and bounty wouldn’t be here.
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If you like this post or have any comments about it, please enter them in the comments section below. I want to hear what you’ve got to say about your Mom, or other, experiences that have influenced your eating.
Jill Nussinow says
Heather,
We need to encourage all Moms to forget the power struggles over food, and to keep “good” food in the house. It’s not surprising that your kids eat well with your attitude. Keep it up, and of course you might be able to influence their friends, too.
Sylvia,
We have to be role models for our kids and not make a big deal about eating real food, calling it “healthy” food.
Thanks for sharing your comments here.
Jill
Cigars Online says
My mother also encouraged my eating habits. She just kept food in the house that wasn’t too unhealthy, but wasn’t a huge stickler. I was really skinny too as a kid, and when people made comments she answered with something similar. All of her dishes were always offered with 2 sides of vegetables.. and I never fought her about the veggies. I love them!
-Sylvia
Heather says
It would be so much better if all the moms were like your mom (and my mom too). Food was never a big deal in my house, the candy dish sat on the table and we didn’t even really notice it. My mom would make family dinners 95% of the time, she would always have a meat, a starch and a vegetable and we all just ate what we wanted- no power struggles, no parents begging us to finish our plates. I see so many moms these days who feel the need to control every piece of their child’s life, including force feeding vegetables – if they just backed off, the child would most likely come around to eating vegetables on their own time. Now that I am a mom, I try to be just as relaxed as my mom was and so far it’s working pretty well. My kids are still young (3, 6 and 9) but they are all good eaters in terms of eating a variety of food- vegetables, fruit, and of course fun food too.