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Every night, as a child, my family’s dinner was the first line of a year-long war around the table. A fight cry? Three more bites…
On the side of the quarrel: my fairy parents counted the rest of the fork like prison sentences on a plate. On the other side of the pepper mill was myself, eager to eat again and again.
My stomach might be empty, but I was full of fear. A globule of drumsticks or the slippage of a muddy mushroom would take me from the plate for months.
In those stressful lunch breaks, I longed for a big, hairy dog that would be sitting at my feet, sitcom-style, like a secret garbage dump. Our cat, Jasmine T. Fluffy, looked at me mercilessly from a corner chair.
“In the morning you never see a child’s skeleton on the table at dinner,” my colorful father told me as he smiled. He was born in the first year of the Great Depression. And, along with my mother – who grew up in the World War II victory garden – I represented stories about distant food origins, the little girl from the Reagan era, longing for Lucky Charms but only allowed Chex. If we were to be stuck in the fight, it was to wait for the father’s tactic.
Many meals ended with me alone under the glow of the kitchen table lamp. Much later in life, I realized that we are not what we eat, how is it.
In our house, my mother used to cook. But our family’s fights weren’t over as the chef was good enough (he was extraordinary). When his hard work came to my plate, tears were shed – and voices were raised – that I couldn’t even try.
I say “come on,” that’s how my mother’s kitchen worked: a confident single-woman restaurant came from her brown electric stove. If a sign had hung in his window, he would have said: Help is not wanted.
From the porch, I saw his hands shake over pots and cutting boards like a mysterious alchemist; The “joy of cooking” was open to his witches. But, to a keen eater, this silver ritual gave each roast a mysterious scary meat that “touched” the unidentified sides and sauces on the plate that were as scary to me as UFOs.
Looking back, I would have preferred to have said: come in and prepare with you. Because of the problem, I’ve learned, that there are too few chefs in the kitchen with modern meals. Especially children.
When I found out about the adult, in a dinner interview, I realized that my favorite food I grew up with was fried trout. Loyal friends on my grilled cheese were impressed; what an adventurer I must have been!
But my father was a fly fisherman and he often let me along with the cold Rogue River. I would put each catch in its wet basket with grass, then when I got home I saw my mother clean and saw the silver bodies in the sink in her gut. All of this was horrible: unpleasant odors, foggy, weird eyes. But all the time I wanted fried trout in the girl – with a crispy fan tail and all.
Thinking back, my fear of food often became familiar with this meal. It was like giving out a night light in a dark room. Soaking the fish in egg yolks and letting them crawl out of the flour made boogie on my plate a favorite finger lick.
When I arrived, I finally realized the terrible failure that can be felt when a loved one rejects your food. My mother then, in the late 60s and after a stem cell transplant, became my charge. I was a childless parent, a caregiver who consumed my mother’s daily calories, protein, and water. We lived in a bubble when his newborn immune system arrived; I took over grocery shopping and meal planning. And with her strength suppressed, my mother finally invited me to her kitchen for help.
Some nights he would ask me for a dish that he would prepare himself just to get away from it. The palate was moving depending on the drugs he took to survive. I was worried about her nutrition, trying to find anything she thought was right, seeing my frustration a decade earlier. I wondered how he had managed to put his patience and culinary creativity into getting into those bags of frozen peas.
There was one thing he wanted all the time: a chocolate one-on-one. Calories? Check. Nutritious? No. As her Nurse Ratched, I changed her name to smoothies and I remember when, between the cocoa powder oven and the whey protein oven, I also put avocado and kale in the blender. When he saw all the green get into its sweetness, my eyes narrowed and he threw a wrinkled “yuck”. I negotiated with him: taste it and I’ll go to McDonald’s if it’s a commotion. But he was successful! Creamy and thick, under his favorite guidance.
I became addicted to gaining taste buds. After all, we weren’t fighting over food, we were fighting for his life.
A few years later, his mother passed away. And then my father too. Among their things, I have family cookbooks and recipe cards that read like road maps that I’ve never driven or hitchhiked. I missed all the adventures. I still don’t know how to prepare a Thanksgiving turkey (as a pescatarian, I just lift it). Although I hate mayonnaise in tuna salad, I like the extra side of the tartar sauce with my fish and chips. The culinary curiosities would come out only by a mother.
As much as I’m passionate about eating, I’m not completely reformed. I like it and like it, but don’t be afraid. I want all vegetables except eggplant. But I love eggs (unlike the mother who despised them). My commotion probably overwhelms the chef, but in the last year I’ve only had to enjoy myself in the kitchen. Enjoy your meal to my only appetite.
I really want to tell my parents that everything went well. Honestly, I would give anything to sit at that table with dinner again, roasted zucchini in the oven to freshen up my plate. The real joy of cooking is eating together. I wish I had cooked together too. Then it would be about recounting memories made over the bite taken at dinner. More fried trout; fewer stops.
So please stick all the parents in the kitchen: let the kids get into it. Allow to stir, mash and mash the dough. Let the spoon lick and pour in the flour too quickly. Yes, it is more complicated and may require a little more time. But they will not only learn to cook, they will learn to eat. Teach the recipe for living. Inhale to try for a lifetime (for initial palates, at least 10 to 15 times). Hey, they’re even accepting salty tears!
Erika is one of the writers, producers and creators Waffles + Mochi, Produced by Barack and Michelle Obama’s Higher Ground Productions and Netflix. He lives in Los Angeles with his partner and Hazel, their four-shoe selector. Say “hi” at helloerika.com and listen with your vegetables @wafflesandmochiofficial.
PS 7 tips for selective children and how to encourage children to eat vegetables.
(Photo by Marco Govel / Stocksy.)
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