Picky

The fact that I love to cook is a minor miracle, but the fact that I eat as wide a variety of food as I do is an even bigger miracle. I had two strikes against me from the beginning, the first was my mother couldn't cook to save her life and my crazy Aunt Rageaholic used to use threats, intimidation, and physical violence against me to try to make me eat the foods she wanted me to eat when I was a kid.

I'm not sure why my mom was such a lousy cook but back then I didn't care. We didn't go hungry or anything, we just ate a lot of bad foods and convenience foods, it was the dawn of the convenience food era after all. Mom would cook that abomination called 'city chicken,' which was actually veal, as I've written about before, and she'd cook a lot of things like hot dogs, instant mashed potatoes, TV dinners, and lots of things that came out of tin cans. I remember eating lots of canned pudding, I used to love the lemon and butterscotch flavors, tamales in a can, salami and liver loaf sandwiches, sugar sweetened cold cereals, and store brand Twinkies, which were called 'Tiger Tails.' And of course we'd wash all that down with Coke, Kool Aid, and whatever store brand drinks were on sale. I'm guessing that having to look after five rambunctious kids and a mentally ill husband sapped her energy so much that she just took the quickest way possible to fill our always hungry bellies.

About the only fresh thing I remember eating was lettuce. Fruit, not so much. Back then I didn't know any better and I didn't care. I loved eating all that store bought crap and I loved it even more when we got to eat out at McDonald's or A&W.

Don't get me wrong I loved my mom dearly but she really didn't do me any favors in teaching me how and what to eat. She indulged us a bit too much and it was during that period of my life where I began to develop my bad eating habits.

But if my mom indulged us, my crazy aunt went in the other direction, which was just as bad if not worse. Since I went the first ten years of my life eating crap I had no idea what to make of the stuff my aunt made and forced us to eat when we moved in with her and her family after mom died. Suddenly I was confronted with a bevy of weird and strange looking foods. I had seen tomatoes in the grocery store but I had never seen one sliced up and put on my plate. I had had salad a few times at my Aunt Carol's house but when we moved out to the farm in Howell we had it every night and it was drenched in oil and vinegar, two liquids I had never seen or tasted before. Other foods I came into contact with at Aunt Rageaholic's house that I had never eaten before were easy over eggs, fritters, stuffed cabbage, stuffed peppers, fried chicken, parsnips, turnips, stewed greens, fried okra, perogies, beef tongue, liver and onions, and many more. And it was there that I was confronted with the food that made, and still makes me, gag and vomit, the cooked carrot.

What my crazy aunt should have done was let me come to these new foods on my terms and on my time, if I didn't like what she made for lunch or supper then I could have just not eaten it and gone hungry, but that wasn't her way. She lived for and loved to control people, that was her sole purpose in life, to control and dominate others, especially small children. She was one of those people who loved having a big family because having a big family gave her more people to control. And she was not shy about doing it either.

When she ran into a kid, mostly me, who did not like something she cooked she'd shriek, "You don't have to like it, you just have to eat it." My brothers and sister were old enough to appreciate all those new foods, I wasn't. I was a picky eater. I didn't want real mashed potatoes, I wanted those flake potatoes that came from a box. I didn't want fresh tomatoes, I wanted ketchup. And I especially didn't want cooked carrots because as I said before they made me vomit. But that didn't matter to my aunt. What mattered was that I bent to her will and that I did what she told me to do.

The Sunday morning ritual back then, and for many years hence, was before we all left for church, and she made sure we all went to church so everyone could see what a great Christian she was for having taken in me and my siblings, she would sear a pot roast, peel carrots and potatoes, and put all that stuff in a big pot. She'd leave it cooking on low while were in church and by the time we got home it would be done. Then she'd make a salad and we'd have a big meal around one o'clock most every Sunday. I'd eat the meat, the potatoes, and the salad but every week I would not eat the carrots. And every week she'd scream at me for not eating them. Some weeks she'd slap me for not eating them and some weeks she hit me, or get Uncle Adultery to hit me, with a belt to try to make me eat those vile fucking carrots. Some weeks I'd chop them up into tiny pieces and move them around on my plate to make it look like they were gone and some weeks I'd hide them in my napkin and toss it away before she knew what was happening. And most every week one or more of my cousins, her biological kids, would remind her that I had not eaten my carrots. They took perverse pleasure in seeing me get hit, screamed at, and abused for not eating something that made me throw up.

The Sunday meal that made me hate cooked carrots, my cousins, and my crazy aunt.

But all her bullying went for naught. I never ate those cooked carrots. No matter how loudly she screamed, no matter how many times she slapped me, no matter how many times she hit me with a belt, no matter how many times her kids snitched on me, I never ate those fucking slimy things. I still don't eat them to this day.

Back before my heart attack when I still would go around her and her family they would make references to me not eating cooked carrots. They would call those references 'carrot jokes,' as in, "Hey make sure he gets an extra helping of carrots with his meal!" And they'd all laugh uproariously, and point at me. To them it was a joke, to me it was a reminder of how I grew up a third class citizen in what was supposed to be my home. After my cardiologist told me to reduce stress levels in all areas of my life in the wake of my heart attack five years ago I cut my crazy aunt and her kids out of my life because every time I saw or was around them they'd bring up cooked carrots and other stupid stuff from my childhood. My life has been much more peaceful and good without them in it.

But happily I didn't let my bad experiences with food scar me for life. I've grown to love fresh fruit and vegetables, mostly because my girlfriend Sparky was patient with me when we got together and she introduced eating fresh tasty food to my lifeless diet. And I've also grown to love cooking with fresh ingredients.

So if you have kids who are picky eaters now, whatever you do, don't hit them or sceam at them to try to get them to eat whatever foods ghey won't eat right now. Nine time out of ten they'll grow out of being picky and they'll learn to eat and appreciate a wide variety of foods. Being the stirct unyielding parent bent on dominating them to your will will only fuck them up in the long run. Trust me on this one, even though I don't have kids I know what I'm talking about.