A lot of my friends, neighbors, and younger family members are currently in the process of raising their children, a job that can be culinarily fraught, at best. One of my friends has two sons–one thirteen, one eight; the thirteen year old has declared himself a strict vegetarian and wears nothing but canvas shoes, and the eleven year old refuses to eat anything but noodles and toast. Someone else I know is raising her not-yet-two-year-old little girl to eat parmigiana reggiano, gorditas, tofu, smoked mozzarella, and manteche from Alleva in New York City. I think this is wonderfully admirable and all; it reminds me of that line in Home Cooking, when Laurie Colwin’s daughter, Rosa, announces from her pram that she would like some Coach Farm’s goat cheese. (I may be mangling the quote, but you get the idea.) The flipside? Dexter. I have nothing but the deepest respect for Pete Wells, but I’m growing a bit tired of Dexter, cute little guy that I’m certain he is.
Anyway, I always find myself getting annoyed at parents who throw up their hands and say “Fenster just won’t eat anything but mashed potatoes and cheerios” or “I have to cook three different meals three times a day–one for me and my husband, one for my daughter, and one for my son.” Please. Allergies and intolerances notwithstanding, what ever happened to mom or grandmom plunking down dinner in front of junior, and junior either eating it, or not? Sure, I know what you’re going to say: Elissa, you don’t have kids. You have cats. So please. Stop talking about what you haven’t experienced. Fair enough.
But the fact is, I was once a child. My mother hated to cook and I pretty much wasn’t crazy about anything she fed me, because that hatred was infused, viscerally, into the food she served. It’s a little understood fact, but if someone really loathes making beef stew, you’re going to taste that disgust right there in the bowl. And I did. Things got marginally better when she discovered Swanson’s frozen dinners; I loved fried chicken and she could give it to me every night–plus a warm apple thing (it wasn’t a pie, a tart, a crumble, or a muffin. What was it?), mashed potatoes with a swirl of previously frozen butter, and industrially perfect peas and carrots. Better yet? It all tasted the same. Absolutely every single time she fed it to me. Is this a good thing? I’m not sure.
I was lucky, though; my Grandma Clara–my mother’s mother–was a great cook, and made insanely delicious Hungarian goulash with spaetzle (her parents came from Budapest), and Friday night roast chicken. Her brisket was spectacular, and she could actually make stuffed breast of veal palatable. Likewise, my father figured out pretty quickly that our tastes were similar and that he could take advantage of that fact on days when he and I would be left to our devices while my mother was having her hair done: he liked pastrami, I liked pastrami. He liked Holsteiner schnitzel, I liked Holsteiner schnitzel. He liked apple strudel from Mrs. Herbst; I liked apple strudel from Mrs. Herbst. He liked Spam; I liked Spam. He wound up having high blood pressure and high cholesterol; I wound up having high blood pressure and high cholesterol.
There were only three occasions that I remember where I sat at the table, stared at my food, and refused to eat: Once, when Grandma Clara unaccountably plunked down a previously-frozen filet of sole wrapped around a mound of previously-frozen spinach. It was white and green and cold in spots and warm in others. I just sat there.
“Whatssa matter with you?” she said.
“I don’t like this,” I responded, staring at the plate.
“It’s brain food. You’ll eat it,” she answered, and ultimately, I did. In bites that were small enough to feed to an amoeba.
This may be why I still don’t like sole, unless it’s doing the backstroke in brown butter. Grandma never fed it to me again.
A few weeks later, shortly after seeing Young Frankenstein at the Ziegfield, I was hauled off to visit my father’s parents in Brooklyn. I was ushered in to the eat-in kitchen. My father’s mother, whose food I rarely ate, placed a lovely little flowered luncheon plate right down in front of me. Sitting on it, without benefit of accoutrement, was a small, grayish, fist-sized brain.
I stared at it for what seemed like hours.
It sat there, like a brain on a plate.
My mind skittered back to the stuffed sole, and Abby Normal.
After several long child-minutes–when 60 seconds feels like 3 hours–my father came in and rescued me.
“Ma, she doesn’t eat brain yet.”
Yet? So this was the culinary goodness I had to look forward to once my palate went on its little jaunt through puberty? How nice for me, I thought.
Two weeks later, in the same kitchen, my great aunt from Russia served me a bowl of cold, creamy borscht with a peeled potato floating in it.
I stared at it. I was convinced that it was a conspiracy.
This great aunt, who was, at best, imposing, looked at my father.
“She doesn’t eat borscht?”
“I don’t eat pink food,” I said.
And that was that.
Thirty-five years later, and I still don’t eat borscht. Or brains. Or frozen sole wrapped around anything else that’s been frozen. But I am abundantly grateful that I was raised largely by people who believed that when the family sat down to a meal, they sat down to a meal. Because the home kitchen is not a restaurant, and mom isn’t in the back preparing several different menu selections for one’s choosing. That isn’t the way it’s supposed to work at home.
I know, I know. I haven’t experienced raising a child who is finicky at the table. Maybe this is where the brain comes in: the next time the kid complains that he won’t eat this or that, plunk some gray matter down on a plate, give him a knife and fork, and watch what happens.
Unless you’re Fergus Henderson, he’ll want what you’re having, peas and all.
