no boys allowed in the room!!!!

My mother-in-law used to be fanatical about getting my husband to eat oatmeal for breakfast each day. (This was during the first time she lived with us, about 15 years ago.) Eventually he snapped and said, "Oats, oats, oats! What am I, a horse?"

What was Dr Johnson's definition? Oats: fed to horses, cattle and the Scots?

as many problems as i had with my parents when i was growing up, even through my 20s - now i feel like i did pretty well in the parents department. it still bugs me the way they watch tv when i go there to visit (they still live in the same house i grew up in). I know i couldn't stay there for more than 2 days without going insane, and that is entirely due to past history and ingrained habits and responses - like some sort of specific antibodies i developed as a child/teenager. Like anyone else that was not raised by my parents would be like, "What's your problem? Why are you annoyed by this?"

My aunt once had a three-day standoff with my grandfather over uneaten oatmeal - and ultimately won - so my mom never pulled that move, also chemo made me a fussy eater who nevertheless liked vegetables so for a multitude of reasons I was never forced into a battle of wills over food, and I can pretty confidently say that I never heard my dad, my uncle or my grandfather a) call a woman fat/ugly for any reason b) say no to a malt or a milkshake - they are responsible for me having mad diner/soda fountain skills. LOL at sarahel - my mom has a version of that called the Meatectomy.

I loved breakfast cereal but we were emphatically not allowed 'sugar cereals' unless they came in one of those variety packs where there was 5 Cheerios/corn flakes options and one tiny box of Sugar Pops - which, obviously, my sister and I would practically have fistfights over. Food was kind of rationed for most of the time I was in high school because my mom was long-term sick and off work, so she'd buy things with specific meals in mind and we'd be in deep shit if we just ate something random out of the fridge or picked at something left-over. If there was six of an item, we'd get yelled at if we ate more than two. Up until I went off to college, my mom was a sugar policeman at home - no ready-made foods, no margarine or diet meals, no 'white trash' goods like Tang and Spaghettios or basically anything eaten in abundance at my grade-school best friend's house - but she would buy bakery-made brownies for 'treats' and make really good Scandinavian and spritz cookies for Christmas.

Once they were left to their own devices, my mom and sister started eating a load of crap. I came home to find Cheetos and Coco Pops at the top of a junk food mountain.

What was Dr Johnson's definition? Oats: fed to horses, cattle and the Scots?

That was before the days of steel-cut oats. If you try to grind oats like you would any other grain, you get something that cooks up into a disgusting clumpy mess.

beats and i have a good relationship. i dont like to cook and she doesnt like to eat. (xps)

I loved breakfast cereal but we were emphatically not allowed 'sugar cereals' unless they came in one of those variety packs where there was 5 Cheerios/corn flakes options and one tiny box of Sugar Pops - which, obviously, my sister and I would practically have fistfights over.

ME TOO! My mother - as some sort of educational activity - made a rule that i could only have cereal if sugar was not the first or second ingredient, except for those variety packs. Losing the variety pack lottery = having to eat the bran flakes.

One of the bad girls i was friends with in 2nd grade - her name was Amy - and her mom bought her & her sister Cookie Crisp. I thought that that must be what people from Soviet Bloc countries must feel like when they visit the West.

ugh school lunches were even more depressing than the breakfast options

i mean, we usually had the option of cornflakes OR weetbix, occasionally rice bubbles, all of which you could at least drown in sugar, but lunch options... i feel depressed thinking about it.

my mom still does not understand that i hate canned tuna

my choices: marmite or jam or pb on bread. sometimes an apple or an orange. sometimes homebaked cookies.

like if i had to live a real life version of "No Exit" with just me and parents in the house i grew up in - hell would be never being able to escape the smell of canned tuna.

i mean, we usually had the option of cornflakes OR weetbix, occasionally rice bubbles, all of which you could at least drown in sugar, but lunch options... i feel depressed thinking about it.

― just1n3, Tuesday, September 14, 2010 4:10 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark
this was us too but to this day i still eat weetbix drowned in brown sugar (just not in the morning because i usually lapse into a sugar coma.)

also lunch of choice for me was vegemite and cheese sandwiches

I feel like I ate peanut butter & jelly sandwiches for 10 years but I'm sure that's not true, I'm sure my mom tried to put in some tuna and once in a while, sandwich meat, but PBNJ was cheaper. A lot cheaper. The bread was always preservative-free and from a local bakery, bought one day old in bulk and frozen. The peanut butter either came from the organic food co-up which was SO NOT HIP back in those days, it was like a shack in the bad part of a neighboring city, where they could afford a little space to sell like dried herbs and 23-grain hippy shit in bulk. You had to bring your own containers iirc. The jelly was frequently home-made so SHUT UP AND STOP WHINING I know I know but I kind of hate PBNJ now.

Oh I was gonna say: the peanut butter was either co-op or the "healthy" stuff from the normal store where all the oil collects at the top and you have to stir it endlessly. No sugar added, is the important thing.

Billions of xposts (I'll go back and read properly later) but the first thing the NPR story said was that there really isn't a freshman 15. New college students gain an average of five pounds their first year, so the whole premise of the story was flawed.

One of the bad girls i was friends with in 2nd grade - her name was Amy - and her mom bought her & her sister Cookie Crisp. I thought that that must be what people from Soviet Bloc countries must feel like when they visit the West.

I TOTALLY felt this way about instant mashed potatoes at one friend's house -- my favorite food and I didn't have to wait until Thanksgiving/Christmas/Sunday dinner to have it!!!! Unfortunately after what was probably 3-4 normal servings, they made me feel sick. At least real potatoes just make you FULL.

oh man my mom to this day considers instant mash potatoes a sign of the middle class apocolypse. she hand mashed potatoes every night. such a good irish girl.

many many xposts later

i'm really into having smoothies that are vanilla yogurt + banana + strawberries + rose water
i am TOTALLY INTO EATING THINGS THAT TASTE LIKE FLOWERS. my dream is to have a garden full of edible flowers and also edible other foods.

new favorite fancy food thing:

v thin whole grain water cracker topped with goat chz, then rose petal jam, then a thin slice of crisp apple

also butter cookies with orange flower water in them and date filling

both of those sound totally delicious!

or fig and rose petal jam crepes

all three of these things are TOTALLY DELICIOUS

anyway i didn't learn anything from my mom about cooking or eating aside from hide your dexatrim somewhere the kid won't find it

it's like there is nothing more decadent on earth than eating FLOWERS

the one thing that prevented my mom from being a total 80s superwoman type is that she had no self-discipline about food. She would try various diets, then decide that she really liked food, and she'd rather be fat and happy eating what she wanted, than be thin and eating depressing weight watchers meals.

I remember a period when I was probably about 12, addicted to cream crackers + cheese, also toast + butter + lime marmalade or pineapple jam. I'd make 2 pieces then straight after I'd eaten them go and make another 2, and so on.

that's how i was with the sourdough toast! same age.

I don't like things that taste like flowers, but I will remember that LL does, and I'll have a worthy recipient if anyone else ever gives me a box of rose- and violet-flavored chocolates.

i had a summer of bread and popsicles too. for me it was whole wheat bread with strawberry jam, age 15. froz fruit bars.

OMG i would pee my pants for some violet chocolates.

and i don't even like chocolate that much

Things I did not eat because chemo made them pukesome: canned tuna, baked beans, egg yolks, fat on meat, peanut butter, PBJ sandwches, bread crusts.

Things my mother did not feed us because they were trashy foods for trashy people: Kool-Aid, Tang, Wonder bread, Spaghettios, Chef Boy-ar-dee, McDonalds, actually the list is endless and maybe if she still reinforced class through food we wouldn't be discussing her girl-crush on Sarah Palin, etc.

Only ready-meal allowed in the house: Stouffer's macaroni and cheese. Possibly the best mac'n'cheese (available from a grocer's freezer) in the world.

This is not to say my mother disapproved of fast food. She is a huge fan of Wendy's and I can usually find a Frosty going polar in the freezer when I'm home. Also, the one time my mother got stoned enough to get the munchies she drove to Taco Bell, got to the intercom and told the server 'I've got ten bucks. SURPRISE ME.' When she got back her friend explained to her about 'munchies'.

hahaha oh man, that's funny

suzy - explain more about the "meatectomy" - this sounds like something i should tell my mother about this weekend when we celebrate her 65th birthday. I asked her if she wanted to go to IHOP, because they have senior discounts - and that was met with a quick, "Ha ha. .... No."

Suzy, sometimes I think our mothers are each other's light and dark sides.

I'm sure I've mentioned that I was SO EXCITED to have Ramen Noodles in college. So excited, that I PANICKED that the package didn't say how much water you're supposed to add, and I couldn't find anyone to ask, and I realized I DID NOT KNOW (and this was pre-internet in yr dorm, so...). Imagine my relief when I realized you just submerge them and drain it off later.

what? i always ate mine like soup.

i have the sort of schedule that allows me to mix a cocktail for myself at 5pm if i please, and this is what i made in honor of drinks that taste like flowers:

gin
lime
orange la croix sparkling water
teeny bit of rose water
put a piece of beet (that i was cutting up for dinner) in it to make it pink, then removed it leaving the drink the shade of pink lemonade. (-sugar/+flowers)

Meatectomy is almost self-explanatory - on the rare occasions I could not finish my dinner, in the same manner as sarahel's mom, mine would 'let me off' if I finished all the protein. Because of my anti-yolk stance she acted as if she'd died and gone to heaven when she discovered Tupperware made a yolk separator. Your mother may also appreciate the genius move on her part in restaurants - she'd challenge me and my sister to 'get a 10' for good behaviour in restaurants and never rated us above a seven, even if we were total angels.

My mom has a lot about her that is very cool (chases and catches burglars, the 'munchies' story, supernatural ability to win at slots in NA casinos) but I think her late sister was a positive influence on her politics and with my aunt gone, she's got no peers who'll call her on her rightward drift. My aunt lived four houses away and had grape-filled trellises and a garden the size of a swimming pool. In the '70s she made soup from golden cherry tomatoes and dusted it with parmesan, did Chinese New Year dinners and generally led culinary expeditions, which I wish my mom would do somewhere that doesn't serve Monte Cristos.

it's like there is nothing more decadent on earth than eating FLOWERS
hahaa totally! a few weeks ago i was in chinatown with a guy friend and we got these chinese baked goods, kinda like shortbread - mine was lotus flavoured and was mauve coloured, his was green tea flavoured and was light green coloured. he was like, 'this is gross', so gave it to me - it tasted like jasmin flowers! it was super weird, but i loved it, or the experience of it. i love food that doesn't really taste like food. which prob means i just like ideas more than food, lol.

i would drink that drink like now

LL - I love things that taste like flowers. Ppl used to think it was so gross that I love violet candies but to me they're amazing! Also love floral drinks. There's a bar here that does a lavender and lemon cocktail that is my fav ever.

you all need to get your hands on some rose petal preserves
it is seriously nectar of the gods

Never had it. Brand rec?

xps ^me too! Rose turkish delight <3 also honey lavender ice cream <3

I LOVE Turkish Delight. I would probably pass out if I had honey lavender ice cream.

xp honey lavender ice cream sounds amazing. (I'm curious about the Rose preserves as well–where do you buy that?)

Violet candies are amazing. Jasmine tea is amazing. I haven't had much more of the others, but I'm willing to try.

Oh yeah, I'm a big jasmine tea fan.

http://www.victoryseeds.com/candystore/images/chowards/chowards_violet.gif

I can eat a whole roll of those in minutes.

those make my face itch like fuck! bleeaarrg

i got the rose preserves at the middle eastern market on foster
brand: kafkas

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3555/3281853303_31926e7103.jpg

honey lavender ice cream sounds AMAZING

i made lavender-rosemary syrup several times and used it in various cocktails
delish -- you get the flowery and the herby at the same time!

flowery and herby are basically my two favorite flavors aside from mango