Many “grown-ups” now love the foods they hated as children.
Speaking for me, that would be most veggies, especially onions, broccoli, mushrooms, peas and carrots. So long ago, when I was a supper-table nitpicker, I wouldn’t touch those veggies with a 10-foot fork. I would even pick any trace of chopped onions out of mom’s otherwise tasty hotdishes. My parents would scoff and scold but never made me eat that icky stuff.
That was then. Now I relish those foods. Just the other day, I made a huge pot of vegetarian soup using all of those items, plus cabbage. Delicious. Nutritious. My parents were right.
Those memories came tumbling home while deleting stuff from my old computer this week. One of the items was a page of typed-up notes from a school lunch I enjoyed six or seven years ago with four students at Sartell Middle School. I’d meant to write a column about it but never got around to it. I was at the school that day to do a news story about the lunch program. The food director invited me to have lunch with the students.
After receiving my meal in the lunch line, I sat down at a round table with the four students – two girls, two boys. We introduced ourselves and began to eat.
“How do you like school lunches?” I asked.
“Mostly they’re pretty good,” said a girl. “But not when they give us porcupine meatballs. Horrible! They’re covered with this icky grainy stuff.”
The other girl piped up.
“I don’t like them either, but they’re not as bad as a lima-bean casserole my mom made the other day. I mean, I love my mom dearly, but that was, like, soooo not good! But I didn’t tell her that. I had to force myself to eat it.”
A boy gave his two-cents worth.
“My grandma makes awful breakfasts. My mom said try to eat them and pretend to like them. But how can I try to eat them or pretend to like them when grandma’s sitting right there?”
The first girl spoke.
“My mom teaches us to be honest no matter what. So when she makes something I don’t like, I tell her.”
“Always?” I asked.
“Well . . . usually,” she said.
I told them about the foods I hated when I was their age and how I love those foods now. They gave me looks that “said” loudly: Well, that ain’t gonna happen to me!
The girl said with fierce conviction: “I will never ever like porcupine meatballs! Never!”
The other girl chimed in: “Same with lima-bean casserole. I will never even TRY to eat that again!”
The students seemed to be enjoying their lunches that day as they dabbled and nibbled.
“Some days the lunches are really good,” said one of the boys. “That’s because the ones who make them are trying hard to make them tastier.”
The other three nodded their agreement.
But one dissenter of sorts raised a big objection as he scowled at the little bunch of neglected cooked green beans lurking on his tray: “Lunches are OK. Except for green beans. I hate green beans! They give me the creeps.”
Those sociable kids were so bright, articulate and funny. I enjoyed our lunch-time banter. As I was about to leave, there were a few green beans left on my blue tray.
To the boy I said, “Do want the rest of these beans?” moving my tray toward him.
He wasn’t sure if I was serious; he must have wondered if I’d even heard his green-bean rant.
“Umm . . . no thanks,” he said politely.
I started laughing.
“NO, THANKS!” he said loudly, his face brightening with amused relief after he knew I was just kidding.
By this time, those students are probably graduates. I wonder if they now enjoy foods they hated then: dreaded porcupine meatballs, slimy lima beans in anything, and – horror of horrors! – those creepy cooked green beans.
