Chapter One Excerpt

My story started long before I knew there would be a story to tell. When I look back on my relationship with food, many things come to my mind. Growing up, my mom was never a foodie. She still isn’t. She has always been ridiculously thin as far back as I can remember. For many years and even now, she has the opposite problem of everyone I have ever known–she can’t gain weight! I usually say, ‘there’s a problem I would love to have’…but maybe I wouldn’t. I often tell her I could help her gain weight, as to me it is super easy. My dad is for sure a foodie. At every holiday, he would pile up his plate with samples of every kind of food available, including every single dessert. He just loves food. Many people do. Honestly, I think it would suck not to love food, considering how often we have to eat. I think he learned about eating and food from his parents and I from him. I’ve always believed people grow up emulating what they see. This can be fortunate or unfortunate. For me, it was unfortunate. 

Most of my early memories about food revolve around spending time with my family. We built our relationships over lots of delicious food. All except one time. I call it the green bean incident. Let me preface this by mentioning that my eating habits were/are quite unusual. I didn’t like any vegetables, any fruits, fish, and most condiments. When I was about five years old, my dad told me not to leave the dinner table until I ate a green bean. I was at the dinner table for at least two hours. I finally ate the green bean. I immediately threw up and haven’t eaten a green bean since. My dad never asked me to do that again. I think he gave up. 

I remember going out for pizza as a family–my parents, my sister and me. It felt like we would sit at the Pizza Gallery forever. My dad has always eaten so slowly, and back then he wouldn’t drink anything until he finished eating. After he drank soda he would smoke a cigarette. This was back in the day when restaurants had smoking sections. We would sit and wait impatiently for all of this to transpire before we could leave. 

I remember my mom making cakes for birthdays out of the Betty Crocker cookbook. One cake she made for me was shaped like a cat with chocolate cake and chocolate icing of course as chocolate is my favorite for all desserts. It had whiskers, eyes, nose, etc. One cake she made for my sister looked like a gingerbread house except it was white and had life savers on it. My sister has never been a big chocolate person so her cake and icing were vanilla. 

When my parents had an argument, the whole family would go to Dairy Queen for ice cream. My mom would always get the peanut buster parfait. The rest of us would get cones (always chocolate for me), and my dad would eat the curls off the tops of all of them! My dad has always loved ice cream and I suppose taught us to use it as a way to deal with disappointments in many situations. Can’t afford the car you want, let’s go get ice cream! I never saw it as a way to soothe pain or resolve problems, but it sure did make you feel better immediately after a disappointment. 

I remember spending a lot of time with my grandparents on my dad’s side. Oh how I loved them. I still miss them so much. They had a huge impact on my life and the person I am today. As soon as you walked in their door, my grandmother and/or my grandfather would ask if you wanted something to drink and eat. That’s what a good host/hostess does, right? In my family, the sign of a good day, event or celebration starts and I guess, ends with you being fed. Food was the measure of a good life. My grandfather always had a jar of nuts next to his chair, mainly peanuts or cashews, and a hunk of sharp cheddar cheese in the refrigerator to share with us. They always had ice cream in the freezer, too. We looked forward to eating all that good stuff every time we visited. And that was in addition to whatever meal we were going to have. 

We had a lot of pizza and spaghetti at my grandparent’s house. One time my uncle was there. I remember because he asked if there was milk. He announced that he couldn’t eat spaghetti without a tall glass of milk. I thought that was weird and funny at the same time.

My grandfather used to cook big delicious steaks back when they didn’t cut the fat off and they weren’t so expensive. My grandfather cooked us breakfast a lot, primarily pancakes using his special mix, with sausage on the side. One time we went camping with my grandparents and my grandfather decided to make pancakes. It was my two cousins, my sister and me. One of my cousins was the only boy. My grandfather asked him how many pancakes he wanted. He said he would have two if they were good. He ate fourteen! 

We went camping with my grandparents a lot. We would have hot dogs and polish sausages over an open fire on a long two pronged fork. We had as many marshmallows as we wanted. We would go to an Amish farm store, Maplehofe, to get fresh eggs and chocolate milk. They had homemade ice cream and we would all get a cone and sit in the front of the store in handmade chairs and swings, eating our cones. Sitting in the camper or at my grandparents house the conversation would go like this: at breakfast, grandfather would say to grandmother, ‘what are we going to have for lunch?’ At lunch, the question was, ‘what are we going to have for dinner? At dinner, he asked, ‘what are we going to have for dessert? And what about tomorrow for breakfast?’ 

From this you can probably tell that my grandfather was the force behind our eating habits. From the time I can remember, he was overweight, but my grandmother was not, which is interesting looking back on things.