Ha! My dad's family all have dessert after dinner, which I always blamed on them being French. But I think the whole family must have terrible sweet tooths? teeth? My dad has to have something sweet, even if it's a piece of fruit.

That's more what I meant, it's usually fruit, not like a pie or cake or what I think of here when I think of dessert.

Plus there's the whole "fromage ou dessert" question in prix fixe meals, implying that dessert is not really a given.

So: chocolate milk, white bread, dessert after dinner, soda. Everyday food or treat food when you were a kid?

Treat. We got most of those things when we stayed at the paternal grandparents. And we'd get pop (soda) when we had pizza.

I'm wondering whether I was the weird one or if my friends were. So: chocolate milk, white bread, dessert after dinner, soda. Everyday food or treat food when you were a kid?

I was allowed to make my milk chocolate (or pink!) with Quik, because it was the only way to get me to drink it. White bread was the default (Butternut). Soda was bought only if we were sick, because my mom believed that the burps brought forth by carbonation would make us feel better. Cookies were rarely around, and snack-cake-like things (Little Debbie, Twinkies, et al.) were never EVER around.

Dessert after dinner -- I think it was a treat food, but I'm not sure.

Sometimes I wonder if not having access to "treat food" as a kid led to me eating way too much of them as an adult (including now). And sometimes I just wonder if I need to get my eating back to a mentality of "everything is *allowed,* but not everything should be indulged in daily."

And then my inner 7-year-old rebels at that. It's all circular.

I remember being upset as a kid that I was told that I couldn't have chocolate milk or ice cream or cookies because they were fattening, but my friends ate them all the time and were thinner than me.

In general, we didn't have food my parents didn't want to eat in the house, and none of us are huge sweets people. So, no chocolate milk, always whole grain bread, no everyday dessert. Diet Pepsi.

Chocolate milk, check (mom's house only; there was always milk and always Hershey's syrup).

White bread, no--whole wheat and sourdough (both places).

Dessert after dinner, check (as long as we'd eaten all or most of dinner, which was never a problem at mom's house, as she knew exactly what veggies we liked, but caused some nights of huge misery at dad's house).

Soda, check (mom's house only, diet only).

Not just white bread, but Bunny Bread. Ever have that, Hil?

Never even heard of it. The only white bread in our house was challah, and sometimes hot dog and hamburger rolls, because they didn't make whole wheat ones then.

Bunny may just be a New Orleans thing and I'm sure you weren't eating it in college. It was very squishy.

In our recent conversation, my mother's reaction to hearing that my friends' parents let them eat all that sugary stuff was, "Then why aren't my kids the skinniest?" Sometimes I think it's a miracle that my attitudes toward food and weight aren't even more screwed up than they are.

LOVE THE THERAPIST!

I still need to get new paint samples, but am too tired tonight. I am not sure I am going to make it to 8pm.