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.

Soda was allowed, but not with meals, and only before 5pm because of the caffeine, and not every day. Chocolate milk, you bet, and white bread, but the Pepperidge Farm kind. Dessert we had, but usually cookies or fresh fruit with sour cream and brown sugar on top. Once we got older, ice cream with chocolate sauce was the Sunday night treat.

We had most of those around. The soda was Diet Pepsi though, and the chocolate (or other flavor milk) was, a la Tep, to get us to drink it. Oh god, now I'm remembering my sister used to drink milk with grenadine all the time growing up. Ugh. Dessert was something sweet, but almost never a "made" dessert like a cake or pie.

We defaulted to white bread and soft drinks were available, but juice and kool aid were the home defaults, at least in Jamaica. No chocolate milk. Not a thing. But we always had Milo (like hot chocolate) on hand. For some reason England is less clear. And desserts were around. My mother is an excellent baker and has a huge sweet tooth.

Ugh. It just started raining again. Just in time for the commute home.

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

Chocolate milk was a treat, but not at all unusual in our house. Our house had yummy baked goods quite often as my mom, and later we kids, enjoyed baking, so I'm guessing that means dessert was quite common, but again, always thought of as a treat. I've never liked soda, so I didn't pay attention to whether or not it was in the house. I think it was probably more common as we got older.

As for white bread, if you mean things like Wonder Bread, my mom stopped buying that the day she saw us kids roll our slices into tiny balls and throw them at each other.

My mom was not the food police.

LOVE THE THERAPIST!

Yay!

Steph, my parent's were crazy permissive about food. (Or really, I was super stubborn and wore them down.) And I still have lots of issues with eating well. I sometimes wish my parents had been stricter to give me some self discipline.

Glad to hear it msbelle. The stars are just lining themselves up for this move, aren't they?

chocolate milk was special, white bread was ordinary. dessert was sporadic, I think. I may not remember the dessert because I was never a big sweets eater. Threatening me with no dessert wasn't a problem.

My mom doesn't like baking. She doesn't really like any recipe where she has to follow the rules. When I was in kindergarten and my mom was in the hospital, my aunt came to stay with us for a while. My aunt asked my mom for suggestions for special activities to do with us, and my mom suggested art projects or baking. My aunt loves to bake, so she chose that. She told me that we were going to bake cookies and asked me where we kept the flour. I had no idea what she was talking about. The only baking I'd done with my mom was from a mix.

The one time I remember my mother trying to bake anything was a zucchini cake in the shape of a dinosaur, which some healthy kids cookbook said was a great way to get kids to eat more vegetables. She'd just gotten a new food processor and was using that to shred the zucchini. Halfway through, the top flew off the food processor, and shredded zucchini sprayed all over the kitchen, including on the ceiling.