Health~ma to your mom, Callaluna!

Y'all have no idea how reassuring it is to me to see that I'm not the only one whose child is/was slow to outgrow a finicky stage. Annabel at 10 is still picky, though at least she's now more willing to at least take a bite or two of a new thing. And now that she's in massive growth spurt mode, she seems to naturally be choosing more protein. Sure, much of it is still lunch meat, peanut butter, and yogurt, but I'm hoping her new taste for things like orange chicken and chicken-fried steak will be a gateway to somewhat less fried and sugary dishes.

I hope the pump works and quickly, Callaluna.

I bought a foam mattress topper online, and it arrived rolled-up and vacuum-squished into the size of a watermelon. The instructions say to open it on a flat surface and let it air for 24 hours. This presented a problem, since the only flat surface the size of the bed is the bed. I cleared off the table and cut off the plastic. Expanding, it looked unnervingly like something alive. Now it's on my oval table with the foam fingers facing up and a foot or so hanging off the table. It looks like a prehistoric albino giant hedgehog.

So that's how the triffids are spreading.

My parents were from the eat everything on your plate school. I did. Guess who is overweight. My sister( a year younger) would sit for hours and not eat. By the time my youngest sister was around, it was try everything on your plate. I like that idea. because tastes change, and you learn to deal with stuff you don't like on your plate.

best to your mom 'luna

I didn't outgrow a lot of my picky eating until I was in college, and then in my 30s I was willing to try things I had never tried before (Indian food, Thai food, sushi, any Chinese other than sweet and sour chicken all scared me, which is funny to me now since they're all favorites). Part of it is that my tastes changed, and part of it is that I learned ways to prepare food that I previously didn't like in other forms.

I would always try anything and liked almost everything. This was not good for my figure, but I certainly enjoyed food. The current chemo makes everything taste weird. Sweets taste metallic; bitter things taste more bitter; most things are too salty; and things like yogurt and sour cream taste like they've gone off. Whine, whine, whine. On the other hand, I've lost 25 pounds.

I was a fairly picky eater as a kid, but some of that was texture issues, some was my mom's no-fresh-vegetables-when I-can-reheat-them-out-of-a-can approach, and some was things like broccoli and squash that taste great now but were awful to my factory settings tastebuds.

Once some relatives introduced me to Chinese food and I started trying more exotic places on vacations, I found that I liked a wide variety of foods.

I am informed that the chicken gizzards were not delicious. (I think it was at a Japanese place, the kind that specializes in Japanese bar snacks.)

Ah, I got a whole table full of Minnesotans to try grilled chicken livers by ordering that as an appetizer at such a place and letting them smell how much better it was than their own choices.

I was a finicky kid who grew up pretty adventurous in terms of flavors and cuisines, but with a few remaining no-go foods and textures. I've learned to like fish if it's very fresh, especially the meatier-textured varieties like trout and salmon, but I still don't like sushi because of the squishy raw fish texture. Zucchini and eggplant are also on my too squishy to bear list, and brussels sprouts have to be cooked just so. And I've never acquired a taste for beer.

Hubby adored chicken hearts. He'd get skewers-full at the Brazilian place. I couldn't eat them because it was such a blatant display of how many chickens died for my dinner. I have no trouble with the food chain and where my meat comes from, I've been in small-scale meat processing places. But a skewer of 30 chicken hearts is a bit . . . oppressive. Eating bits of grilled chicken breast lets me spread the guilt out among lots of people.

Plus I don't trust the texture. Texture and bitter are my no-gos with food.

I liked food a lot more once I realized that my grandmother and my mother were horrible cooks. In very different ways. My grandma was the main cook and she lived through the depression and hated cooking. Plus we were poor and my grandpa was Archie Bunker in his detestation of any ethnic food, though mostly Italian. My mother could follow a recipe but could and cannot put together a menu, and she over cooks everything. My family also are a lot of things like potato flakes, minute rice, etc. My grandpa who hardly ever cooked made really good soups and salads.

My grandmas recipes were actually pretty sound, though, once you cared about what you were doing and fixed the lumps in the white sauce and seasoned things.