Food Nazis: Matt’s perspective

I’m so glad that my sister remembers the trials and tribulations surrounding food like I do. It’s true. Eating was something that was only tolerated in our home.

One of the saving graces for me was my lactose intolerance as a child. Though I quickly outgrew the problem, I did not tell my parents because it allowed me to drink fruit juice at dinner in lieu of milk.

The only three liquids we were ever allowed to ingest as children were water, milk and a bastardized version of Kool-Aid.

A cup of apple juice was like a treasure.

It was also odd how some of our parents’ decisions seemed to have a nutritional underpinning while others did not.

Yes, you can have a Pop Tart once a week, but unfrosted only. No unnecessary sugar for you. And only healthy cereals like Wheaties and Corn Flakes. Nothing with an animal or a leprechaun on the box.

But here, have a slice of bologna on white bread with catsup for every single lunch of the entire summer.

And potato chips to go along with these sandwich monstrosities?

Never. I don’t think I ever ate a potato chip unless I was visiting a friend or relative. 

I almost never saw a slice of cheese as a child, other than the blocks of cheese that we would receive sometimes from WIC. I still think of American cheese as a priceless commodity. When I see it in my refrigerator today, I can’t help but want to horde it.

Snacks in the summer were often picked off my grandfather’s fruit trees. He lived next door and grew apples, pears and peaches in abundance. We were forced to eat the fruit right off the tree regardless of how ripe it might be.

I like to say that as a child, I never went hungry but was always hungry.

We were active, growing children who played outside everyday regardless of weather or temperature, but we were probably living on a diet of about 2,500 calories.

Kelli was correct about dinner, too. Grub was exceptionally common.

“It consisted of scrambled hamburger and baked beans. The state should have removed us from the home for that one.”

Yes, indeed.

There was also a lot of spaghetti, almost never with any meat in the sauce, and many times without sauce. My mother eventually bought a pressure cooker, and for a time, everything was cooked in there. An endless parade of meatless stews and unidentifiable soups. One day she placed the heated pressure cooker on the counter and burned a hole in the shape of the pressure cooker about one centimeter deep. The repair of the counter consisted of placing a cutting board over the hole and calling it a day.

Our parents also dropped us off at Colt Spring Park in Woonsocket, Rhode Island every day in the summer because a free lunch wagon would come through the park and feed any child who was playing there.

Mind you, my parents didn’t stay with us. They dropped us off in a strange park in another state and left us for a few hours so we could get a boxed lunch from the Woonsocket social services department.

I’ll have to ask Kelli to write about those days in the park. I recall them being surreal and scary.