The Stink-Eye

Tonight's dinner was vegetarian chili. The dish was propelled by (1) my husband's desire to eat only healthy, cancer-fighting comestibles, and (2) my desire to slowly but surely consume the BUCKET of dried red beans that has been occupying valuable countertop real-estate for enough time to qualify for adverse possession. Mostly (2). I am on the lookout for Ways With Dried Beans in order to use up the offending legumes with good taste and variety. Sadly, not only did this recipe use a scant 3/4 cup of the beans, but as pictured above, it made my younger son distinctly unhappy. His review of the meal was this: "It made me yack a little bit into my mouth." He is now sequestered in another room until he sees fit to finish his dinner.

I'm of mixed feelings about this. Some of my least-happy childhood memories involve being forced to sit at the table in front of a plate of something I found unpalatable, the dish growing colder and less-appetizing by the minute. One of my father's favorite topics of dinner-table conversation was the poor quality of his own mother's cooking, the details of which any of my sisters can recall by heart, and how good we children had it, relatively speaking. It's hard to argue with his logic. My mom was and is a great cook, given the limitations and food-vogues of the day as well as her straitened budget and large-ish family. She used to "put up" heroic quantities of pickles and jams every year, made her own yogurt, etc. BUT she also liked to make fried rice, which I still won't eat unless somebody's willing to pay me cash money to do it.

Adults are entitled to their food dislikes, and usually deal with them by crafting balanced, healthy diets that omit their most-loathed ingredients. I avoid: mayonnaise. That's pretty much it. And I was brought up right insofar as I will eat ANYTHING that is placed in front of me at a restaurant or somebody else's house, bar NOTHING. So in theory, I object to forcing children to eat things they genuinely hate. But one presents a united front to the kids, parenting-wise, so I'm sitting this one out.