Normal Is Weird #4

Christopher R                                                                                                                                                    9/26/10

                The food my mother ate was whatever her mother made for her and her sisters to eat. If my grandmother didn’t cook for whatever reason there would just be a group of really hungry children. However my grandmother cooked all the time. She would wake up early to make biscuits, bacon, sausages, eggs, grits and anything else available to help feed the family of eleven. Food was always being cooked when my grandmother was home and the Sunday meals were the largest. Usually you would see some kind of pork, rice, macaroni and cheese, stuffing, turkey, chicken, and cabbage. Eating this kind of meal is something my mother became use to and it was considered normal for her to eat like this because this is how everyone in my family cooked. Then for desserts there would be pie, and this would happen every weekend without fail. If my mother didn’t want any of that food she just would have to go without eating. Making a statement such as, “Well maybe next Sunday we can try something different, maybe we could eat spaghetti or try to change it up” just wouldn’t be given any attention because it was a routine. A routine that would not be broken and trying to raise a family of eleven people isn’t expensive so knowing that my grandmother could full up eleven people at an affordable cost is also something that couldn’t be disputed.

                This was also the food that my grandmother was bought up eating and she learned how to prepare these certain foods from her mom. These food routines were what my grandmother learned to cook making it easier for her to feed my mother and her sisters. At that point in time there were a lot less books that were talking about what was considered healthy and new inexpensive ways to make new foods. All that was thought about food to my mom was what she was going to eat and when she was going to eat it. There was no say in it for her because she lived in a suburb were the closest fast food place was 10 miles away and there were not very many fast food places to begin with. Her food was generally based upon what was consumed by her mother and that’s what she learned to cook so a lot of that is what I eat now.

                My food ways however are still different from my mom because there are many more options I can choose from. At lunch there are many places you can go and money isn’t usually a problem because all fast food restaurants are always trying to prove they have the cheapest meal. For example while I type this I just saw an Applebees commercial that was advertising a “20 dollar dinner for two”. Also living in the city I can be exposed to all kinds of food. In Chinatown I can pick up more traditional Chinese food. Or you can go to other places that have foods from other nationalities. Compared to my mother who only got to eat the foods that her mother made I get to try a variety of foods because it is more accessible and the time and courses the foods are served in are less routine. Compared to my grandmother who had to cook every night my mother now usually gives me fast food when she comes home because it’s the inexpensive quick food variety in which she couldn’t get. This meaning my mother doesn’t have to cook however between her and my father she is the one that cooks because she was taught how to cook all the things my grandmother cooked. She also wakes early every now and then to prepare breakfast but it’s in a smaller quantity because this is a family of 2. And even though my mother doesn’t cook everyday she does make a meal every Sunday. Her and my aunts and uncles all do this because it’s a tradition that they’ve gotten so use to and enjoyed that they passed it down.

                With the family of 2 it’s easier to have different foods because only two people have to agree upon it instead of 11 and there can be a decision made. The picture that I posted of my meal is chicken and waffles because that is something that I get from outside. It also has chicken which is something my family eats a lot of and it’s also something that I enjoy.  It’s also something that’s really easy to find where I live and there are a lot of people who live where I live that eat this food. My ideas about food ways is you eat whatever your parents eat. When you’re younger and can barely speak your parents decide what you’re going to eat. They usually get this from your parents. Then when your five and can speak but don’t have a say in what you eat only what you like your parents continue to give you food they like so they think you’ll like this too. In other cases your parents feed you certain foods so many times it just becomes something that you get use to eating. In the case of my mother even though she didn’t like some of the foods she was feed she had to eat it because if not she wouldn’t eat and sometimes she learned to like the foods she ate. Then these foods get passed down, those get passed down but each time it changes a little. Like people who grew up eating meat (because of their parents) then turn in vegetarians the new found vegetarians might influence their kids to become vegetarians. So even though in some cases maybe even twenty percent of cases  when the kids defer away from the parents eating habits they influence THEIR kids to the eating habits they have and its passed on and changed a little bit but the majority is passed on.