Do you eat stuff you never had a child growing up?

[Ottakee]

I was sitting her eating my lunch and talking to my mom on the phone when she said my lunch sounded good. Now, this is NOTHING that she would have EVER served. She won't even eat it.

 

I had a baby spring mix salad with crunchies and feta cheese topped with ranch and broccoli cheese soup with extra extra broccoli.

 

Growing up our 3 veggies were green beans, peas, and corn. Possibly very very rarely tomatoes, cucumber, or carrots---but that was almost always at grandmas. VERY VERY rarely a salad.

 

Cheese consisted of moz. for pizza, colby, and cheese slices. Anything else was too exotic.

 

My mom never enjoyed cooking and had about 6-10 meals that she made on a rotating basis. Things like goulash, pea soup, chili, pig in the blankets, a roast, hamburgers, and chicken. Maybe a meat loaf occ. or some ham but never fish (other than the occ. fish stick).

 

We all made it to adulthood.

 

Now though, I will eat most anything and love different things--feta cheese, artichokes, different fish, almost any veggie, etc.

 

Anyone else grow up with a more limited diet and then love lots of other foods as an adult?

[Daisy]

Actually I eat a lot like I did when I was a kid and my Dad WASN'T home. My mom was very adventurous and healthy, but my Dad wasn't. So she'd make these great meals when he was out of town. LOL.

 

Our family eats Thai, Indian, etc. My Dad would die. My mom would love it.

Edited November 11, 2011 by Daisy

[Meriwether]

Not much.

[KarenNC]

When I was growing up, exotic foreign food was LaChoy chow mein in the can or stroganoff made with Campbell's soup and once in a while we went to the nearest city for "authentic foreign food"----at Taco Bell.:D

 

Now we routinely eat sushi, Thai, Indian Chinese, Mexican (more than just Taco Bell ;)), Middle Eastern, Greek, etc---even adventuring to Ethiopian, etc occasionally. We've had many conversations about how differently my daughter is being raised in terms of culinary exposure.

 

I will eat a much larger selection of vegetables now than when I was a kid (but I still cannot abide okra in any form).

[twoforjoy]

Definitely. Growing up we mostly had Italian food, chicken breasts/nuggets, meatloaf, and sometimes barbecue. Neither one of my parents like spicy food at all, so we never ate it. And I don't think my mom ever served a veggie other than broccoli, carrots, corn, or cauliflower.

 

My parents are both willing to try almost anything, and like a wide variety of foods, but neither one enjoys cooking very much. My FIL has a really small number of things he'll eat (he grew up in one of those "Eat what you're served or don't eat" households, and instead of growing to love everything he was served, when he got old enough, he just decided he would never again eat anything he didn't like), so DH's family rotated the same 4 or 5 meals his entire childhood. I love to cook, and both of us will eat almost anything, so I'm a lot more likely to try new things or make more complicated meals.

 

We're definitely more adventurous/experimental, in terms of what we eat, than either of our families were.

[GailV]

Yeah, but that has more to do with what foods are now easily available in shops and restaurants vs. what was available when I was little.

 

My parents are actually fairly adventurous, and have spent time traveling the world in their later years, sampling all sorts of cuisine. But growing up next to a tiny grocery store, 1 car family, not much money, the choices were limited.

 

I WILL say that we're on a collards binge right now at our house. Never had them while growing up!

[LidiyaDawn]

I was sitting her eating my lunch and talking to my mom on the phone when she said my lunch sounded good. Now, this is NOTHING that she would have EVER served. She won't even eat it.

 

I had a baby spring mix salad with crunchies and feta cheese topped with ranch and broccoli cheese soup with extra extra broccoli.

 

Growing up our 3 veggies were green beans, peas, and corn. Possibly very very rarely tomatoes, cucumber, or carrots---but that was almost always at grandmas. VERY VERY rarely a salad.

 

Cheese consisted of moz. for pizza, colby, and cheese slices. Anything else was too exotic.

 

My mom never enjoyed cooking and had about 6-10 meals that she made on a rotating basis. Things like goulash, pea soup, chili, pig in the blankets, a roast, hamburgers, and chicken. Maybe a meat loaf occ. or some ham but never fish (other than the occ. fish stick).

 

We all made it to adulthood.

 

Now though, I will eat most anything and love different things--feta cheese, artichokes, different fish, almost any veggie, etc.

 

Anyone else grow up with a more limited diet and then love lots of other foods as an adult?

 

Your description of the meals you had growing up is very much like ours were as well….and as they are here now. See, *I* would happily eat all sorts of 'adventurous' foods - but dh and the kids won't. ESPECIALLY dh.

 

I'd love your lunch…dh and the kids would run away. :tongue_smilie:

[kiana]

Yep.

 

My father hated brussels sprouts so I'd never had them until I went to dinner at someone's house. I said 'ooh, what are the little baby cabbages?' and they were ... astonished, to say the least.

[Mothersweets]

When I was growing up, exotic foreign food was LaChoy chow mein in the can or stroganoff made with Campbell's soup and once in a while we went to the nearest city for "authentic foreign food"----at Taco Bell.:D

 

Now we routinely eat sushi, Thai, Indian Chinese, Mexican (more than just Taco Bell ;)), Middle Eastern, Greek, etc---even adventuring to Ethiopian, etc occasionally. We've had many conversations about how differently my daughter is being raised in terms of culinary exposure.

 

I will eat a much larger selection of vegetables now than when I was a kid (but I still cannot abide okra in any form).

 

 

You ate that, too?!! I really liked it when I was a kid. I tried it again as an adult and don't know what my mom was thinking, bless her heart. :D

[abbeyej]

We weren't particularly limited in foods for the time... We ate a fair variety of veggies, etc. But there are a lot of foods that are widely available now that simply weren't around (unless you were part of a particular community) when I was younger.

 

I think I was in my teens before I had hummus. I was at college in California when I learned to love Thai food. I didn't have sushi 'til college. I wasn't familiar with arugula 'til then either. I'm sure there are other things as well that I consider normal / everyday foods now that I simply didn't encounter as a kid.

 

I wonder if my own kids will have the same experience? Are there things that would seem wildly exotic to me now, that my kids will serve me without thinking twice in 20 years?

 

Actually, we were at a restaurant a couple of years ago, and dd was chowing down on sushi. Dh made some observation (like yours) about how this was *not* food we would have encountered at her age. I agreed, but then laughed and said, "Watch this: Hey, F! Have you ever had a Twinkie?" She looked confused and ventured a guess or two as to what a Twinkie was, clearly based on something she'd read, not on actual experience. ;) So, yes, our family eats all sorts of "exotic" things -- and yet, some things that would have been considered "normal" (even if they were rare treats) when dh and I were kids have sort of vanished...

 

[ETA: Dh made sure to buy the kids Twinkies a couple of weeks after that... Cultural literacy and all, dontcha know. ;)]

Edited November 11, 2011 by abbeyej

[Cinder]

I eat pretty much the same as when growing up--except no Spam. And, of course, we have access to a wider variety of foods than we did 30 years ago. In spite of being poor, my mom worked hard to cook us a variety of good foods. She especially loved salad, so we ate a lot of salad, too. The only thing I can think of that I eat now that we didn't eat growing up is southern-style BBQ. I only knew of Korean-style bbq back then.

 

Dh, on the other hand, eats a lot more variety now. His mom never used onions or bellpeppers in her cooking. Not much garlic, either. The food was pretty bland. Of course, these are his favorite ingredients--they go in just about everything!

[redsquirrel]

Absolutely. My mom isn't much of a cook and is very limited in her likes. In fact, I was complaining about how VERY limited my second son is in his food choices and I realized that he eats just like my mom! ACK!

[kewb]

My mother made a wide variety of foods but I was a very picky eater when I was a kid. Now I will eat almost anything.

[TravelingChris]

I eat a lot more types of food than I did growing up but it wasn't so much that my parents restricted our food choices. Lot of what is available now wasn't then and also some food has come down a lot in price. So while I ate many kinds of vegetables and fruits, I actually wasn't familiar with either Chinese or Pizza until I went to college. My parents didn;t ever take us out to a restaurant unless we were on vacation and then we usually went to family style restaurants. I had been to some upscale restaurants too but not to pizza or Chinese restaurants. I had encountered both middle eastern and Korean food earlier because I had friends from those areas but my idea of pizza was the soggy mess that they served in school cafeterias and which looked gross to me. I do love pizza now but not school pizza.

[elegantlion]

I have a way more diversified diet than I did as a child. My mother was not an exotic cook, and we were limited on funds. We had a lot of spaghetti, gross mystery meats that I would serve to my family over my dead body (minute steaks anyone?) - I don't even know what they really were, except a bunch of gristle. We never had Chinese food, which I adore. Salad was iceberg lettuc with a tomato. We ate a lot of typical midwestern country meals.

 

My mom is a heck of a baker, homemade bread, cinnamon rolls, cookies. But now I have a gluten sensitivity, so I can't enjoy it anymore.

 

I'm a picky eater, not a great cook, but ds gets a much more broad diet.

[elise1mds]

I could have written your post, word for word. My mother is not an adventurous cook, but first and foremost, she's CHEAP. She *still* cooks from a very limited repertoire, but when she asks what we've had for meals lately ("to get ideas") she always says mine sound delicious. She'll never cook them or try them, but she likes the idea of them. I still remember the time my dad finally insisted on having asparagus as a veggie for dinner; I was about 12. My mother freaked out because A) that was expensive compared to a can of corn or green beans and B) she had no idea how to cook asparagus. I think she microwaved it or boiled it beyond all recognition. It was truly disgusting, and my father never asked again. The only other time he gave input into dinner was when he was sick and tired of her making a dish twice a week. I still can't hear the words 'cabbage skillet' or 'Spanish rice' without my stomach clenching.

 

My kids, DH and I, OTOH, love asparagus. And kale. And fresh spinach. And all manner of foods my mother has never tried. Last year my mother mentioned she'd never had real maple syrup because it was 'so expensive.' The kids insisted we buy her some as part of her birthday present, so we did. They couldn't believe she'd never had it. She called me up last year to say she'd bought a butternut squash because it was 'so cheap,' but she had no idea how to cook it. I'm still not entirely sure she ever did cook it; I suspect she took it to work and gave it to a coworker.

 

My sister is an adventurous eater also. When I came down to visit her, we took our mother to an Ethiopian restaurant. That was fun :lol:

[Jenny in Florida]

Yes, I eat many things we didn't eat in my household of origin.

 

Common meals in my childhood home were macaroni and cheese, pork chops with Rice-a-Roni on the side, beef roast rubbed with powdered onion soup mix, lots of things from cans and boxes that had been "dressed up a little." Thanksgiving at our house was a tiny turkey, glazed sweet potatoes out of a can with marshmallows on top, brown-and-serve rolls, Stove Top stuffing, instant mashed potatoes and a frozen pie.

 

I didn't discover Indian food until I was an adult and out of the house, and now it's my favorite thing. We ate no beans except baked ones out of a can, and now I make three or four meals a week with garbanzos and black beans and lentils . . . I'd never had hummus, and now it's a staple.

 

We didn't bake anything except from mixes, and now I do almost all my baking -- including most of our bread -- from scratch.

 

To be fair, my parents were more adventurous eaters than I was. They liked to go to the Japanese restaurant, for example. But I was picky as a kid and didn't get much encouragement to branch out at all. I spent most of my teen years living on very well-done hamburgers, french fries, plain cheese pizza, mac and cheese and diet Coke. I'm not sure I ate a vegetable for 10 years.

[foxbridgeacademy]

I was sitting her eating my lunch and talking to my mom on the phone when she said my lunch sounded good. Now, this is NOTHING that she would have EVER served. She won't even eat it.

 

I had a baby spring mix salad with crunchies and feta cheese topped with ranch and broccoli cheese soup with extra extra broccoli.

 

Growing up our 3 veggies were green beans, peas, and corn. Possibly very very rarely tomatoes, cucumber, or carrots---but that was almost always at grandmas. VERY VERY rarely a salad.

 

Cheese consisted of moz. for pizza, colby, and cheese slices. Anything else was too exotic.

 

My mom never enjoyed cooking and had about 6-10 meals that she made on a rotating basis. Things like goulash, pea soup, chili, pig in the blankets, a roast, hamburgers, and chicken. Maybe a meat loaf occ. or some ham but never fish (other than the occ. fish stick).

 

We all made it to adulthood.

 

Now though, I will eat most anything and love different things--feta cheese, artichokes, different fish, almost any veggie, etc.

 

Anyone else grow up with a more limited diet and then love lots of other foods as an adult?

 

HMMMM, are our mothers related?

Growing up 90% of our veggies were canned, anything fresh (broc and Caulif.) were eaten as a snack raw with dip. We ate a lot of startch and meat. My mother also hated to cook and had only a dozen or so "recipes". It didn't help that we were "poor but proud". Meaning very little money and NO government help. As an adult I am very adventurous with my food choices. The only problem is that my DH and DD are "meat and potato" only. DS is a bit more willing but only so far. It's very hard to cook for me and still feed all of them. So I end up finding that I fix the same dozen or so meals over and over again.

[6packofun]

All the time! But you know what? So does my mom! LOL I think she settled into her own routine of convenient foods to make as a single mom and they worked, so doing something different wasn't on her radar then. But now, she's a vegetarian and loves to try new things. (She probably did back then, too, but it just wasn't a priority.)

 

I also feel like the unhealthy things that I have access to are MORE unhealthy than what she had/did, but on the other side of the coin, we eat many more healthy things because there is a distinct focus on that in our society (some would disagree, lol)...if you care about that and look for it. :)

[lailasmum]

The food we ate growing up was very bland. Traditional English Meat and two veg. Pretty healthy but dull. Lots of veg off my dad's allotments.

The closest we came to foreign food was bad stir fries my mum did but they were really over cooked and more stew fries.

 

I had curry at 18 for the first time. Had Chili sometime around then too. Must have had things like Falafal and Hummus in my 20s. I eat pretty much anything now and my mum has increased her range but is pretty fussy. She loves hummus and mild chili and curry but is turns her nose up at a lot of things. She is quite a bad cook though, she never enjoyed it.

 

So I eat a lot larger range of foods than I did growing up.

Edited November 11, 2011 by lailasmum

[Lily_Grace]

I had a very limited diet as a kid. My mom made about 10-15 different dishes on a regular basis, but we were allowed to have cereal or a sandwich if we didn't like what was cooked. Guess who was the picky eater? :D

 

As adults dh and I marvel about how different the kids eat and how they're willing to try nearly anything. We don't eat anything like how we did growing up or how dh's family did, either. Dh became an amazing cook over the past few years and it's like every week we're trying something new.

[kalphs]

I was sitting her eating my lunch and talking to my mom on the phone when she said my lunch sounded good. Now, this is NOTHING that she would have EVER served. She won't even eat it.

 

I had a baby spring mix salad with crunchies and feta cheese topped with ranch and broccoli cheese soup with extra extra broccoli.

 

Growing up our 3 veggies were green beans, peas, and corn. Possibly very very rarely tomatoes, cucumber, or carrots---but that was almost always at grandmas. VERY VERY rarely a salad.

 

Cheese consisted of moz. for pizza, colby, and cheese slices. Anything else was too exotic.

 

My mom never enjoyed cooking and had about 6-10 meals that she made on a rotating basis. Things like goulash, pea soup, chili, pig in the blankets, a roast, hamburgers, and chicken. Maybe a meat loaf occ. or some ham but never fish (other than the occ. fish stick).

 

We all made it to adulthood.

 

Now though, I will eat most anything and love different things--feta cheese, artichokes, different fish, almost any veggie, etc.

 

Anyone else grow up with a more limited diet and then love lots of other foods as an adult?

If you take a look at Almanzo's diet in the book "Farmer Boy" it pretty much sums up the table fare I had as a child growing up.

Our familly tastes are eclectic, Chinese being at the top of the list along with Indian.

We rarely eat the farm food fare I described from childhood.

My parents continued eating the same farm food until they passed on.

Dh's parents are of the same mindset.

:)

Edited November 11, 2011 by kalphs

[Mommyof4ks]

I do eat some of the same things, but there are new things in my diet too.

[Annie Laurie]

My mom is into very healthy food now, but when we were kids I think she just hadn't learned some of the things she knows now, and she was a working mom and probably stuck to familiar, easy to cook things for that reason. So her and I eat similar things now and trade recipes, but different from when I was a kid.

 

We had traditional things back then: lasagna, chix and broccoli casserole, stews, chicken pot pie, etc. She always served veggies and it was not unhealthy, just wasn't anything unusual and there were things I didn't know existed until I was an adult. Some of those things I still make myself.

 

My dad took over the cooking from the time I was about 5th grade on and he is much more unhealthy and traditional than my mom as far as eating, even today. When he started cooking we had meat loaf and casseroles w cr of stuff soup a lot.

 

What's funny is my kids are used to things like salmon, portobello mushrooms, artichokes, sushi, proscuitto, etc. They can be picky in a funny way, and don't typically like kid food like chix nuggets and mac and cheese.

[justamouse]

I grew up with a very limited diet, NAna was a great pie baker, but not the greatest cook. She was a 40s cook.

 

My mom was a little more out there, but she married a guy who like things bland.

 

I eat everything. All kinds of crazy stuff. Sushi, lots of different fishes, game meats, lots of spices.

[Parrothead]

Sure. I eat a few different things now that I didn't have growing up. Mostly things my parents did not like. For instance, I love beets. I did not have my first taste of one until I was 35.

[unsinkable]

I was sitting her eating my lunch and talking to my mom on the phone when she said my lunch sounded good. Now, this is NOTHING that she would have EVER served. She won't even eat it.

 

I had a baby spring mix salad with crunchies and feta cheese topped with ranch and broccoli cheese soup with extra extra broccoli.

 

Growing up our 3 veggies were green beans, peas, and corn. Possibly very very rarely tomatoes, cucumber, or carrots---but that was almost always at grandmas. VERY VERY rarely a salad.

 

Cheese consisted of moz. for pizza, colby, and cheese slices. Anything else was too exotic.

 

My mom never enjoyed cooking and had about 6-10 meals that she made on a rotating basis. Things like goulash, pea soup, chili, pig in the blankets, a roast, hamburgers, and chicken. Maybe a meat loaf occ. or some ham but never fish (other than the occ. fish stick).

 

We all made it to adulthood.

 

Now though, I will eat most anything and love different things--feta cheese, artichokes, different fish, almost any veggie, etc.

 

Anyone else grow up with a more limited diet and then love lots of other foods as an adult?

 

As a I child, I ate very little. I think it was a texture thing.

 

I eat much bigger variety of food now. I will eat almost any vegetable or starch. For meats, I only eat plain jane meats in standard cuts. I'll eat pork chops but not pig feet. I'll eat beef but not tongue or liver. KWIM? I'll only eat chicken and turkey for poultry. I am allergic to shellfish. I'll taste most fish.

[prairiewindmomma]

---

Edited November 10, 2021 by prairiewindmomma

[Guest lara916]

My parents made really plain food. Just meat and potatoes with a veggie at almost every meal. Steak, baked potato, green beans or chicken mashed potatoes and corn etc.. and my mom burned a lot of food lol. I hardly recall eating a grilled cheese sandwhich that wasn't burned on one side and I remember eating rice a roni so much it could make me gag now just thinking of it, lol.

 

Growing up with a really drab diet definitely didn't affect my palate as an adult. I LOVE cooking and looking at recipe and I am a total foodie. My kids have had a really wide variety of foods since they were young and so aren't very picky. For instance, they have been eating caviar w/cream cheese since they were around 18 months old.

 

I love Indian and Thai food and am trying to learn to cook some of those meals but for the most part I cook pretty healthy meals. It's mostly lean meats and fish and a vegetarian meal once a week. We're trying to drastically reduce our meat intake to around 10% of what we eat per day.

 

I will say though, there's nothing like a good bowl of chili or chipped beef on toast like my Dad used to make when I need some comfort food :)

[Annie]

Yes. My mom is a great cook, but I do eat pretty many different things now. Partially because I can't make the things she's good at as well as she does, so I don't bother trying. :tongue_smilie:

 

I did make them roasted beets for the first time last summer. Mmmmmm

 

Oh, and congratulations, this thread has made me want sushi for dinner when I already have chicken in the crock pot.

[regentrude]

Sure. I grew up in communist East Germany.

There are a lot of foods that I never had growing up.

Neither my parents nor I had any trouble embracing the wider variety of foods that became available after the fall of the Wall.

 

I never had Chinese or any other kind of "ethnic" food until I was 21.

[Joyofsixreboot]

I eat everything but as a kid it was all home fried everything. My mother even fried corn. Typically dinner was a fried meat, fried potatoes, bread and gravy( the milk kind you make in the frying pan) and whatever was in the garden. I never make gravy but we had it 6 nights/week as a kid.

[Mom-ninja.]

My mom always cooks from boxes and cans. If it doesn't come in a box or a can, she doesn't cook it.

 

I cook everything from scratch. We eat the complete opposite of how I grew up eating. Especially now that we are gluten free.

[Wabi Sabi]

I would say that the vast majority of what we eat now are things that my mother would have NEVER served.

 

While we still have things like spaghetti, meatloaf, or vegetable soup from time to time we never ate anything ethnic, salads were only iceberg lettuce with Wishbone Italian dressing, my mother gags at the thought of sushi, she hates anything with garlic, etc. We ate lots of Hamburger Helper and Kraft macaroni. I was an adult before I realized that I actually liked spinach and that it didn't have to come out of a can, LOL.

 

Funny thing is out of my 8 siblings I'd say that 6 of us are foodies to a certain degree. We've all eat very similarly now, but it's nothing at all how we ate as kids.

 

For example, this week:

 

Monday we had Chinese. When I was in junior high my mom took me out for an eggroll once and that was WILD! It's a regular thing for us.

 

Tuesday was butternut squash soup. My mother has never touched a squash in her life.

 

Wednesday we had sushi. There's no way Mom would even be willing to try one tiny bite.

 

Thursday was beans and rice topped with salsa, cilantro, etc. The only beans or rice we ever ate growing up came from Taco Bell. Besides, it had garlic in it and as I mentioned before she doesn't tolerate garlic at all.

 

Tonight we're having vegetable-beef soup. Finally, something my mother would be willing to eat, LOL!

[butterflymommy]

My parents are south american so we grew up on grilled red meat, even in winter my dad would grill in the garage with the doors open. My mom would try to force a salad down us beforehand but gave up around the time I was 7 or 8. I was an extremely picky eater, hated meat. I would only eat cookies, bread, one type of cheese, and milk. In high school I tried peanut butter and pizza for the first time (boarding school, I was starving). In my 20s I tried branching out a bit but I remain a very picky eater, though I cycle in and out of veganism so I have a massive repertoire of fruits and veggies these days, compared to how I used to be. I didn't taste a banana until I was 30. I still hate meat and eggs for the most part and only like dairy in limited form and quantity.

 

My husband is a picky eater and has eaten the same thing, every day, for 2 years now-- oatmeal in the morning, rice and beans for dinner. Some of our kids are very picky, a few will only eat 3 or 4 things. My 12 y.o. daughter lives on bread, cream cheese, juice, an occasional chicken or piece of fruit. I don't give them too hard a time as I was exactly the same way as a kid.

[QueenCat]

Breakfast is similar except instead of sugary cereal, we have mostly whole grain cereals w/fruit. Pancakes are whole grain with real maple syrup. Lunches are somewhat similar, but more whole grain versions and fruit is not canned in sugar juice, like my mom served. I like fruit far more now than I did when it was soaked in the juice.Dinners are different around here... I had no idea my mom wasn't a good cook until dh started cooking for me, and teaching me since he didn't care for the way I'd been taught. I don't eat the things I was forced to eat, even though I didn't like them; my kids are not forced to eat things they don't like as long as they've tried them. Didn't help me expand my palate, nor did I want my kids doing the unhealthy things I did, like swallowing large chunks of what I didn't like with milk.

[DusksAngel]

We eat so much more variety than when we were kids; different styles, different foods, different ways of preparing our dishes. Now that I'm fixing dinner for her and my grandmother, I've come to realize just how picky they both really are. If it's new or not what they grew up on, I can't hardly get them to eat it. I thought my toddlers were bad. :glare:

[angela in ohio]

I grew up with a very poor, typical American diet: fast food, junk food, packaged food. The only vegetables we ate were corn and potatoes. :lol: I had Pop Tarts and Coke for breakfast most days.

 

I made radical changes for my family. It was so incredibly difficult to kick old habits. I am glad my dc will have healthy habits instead.

 

My parents (since my dad's heart attach, near death scare, and triple bypass a few months ago) have started to work on their diet. We still eat very, very differently.

[TammyinTN]

Absolutely different foods here.

[Farrar]

If I only ate the foods I ate as a child, I would never eat anything. I was extremely picky.

 

But I also eat foods I wasn't exposed to as a child, not just the things I ought to have been eating. And my mother will absolutely still try new things too.

[The Girls' Mom]

I eat nothing like I did as a kid. I'm not sure I had ever had anything mexican or asian until I was grown. Italian was pretty much limited to what you could get at Pizza Hut. We ate pretty much country style cooking or something out of a box. My parents both worked, so it was something Hamburger Helper-ish. But when mom did cook with was things like pinto beans and corn bread, or boiled veggies (cabbage and the like).

[Lisa in the UP of MI]

Yes! I was very picky growing up as was my dad, so our diet was fairly limited. I eat much much better than I did growing up and I'm doing my best to be open to trying new foods. I still have a few things that I refuse to try.

[Sandsam]

I love - but never ate growing up - feta cheese, bagels, tacos, tofu, kiwi. I grew up with traditional meat and potatoes. I am so much more adventurous and are my kids!

[LaxMom]

I eat lots of things I didn't eat as a kid, but it has more to do with the availability of different food than anything else. There was no sushi in Rumford, ME in the 1970s (I'm not sure there is now, to tell the truth).

 

It's not that the food of my childhood was lousy - we had plenty of fruits and veggies, etc - it was just limited by what was available.

[EmilyinND]

Yep, as a child I didn't like mushrooms, but I Love them now! I'd eat mushrooms in just about anything!!

[rwjx2khsmj]

Yeah, but that has more to do with what foods are now easily available in shops and restaurants vs. what was available when I was little.

 

My parents are actually fairly adventurous, and have spent time traveling the world in their later years, sampling all sorts of cuisine. But growing up next to a tiny grocery store, 1 car family, not much money, the choices were limited.

 

:iagree:We lived in a small town with no ethnic diversity. Choices were limited. As we've traveled, moved, grown, we've all tried and enjoyed many more foods.

[Wendi]

My mom's repertoire was big enough, but she cooked mostly very simply seasoned "meat and vegetables" meals. (For example, chicken baked with a sprinkle of flour, a pat of butter, and a dash of paprika on each piece, served with mashed potatoes and a veggie.) My brother and I laugh about the tacos we ate growing up: ground beef seasoned with salt and pepper, diced American cheese, lettuce, tomato, and onion, in corn tortillas. Every Saturday night was hot dog night. My mom grew up in New England, and cooking is just to put food on the table, not a hobby or interest for her. (My dh is mildly horrified that she doesn't put ricotta cheese in her lasagna - she doesn't like it, so she just leaves it out.)

 

What my mom is WONDERFUL at is meals like Thanksgiving dinner.

 

I like to try new recipes, and cook a lot of Asian and Mexican, and sometimes even African foods. I shop at an Asian market regularly. So I cook a lot different from my mom.

 

Wendi

[Audrey]

I was sitting her eating my lunch and talking to my mom on the phone when she said my lunch sounded good. Now, this is NOTHING that she would have EVER served. She won't even eat it.

 

I had a baby spring mix salad with crunchies and feta cheese topped with ranch and broccoli cheese soup with extra extra broccoli.

 

Growing up our 3 veggies were green beans, peas, and corn. Possibly very very rarely tomatoes, cucumber, or carrots---but that was almost always at grandmas. VERY VERY rarely a salad.

 

Cheese consisted of moz. for pizza, colby, and cheese slices. Anything else was too exotic.

 

My mom never enjoyed cooking and had about 6-10 meals that she made on a rotating basis. Things like goulash, pea soup, chili, pig in the blankets, a roast, hamburgers, and chicken. Maybe a meat loaf occ. or some ham but never fish (other than the occ. fish stick).

 

We all made it to adulthood.

 

Now though, I will eat most anything and love different things--feta cheese, artichokes, different fish, almost any veggie, etc.

 

Anyone else grow up with a more limited diet and then love lots of other foods as an adult?

 

 

Your mom's cooking sounds similar to mine except that we had a lot of seafood when mom and dad caught it. I don't think our limited diet was due to mom's cooking ennui, though. I think it was because choices were far more limited back then (I'm sure I never saw feta in a regular grocery store until I was an adult). I also think it had to do with a very, very tight budget for groceries.

 

I eat a lot of foods that I cannot ever recall having seen or heard of as a child. I always shopped with my mom, and when I was small, I read all the packaging voraciously, so it's not like I had a sheltered food life. I just don't think the variety was available.