Pluggers by Rick McKee for June 03, 2022

way to go, Mom

I have never heard that saying before.

I got “people are starving in Europe”. To this day I cannot stand to see crust left on plates. I try to explain this to my grandkids how wasteful it is to leave food like that. I get a shrug. So I end up the designated crust eater. History: Food was rationed during WW2. And post war was tough on the survivors overseas.

I never understood why people cut the crusts off bread. I always thought crusts were the best tasting part.

When I was a small boy, one of my favorite treats was when Dad would bring home a fresh loaf of Italian bread from the bakery. He would cut off both ends of the loaf, one for him, one for me. We’d dip the bread into seasoned oil and munch on it as a treat. Mom would take the rest of the bread and slice it down so far and make it into garlic toast to serve with spaghetti.

Mom taught us to take what we want but eat what you take. Growing up during the depression Mom and Dad learned not to waste good food :-)

I even it the heels of the bread loaf. The only change on top is less and less.

I got “Two choices, Kiddo, Take it, or leave it.”

Or it could determine whether or not you go bald.

A long time ago my aunt “D-Day” (her birthday was June 6, 1944) would always ask me “Who curled your hair last night?” I am straight haired. One summer I drove down to visit on my way to Disneyland with my girlfriend at the time. Before I could answer she told my aunt, “I did. And his toes as well.” My aunt never asked me that question again.

According to my mom. potato skins did that too!

The crust is my favorite part!

I don’t eat bread (on Keto for my diabetes).

Now that I think about it, maybe it made my hair fall out. :)

’course you have to have hair.

I got “kids starving in Japan”… but I could never figure out how my eating something in Indiana was going to help a starving child in Japan.

Not a bad idea, but the dosage is wrong. You have to eat the heels, too.

Yep, though I did not have to wait.

The reality is that millions of resident German civilians died after the end of World War II. James Bacque estimates 5.7 million Germans already residing in Germany died from the starvation policies implemented by the Allies after the war. Bacque details how this 5.7 million death total is calculated:

We ate all our bread. And if my toast was kind of burnt, Mom would say, “Eat that; it will put hair on your chest.” It took about 20 years, but it worked!

When I went on a class trip to the Soviet Union when I was in college (around 1974), we were all amazed when we went swimming on the beaches. So very many of the Russians (females mostly, but some men too) were MASSIVELY obese. Really startling in size. (This is not to fat-shame; it was just amazing for us to see.) One of the braver members of the class, who spoke excellent Russian (and was coincidentally an army reservist), asked one of the ladies why it was that they were so large and heavy. She told him, "We starved all through the “War”, and now that we have plenty of food, we will never deprive ourselves." Kind of made sense to me! (Even though I ate all I wanted at the time and weighed 115 lb.)

This must be a Pittsburgh thing. I remember my grandmother telling me the same thing “eat the crusts and you’ll have curly hair just like Bill Burns”. It had nothing to do with cleaning your plate.

Well, me mama bear never tolds me anything like this.

I never heard of that one.

I am not sure how my mom put up with me. I was a picky eater. Nothing could touch. Nothing could have sauce on it. Ate very limited assortment of foods. I was talking about this with her (she is 94 now) and asked how she put up with it – she does not remember me being a picky eater at all.

Now my husband is the one who has to put with my picky eating.