For Better or For Worse by Lynn Johnston for May 21, 2012

Speak for yourself, Elizabeth. That actually sounds like a feast fit for a king! :-9

Elizabeth seems suddenly to have grown up by a few years in the last couple of days. She’s using sentences way beyond the child of last week who poured beer down Phil’s trumpet.

Send her to Guatemala for a month; that’ll shape-up her attitude.

First time I’ve heard anyone complain about steak!!

And her version of “good” is probably chicken nuggets, pasta and corn.

If we kids didn’t like the dinner menu, our parents were like “Tough Luck!” But that rarely happened,too many kids are just spoiled .

Ha ha! Well I guess I have to jump in and agree with Liz. I have never been a steak person. It’s bland and metallicy, like chewing on tin foil (And my parents use to have the beast once if not twice weekly when I was growing up). Ditto on the fruit salad. Sounds like mystery food! Potatoes are OK.Now asparagus, skip the sauce & I am so there! I remember the first time I had it ligthly steamed instead of the limpy stuff drowning in mayo that my grandparents would make. I was sooo hooked! We have a wild one in our yard that I love to pick the shoots off of & just eat each spring. Heh, the joy of food memories :) Bender. I don’t know what they eat in Guatamala, but some of us dig ‘ethnic’ food. I have lived in quite a few places, and will try almost anything once (ya I have eaten some pretty weird stuff). And fresh tropical fruit is da boom!

Amazing the number of Grown-Ups who don’t get the point.You can’t afford to feed your children on steak, baked potatoes, asparagus and fruit salad all the time. You feed them, and teach them to like, things like Cheeseburger Macaroni, instant mashed potatoes, frozen mixed vegetables, and canned fruit cocktail. Inexpensive, easy to make and keep as leftovers, tasty.And then you get upset when the kid doesn’t like the Fancy Food that you make ONLY when you have company.

Or another example.Which would a kid like more, Tuna Noodle Casserole, or Sesame crusted Seared Ahi-Tuna? Which would you serve company?

LOL I am with you…can I at least have ice cream or something for desert?!

skip the asparagus and I would love this!

WOW! I’m hungry!

My kids hated ‘yucky roast beef’ and wanted to know why they can’t have peanut butter and toast, like the neighbor kids.

When I was little, that kind of dinner party usually involved me and my brothers eating Kraft Dinner in the kitchen, and firmly believing we were getting the better end of the deal.

Mmm! :-) Little kids like Lizzie aren’t fond of meat and fancy foods like that. However, she might give it a taste and enjoy it. My two older kids ate anything put in front of them-even liver Creole, vegetables, pineapple chicken, etc. But my youngest was picky. He just wanted Mac and Cheese or peanutbutter&jelly. But he loved brocolli.

When I had to cook, the kids loved macoroni and cheese with chopped hot dogs!

Tog: Not necessarily. When my kid first encountered skin color (this was early ’60s during “massive resistance”) my wife asked him what color he was. He looked down at his arm and said, “sort of beige”. I mentioned that in a paper once and my professor claimed a three-year-old would not say “beige”, yet it was a direct quote.

I actually have a recipe for fruit salad that is anything but ordinary or boring – it’s what I’m requested to bring for potlucks & I never have leftovers.

Damn, that sounds good! Wish I were the “company” invited to Elly’s house tonight for dinner!!!!!

What’s wrong with fruit salad hand made from fresh fruit???

I’ve never had asparagus and I don’t like fruit salad, otherwise it sounds really good!

Didn’t need to be anything about retribution.Even the best cook sometimes comes up with something awful.Even Ben&Jerry mentioned their one “really weird batch of Rum Raisin.”

When I was first learning to cook for my family (I was around 13) I made an almond cake and used too much flavoring. That was one even I hated. One of my first meat dishes was from “men only” in the newspaper, an herbed pork roast with lots of garlic. I made according to recipe and brother and I liked it but my mom said I ruined a good piece of meat (not like the overboiled pot roasts we used to hate that she made before I volonteered to take over).

Now that I’m a senior I have switched to really healthy cooking and back to making everything from scratch. I eat very few desserts, but a pile of 3-5 different kids of fresh fruits cut in pieces and piled up with plain Greek yogurt and my homemade breakfast loaf that I keep frozen is a great breakfast (alternated by a scrambled egg with crumbled pecans that my little parrot likes to share (he only likes SOME of the fruits) and other nuts.

my kids usually love our fancy cooking – except my youngest (now 12 yrs old) doesn’t much care for risotto.

My parents were like “If you do not like, no problem, you can go hungry!” I preferred that to the tripe about “Think about the starving Ethiopians”.