Food preferences. Seems an odd question.

Question: What are your food preferences? How did they come about?

That truly does seem like an odd question to come up during a journal entry. But there it was.

When you think about it, it is not so odd. Food does help make you what you are. So why not ask the question?

I love food. I use food to make me happy and to console me when I am down. We just came back from Mom's 90th birthday party celebration. When asked what we did, it was noted that it all was surrounded by food. We went here and ate this; afterwards we went there and had fresh water clams; we went to Anne's and had steak and so on. It was fun, but food was definitely at highlight at each event - except the quilt show we got to attend while we were there.

So food preferences. Growing up in southeastern Idaho, our food choices were not as great as my kids had it growing up in California, the bread bowl of the world. In Idaho we ate a LOT of potatoes. They were readily available and cheap and often free from local farmers. Vegetables consisted of green beans, peas, yellow squash (yech), corn on the cob and such. Fruit was mostly apples and pears and berries. My memories of dinners were some sort of meat, always a pot roast on Sunday afternoon. With the meat we had potatoes, never rice or noodles, and green beans. Occasionally bread would be served, but it was usually sliced, white bread. Lunch at home was usually sliced, white bread sandwiches of bologna or peanut butter and jelly. Breakfast was cereal during the week and bacon and eggs on weekend. Always. Snacks were limited. We were not allowed to have sodas at all. That was a treat to be saved for family get togethers only. Ice cream we had maybe, if we were lucky, once a week. Popcorn occasionally. No candy unless we saved and bought it ourselves. Cake or pie usually accompanied Sundays repast. That was pretty much it.

Let me tell you about our school lunches, though. This was in our elementary school at least. We had these wonderful ladies that came into our school kitchen, which was in a building right across from my first grade class and again my fifth grade class. They would come early in the morning and make bread, usually dinner rolls. They would serve turkeys with mashed potatoes and gravy or macaroni and cheese and jello or roast beef with mashed potatoes and gravy and on and on. I LOVED to eat at school. I always ate at school during my first eight years. I would savor every bite. I could not believe we got such good food, especially seeing what is served in todays school lunch rooms.

I was a slow eater. I was often the first one in the lunch room and always the last one out. I often missed the recess part of lunch because I was slowly eating, and enjoying, my lunch. The lunch ladies would come and sit with me to hurry me along. I often was late getting to class afterwards, too. I didn't care. I LOVED my lunch time. The one thing them hurrying me up did was I was encouraged to eat really fast, which I still do today, which is not good either.

You probably think I was fat eating meals like that. Well no I was not during that time. I am now and have been my entire adult life, but not then. Then I was skinny as could be. A friend told me one time that when I walked into class the first time, she thought she had never seen anyone so skinny. That was because when I wasn't eating, I was running, biking, skipping, whatever. Then I could eat like that. Now I still like to eat like that but I don't do the running, biking, skipping, so it stays with me.

In high school, french fries was the lunch I preferred. We had a little shop across from school at both Bonneville and Pocatello high schools. I never had enough money to buy a real lunch, but I always had enough to buy french fries and a soda. That is when the weight was a little harder to keep down. During my senior year, I thinned back down because I never ate lunch.

After graduating from high school from Cody Wyoming, I was working at Western Union. I had the opportunity to come to California for a job with them and took it. Food in California is another thing all together. Californian's have meat and potatoes, but they also have oodles of noodle dishes, vegetables and fruits that are relatively cheap and very fresh. I was introduced to such things as broccoli and brussel sprouts, asparagus and kiwi fruit. Yummy. Now I will try many new things and seldom eat just meat and potatoes.

My husband will eat anything, absolutely anything. One of my favorite stories about him is him eating quiche. I loved to try different recipes. I have a million or so cookbooks and use to spend a lot of time reading them and then trying the recipes I would mark to try in them. I love cheese and thought quiche sounded wonderful. I made it one night and loved it. It was just the two of us; I guess it was before we started having kids. Between us we ate half the quiche. When we were done, I said how wonderful I thought it was. He would usually agree, but he said nothing. So I pressed him on what he thought about it. He said, "Please, don't ever make that again." He hated it. But he ate it and ate more than one helping. He taught me through the years to try it. Because of that, I eat things now that at age 18 when I came to California I would have never attempted.

I love food. I love all kinds. I love all American food, but it is not my favorite. I love Italian for its yummy sauces and pastas. I love Chinese for its blend of veggies and meats. I love Thai for its veggies and heat. I love Indian food for the curries and spicing they do. There is an English pub here that I love to go have breakfast at. It is called the Fox and the Goose. We have a local Lebanese restaurant that I love and would go to every week if possible. It is the Maloofs restaurant. I love it all. When asked where I want to go eat, I usually say wherever because I can find something yummy anywhere - except McDonald's. I hate their food.