The Fussy Eater
By Bob Stevens, The Muddled Male
When I was a little boy I was, I admit, a
very fussy eater. Among my “do not eat
under any circumstances” items were beets, fish, certain wild game, and
mushrooms. I loved to go fishing,
which could have been a serious problem had my dad not been willing to eat my
catch. Beets were another matter. My parents loved fresh beets out of the
garden and my mother would cut them into small pieces and cook them slowly in a
fry-pan until they were lying there bubbling in their own purple sauce. To avoid the possibility that I might damage
my palate, I would sneak one small beet when my parents weren’t looking, rub it
around on my plate to leave a large and obvious beet stain, and then wrap the
used-beet in something and slip it into my pocket so that my parents thought I
had already consumed my share of what they considered a delicacy.
At least I thought that they thought that I
had eaten my share of the beets. One
time to teach me a lesson regarding my beet scam my mother placed a plate of fish
on the table and told me that I couldn’t leave to play until I had eaten at
least one full piece. Well I whined and
pleaded and complained that I would die if I had to eat fish, but my mother
showed no mercy. After sitting there
squirming in my chair for an hour trying to convince her that I would surely
expire if she persisted, I finally acquiesced.
Each fish had obviously been de-headed, de-tailed, and then filleted. In an attempt to make them appear more
appealing my mother rolled the pieces in flour and fried them so that they were
completely encased in a light brown crust.
When I finally stopped crying and cut off a piece of the dreaded fish to
eat, I found that the fish wasn’t a fish at all. My mother had sliced large carrots lengthwise
then breaded them and fried them to make them look like fish. I didn’t like cooked carrots either, but
compared to fish they tasted like cake.
I hate to disagree with my friend Cisco regarding
his “delicious deer claim,” but my one time experience with deer hamburger scarred
me and all the people living on our block in Ogden, Utah for life. My dad never hunted, but my mother’s brothers
faithfully went out every deer season in their attempt to supplement their
meager winter provisions. They once gave
us a couple of pounds of deer burger to eat, which my mother dutifully tried to
fry. The odor was so bad that we were all
forced to not only exit the house for air, but we had to cross to the other
side of the street and cry, “Unclean,
unclean” whenever we approached a neighbor walking toward us. I admit that I did like the occasional quail
my uncles bagged. The only problem was
that quail hide until you are almost on them then they take off so fast and in
such a flurry that the startled hunter barely has time to raise a weapon and
shoot in the general direction of where the birds were thought to have flown. If you were lucky enough to hit one, the shot
that brought the quail down often removed a significant portion of what little
meat there was available on that tiny carcass in the first place.
My experience with mushrooms came at the
hands of my parents’ friends the Crouches who lived on their ranch just north
of Croydon, Utah as you head up Lost Creek.
I was about four years old and my parents decided to buy a new car by
traveling to Detroit, purchase a new 1939 Ford off the assembly line, and drive
it back to Croydon. They left me with
the Crouches and my sister, who was not quite two, with the Londons. The Crouches, who had no running water in the
house, grew much of what they ate and I was okay with that except for the
special crop that grew itself in their sheep pens. I didn’t know anything about mushrooms, but
these were the leafy kind (maybe Chanterelle) that they cooked in kind of a
broth. It was one of the worst
experiences of my life in that it was almost more than I could handle. That was seventy-six years ago but my throat
still constricts just to think about the experience. The closest I can describe it was that they
tasted like liver, which also makes my throat constrict just to remember. I also don’t like fat. Nor do I like the meat that touches the
fat. So when I trim a piece of meat it is
normal for me to throw away a significant portion of the good part just to make
certain that what remains was far enough from any fat to not damage any part of
my delicate digestive system. The
closest I get to fat now are French Fries boiled in it.
I
am happy to report, however, that to make up for the culinary mistakes of my
youth I have turned over a new health leaf.
I am in the process of inventing a special green food-coloring that if
used carefully will make Ann, my wife, think that the Mexi-Fries I love, are
made from broccoli.
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