I have no regrets. Im sure my Mum has no regrets. Let me explain:- By age 5, Mum taught me how to use the stove top oven and make pikelets (mini pancakes) with supervision. Every time she baked (which was typically weekly) my brother and I were always somehow involved. The reward was getting to lick the hand beater or eat the leftover icing! From a young age, being involved in the kitchen was fun.
- By age 10, I had been taught and was expected to pick, peel, cut, boil, stir fry, stew every fruit and vegetable you could think of. If my brother and I dared to stupidly say out aloud "Im bored" you can be sure in 2 seconds you'd had a giant bowl of potatoes put in front of you to peel. Cooking starch (potatoes, pasta etc) was probably the first independent cooking task I did without supervision. And we did it constantly. It was simple and it was easy and Mum trusted us to get it done. If I didn't do it, it meant dinner or lunch was delayed and no one likes delayed meals.
- Everyone in our family cooked and I got to watch and participate with everyone. Growing and collecting and cooking food and eating was such a huge part of our lives. I spent a lot of time with my grandparents at the family bach. My Pop (grandfather) kept fruit trees, chickens, pet rabbits, giant compost bins and most of all a giant vegetable garden. Even my Mum as a single parent on an extremely low income kept a vegetable garden, and later a giant vegetable garden when she remarried. Everything I ate, I knew where it came from. I knew the meat on my plate came from live animals and it never occurred to me to be weirded out by that. We never treated the chickens as pets, more as loud annoying livestock. Although most meals were planned and put together by my Mum or Grandmother, I still observed my Pop cooking his interesting meals - usually a mash of sorts (he loved keeping his leftovers in a giant mason jar). Unbeknownst to me, my biological father was also a trained chef (I grew up not knowing him). For all his flaws and issues, the one thing my family agreed on, his food was amazing and I discovered this when I finally met him and it was cooking and growing food that gave us something to enjoy together. My brother also eventually trained as an Army chef and is an amazing cook. I knew which family members cooked what the best. My grandmother made the best vegetable and barley soup. She always served salad with this delicious condensed milk dressing. My Mum made the best chocolate and courgette/zucchini cake and chilli beans (seriosuly its the best). Recipes to this day I can make blindfolded. Im aware that even though we were not financially rich, I was rich in my upbringing. I was rich in having so many wonderfully loving family members who taught me how to appreciate and joyfully eat good food with zero guilt. For sure we had treats. But most if not all baking was done by scratch. A wonderful treat was eating fish n chips at the park or beach or my grandmother giving my brother and I 80c to buy a popsicle at the dairy.
- By the time I was 14 I was cooking dinners and regularly baking something either to give my Mum a break or because she was working (she worked shift work as a nurse). My brother was expected to cook as well, AND all clean up was done by us regardless if we cooked or not. All dishes had to be done immediately after dinner, and yes by hand. My Mum didn't buy a dishwasher til I moved to college. The only thing I didn't appreciate during this time period was that my (now ex) step father (being a giant sexist misogynist) increasingly expected me to be a household replacement of my Mum and he considered cooking and housekeeping "women's work." This was NOT the attitude my Mum and Grandparents raised me and my brother and I knew it, but at the time I went along with the system because frankly, I was terrified of him and punishment was severe if I didn't do it. Besides whenever he did cook (which was rare), his food was disgusting. So if I had to cook food myself to avoid his food, fine by me. Despite his attitude, I kept cooking because I genuinely enjoyed it not because he expected it of me as a female. By the time I moved out at 18, cooking and all the housekeeping that goes along with it was such a part of my life that it has never to this day stressed me out. No matter how poor I got in university or early on in my marriage, no matter what lack of ingredients I had, cooking was easy and relaxing. Trying new recipes and new ways of cooking was fun for me.
- So Ive talked about food a lot, but not about exercise. My Mum would tell you, right off the bat that she hates what anyone would call "exercising" and she never failed to tell us growing that she deliberately avoided sports and PE at school. My brother and I grew up loving physical activity and trying out sports and Mum would say she had no idea where it came from (my father wasn't particularly fond of sports etc either apparently). But she always encouraged and supported us in our pursuits. We had basketballs, tennis racquets, rollerblades, hoola hoops, hockey sticks, skipping ropes. I even had a pogo stick at one point. My brother and I both had bikes and went everywhere on them. Whatever we wanted to try out, she let us and encouraged us. I tried and failed gymnastics (meh). My brother tried soccer (meh). We both knew how to play cricket, rugby and netball (thats a given for any Kiwi kid). We were both expected to be outside of the house as much as possible either playing or doing something productive. One of the best things about my Mum is that she encouraged us to explore. Exercise can be made incredibly easy and fun if you turn it into exploring. Despite her distaste for sports, Mum loved and still loves hiking. Her idea of a good time was packing enough food for a day and driving my brother and I somewhere random and making us hike for hours on end in order to "have an explore around." And at the end of the day we'd stop at a dairy on the way home and she'd buy us an ice cream. I didn't know she got it from a book but when I was really little she would excitedly recite "Im going on a bear hunt.." to us whenever we went for walks. Its now a family legend that there was a local bear that lived near our bach. As we got older, the hikes got steeper and the day trips more remote. We eventually learned that the worse things got at home (between my Mum and her husband) the more hikes and day trips we three went on. I learned from Mum that during great grief and stress, one went for a walk/hike. She taught us to love and appreciate nature, to smell the smells, get our feet wet in rivers and beaches, to pick up and inspect interesting looking rocks and bugs, to keep going in order to see whats around the next corner. She also allowed us to explore on our own, to travel on our own, use transit on our own - long lengthy hours - without a cellphone! She held us to very high behavioral standards but in turn Mum gave us a huge amount of freedom and allowed us to think for ourselves. In turn I have always trusted her and knew unconditionally that she was my best friend and a good parent. Mum also modeled exercise in nature as a form of spiritual worship. We were raised Christian and most often during a walk with Mum I would see and hear her unashamedly pray out aloud. Whether for herself or for us or some other situation. I witnessed joyful singing and sorrowful praying - most often in the woods or hills. What I saw modeled was a woman who deeply loved the Creator by often walking in His creation and enjoying it.
In closing, let me share this:
Having healthy habits can be self learned in adulthood, but its blimin hard compared to the skills you learn almost by osmosis in childhood. Im well aware of the skill set I got from my Mum and Grandparent's that made heading into attempting to lose weight that much easier. That's not to say I also didn't pick up habits from them that I had to unlearn as well. Home Economics and Nutrition is incredibly helpful to learn for both boys and girls, women and men, but I frankly didn't need to learn them in a traditional school setting because I got that education at home. Many people didn't get that blessing. Im noticing its completely normative for young people here in Canada to head off to college with pre university academics and intellectualism but zero life skills with cooking and organising a kitchen. Isn't that a shame? We're wondering why theres awful nutrition and obesity rates in the West, despite the fact we're the ones with the most and best access to food and education.
And before all the feminists get their knickers in a twist I have to say, these skills HAVE to be taught at home. Doesn't matter if its the Dad or the Mum doing the teaching. If I had grown up with my father in my life I'd bet my cooking skills would have been a 50/50 influence by both parents, but he wasn't in my life so it came from my Mum and Grandmother. I'll bet my brother's kids will likely be taught to cook by him. If and when I have kids, the teaching will most likely come from me, but I'll leave the baking to my husband because thats what he enjoys doing. But for the vast majority of us, the food we learn will still most likely be learned from our Mums and Grandmothers. If you don't like that, get over it. And as a woman, I can't think of a more lovely, precious, bonding experience with the women in my family than learning recipes handed down. In many cultures these recipes are proudly and closely held secrets shared from mother to daughter. But at the end of the day, eating and cooking is not a women's thing, its a human thing. We all need to eat therefore we should all know how to cook. I think there would be much less panic, misinformation, confusion, yo yo dieting, stupid food "trends" and myths if people were taught at a younger age common sense in eating, cooking skills and learned that exercise can be stress relieving, relaxing and fun and not punishment for their food "sins."
If you did not grow up in a home where cooking and nutrition was taught well then my hope is that this blog would at least get you in the right direction in your proactive pursuit in your adult life no matter how early or late you entered into the fray.
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