Food, Food, Glorious Food!

The wee one has never been a big eater, however she has always eaten a wide variety of different foods, aye some stranger than others for a wee one.

Recently, her try anything once attitude, had her tasting the fine spices of an Indian curry, the bite of a chilli and the fire that is a jalapeno! As I said some stranger than others.
When I was growing up, we never had the choice of flavours we have now as our daily menu choices, that is not to say they were not available, its just that the old fashioned flavours and recipes ruled the day in most houses. It was seen as exotic and even a thing reserved for the holiday abroad if you dared to change the ordinary pot of mince into say a bolognaise! Pizza was something the neighbours told you about after returning from their trip to Italy and a kebab with chilli sauce might as well have been from Mars!!!!

No, if it was not mince and tatties on a Monday and fish on a Friday with a number of various meals that included beans in-between those days, with Sunday reserved for a roast of some sort, it was not my house in a normal week in any given year.

The ASBO gardener aka papa still gets cranky to this day about the menu he has to live with now, as  to him, Pizza is a town in Italy as far as he is concerned, and not only that he lives by the attitude that if the diet was good enough before all the imports of flavour started in his day then it is certainly good enough now!
The good old days he yearns for food wise, were not that bad on reflection, and further we probably had a better understanding of our seasons due to the fact you could only get certain foods at certain times of the year, now of course you can buy strawberries in December!

The last couple of generations are tied to the obesity epidemic that we hear about every other day on the news and see on our streets, aye sadly I am a statistic!

This of course did not start with the introduction of new flavours and the fact that we like to experiment with food, aye those of us who still cook anyway, although according to my eldest cooking ends with a ping that says the microwave is finished! It is linked however to the fact we expect to get what ever taste takes our fancy no matter what the time let alone the season of the year, thus the explosion of fast food joints.

As the ASBO gardener aka papa likes to point out a good stew takes hours to prepare and cook, in that stew is everything your body requires, from the five a day to carbohydrate intake.. good food takes time. Fast food contains very little of what you need but tastes great and we have two generations of proof to back this up.

However while we have two generations of proof to back up our taste buds desires, the ASBO gardener aka papa has the fact that he is eighty something, and the rest of an aging Britain, that had a similar diet to him to rest his case on.
If peer pressure and consumerism are to drive what our taste buds will enjoy in the future we will have some interesting times when it comes to dinner time in the average household.

The wee one and her generation will never know what a seasonal vegetable or piece of fruit is as they can and will be able to buy anything anytime. The wee one will grow up believing that a curry is a traditional Sunday dinner originating in Britain and when people have dinner parties they will talk and laugh about a the old folk that long for a traditional pizza let alone a pot of stew!
The wee one does however give me hope that all is not lost, as she has a wee go at all flavours as I said, that has to include things like stews and porridge when you live with the ASBO gardener aka papa.

So she has a fighting chance of a balanced diet, add to that we now know what two generations of our eating habits have achieved, so it would be an unwise granddad that would allow it to be three generations.
That of course does not mean that the wee one or myself for that matter will never see the inside of a fast food restaurant ever again, no, that would be lurching from one extreme to the other, as a wise granddad I believe that a little bit of everything in moderation does no harm, and lets face it they taste too dam good to give up completely!