When I was just a toddler I was tested for allergies, and my body reacted to 144 of the scratches used back then to ascertain what I was allergic to. As a result I had to have weekly injections, and could no longer have a lot of the foods my family and friends got to enjoy. I wasn’t able to eat wheat, so the only breakfast cereal I could have was Rice Crispies. I was also allergic to milk, so apple juice went on top of the cereal instead of lovely creamy milk. The only bread I was allowed had to be bought at a German bakery in Toronto, it was black, hard disgusting stuff that my parents could ill afford, and I absolutely loathed it. Perhaps if I had never tasted milk and white bread I wouldn’t have been so traumatized when I was no longer allowed to have them.
My father had been assigned to a church in Etobicoke Ontario, and my mother was immediately presented with daily casseroles by our new neighbors. Each afternoon a lady (they took turns) would knock on the Rectory door bearing yet another covered dish for the minister and his family. My mother finally told them that we were all settled, it had been very kind of them but there was no need to keep bringing food for us. That’s when Mom discovered that I had been seen pawing through the neighbors’ garage pails, and when asked what I was looking for I said, “I just want a little crust of bread”. The kind ladies figured we were hungry, poor little toddler scrabbling for a crust of bread! My poor mother was mortified.
My children didn’t have my food allergies when they were small, but they were certainly denied the type of breakfast foods North Americans eat. Today there is access to different types of milk in the grocery stores, but when Vanessa and Rachel were growing up there was Klim (powdered milk) or evaporated milk, and once they had been weaned that’s what they drank. I thought both options were horrible, but as the girls had never tasted fresh milk they drank it readily enough. They didn’t have breakfast cereal until they were much older for a variety of reasons, the main one being the condition of the cereal! Corn Flakes was the only type on the shelves and we called it “Turd World Cereal”. By the time the Corn Flakes arrived on Bequia the expiration date was usually a thing of the past, and the weevils had moved in. The bugs would float to the top and swim frantically once the watered-down evaporated milk was poured into the bowl, and those swimmers were the lucky bugs that hadn’t been buried alive by the cereal.
Fish is what my children ate for breakfast. Fried fish, fish broth, steamed fish and grilled fish. Sometimes Mac would slather some dolphin fish roe with garlic and fry it for the girls, that was one of their favorites. They also liked lobster sautéed with onions and peppers on top of toast. My family in Canada found this fish-for-breakfast business pretty strange, and had a hard time getting Vanessa and Rachel to eat a “proper” breakfast when they visited Ontario. Rachel in particular had an aversion to scrambled eggs and refused to eat them, she didn’t like eggs much at all but scrambled were the worst.
The other breakfast favorite was re-heated leftovers, whether it be chicken pelau, curry or spaghetti. Anything left in the refrigerator from the day before was fair game for the morning meal, and the children ate the leftovers happily. The one thing they turned their noses up at was PIZZA, something their friends would have loved to eat morning noon and night. My girls got tired of pizza about the same time they learned to walk, which was really early! I was too busy to cook their evening meal during the “silly” season, and taking a pizza home was an easy solution, in their opinion TOO easy.
I never worried about nutrition while Vanessa and Rachel were growing up, the fish and lobster they ate was fresh from the sea, the bread was always home-made and the fruit from the garden was free of pesticides. They were rarely exposed to junk food for the simple reason that it wasn’t available, and they didn’t care for soda pop. They grew up happy and healthy on an Island free of pollution, and if they ate a few weevils it certainly didn’t hurt them!