When we first got married, I started asking Mr. Handsome why he ate so fast. In the six years since our wedding, he has thankfully kicked this habit, but his reasoning for why it was so deeply ingrained is pretty funny. To bring you your regular dose of Mr. H humor, he wrote a post:
“Babe, why do you eat so fast?”
The question startled me so much that I almost choked on the T-bone I was inhaling. “What are you talking about Ellie?”
“I’m talking about the fact that I’ve hardly sat down to dinner, and you have almost finished 16 ounces of steak.”
That wasn’t the first time that someone commented on the speed at which I used to consume my food. My answer was always the same: “I have six siblings.”
All of you who come from big families know exactly what I’m talking about. For those who don’t, I’ll explain. We had to eat fast in order to survive. It’s called natural selection; only the fast eaters make it. Watching a big family eat dinner (or lunch, since most of us were homeschooled) is like watching a small rabbit being fed to a pack of starving hyenas.
In all fairness, we never went hungry, and there was no real shortage of sustenance. But there was always a shortage of “edible” food. After all, cooking in bulk when you have a bunch of little kids pulling at you is hard.
On a typical morning, Mom was trying to get seven children up and dressed, teeth brushed, hair combed, and diapers changed, all while cooking a pound of bacon and a dozen eggs. Inevitably, about a third of the bacon was as soggy as a wet noodle, another third was burnt to a crisp, and the other 33.3333 perfect was just perfect. (Soggy bacon was how I learned to convert fractions to percentages.) Keep in mind that the two best pieces were saved for Dad, so if you didn’t your eggs fast, you got the bacon that was less than desirable.
The situation was the same by the time lunch rolled around. There would only be a small amount of food that you really wanted to eat, maybe three or four hotdogs or a couple of hot ham and cheese sandwiches. And if you didn’t eat quickly, you weren’t getting any of that.
But have no fear, Mom would supplement with something that still sends chills down my spine: leftovers. Big families are the kings of leftovers. Was that green bean casserole so unpalatable that no one even touched it at the church potluck? No problem, feed it to the kids as leftovers. Was that hamburger helper so atrocious that the dog went howling into the backyard after smelling it? Just add a little salt and pepper, and it will taste like a 5-star restaurant. And as much as I loved mac and cheese, leftover mac and cheese is just plain gross. Somehow it succeeds at being both dried out and soggy and the same time. But Mom wasn’t going to waste 99 cents on a new Kraft package.
Of course, Mom was always willing to quickly slather some peanut butter and jelly on two pieces of wheat bread and call it a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, but she never got the proportions right. Just last year, I learned about one of her tactics to save money. She would take the end pieces of each loaf of bread and turn them inward so the sandwich looked like it was made with two normal pieces of bread. Peanut butter and jelly still makes me gag to this day. Somehow Ellie and Little Buddy eat it all the time, but I just can’t.
As I got older, I started to figure out the system. I would wake up early and eat the good food before anyone else got up. For a while, no one could figure out what was going on. “I could have sworn that there were three pieces of pizza in the fridge last night, but they’re gone,” my brother would complain. “What happened to the dozen homemade cookies that I made last night?” Mom would ask.
Please don’t tell Ellie, but I have continued some of these food consumption tactics into marriage. I would hate for her to figure out why I always wake up early in the morning when there is only one doughnut left.
My husband is the youngest of seven, and all of this is true! The first time I went over there to dinner, I thought I was in the middle of a free-for-all, as his eldest brother grabbed the best pieces, and everybody else had to fend for themselves LOL! But, like your family, there was never an actual “shortage” of food. They were, and are, very blessed. It’s just funny to hear about another big family talk about what happens around meal time! After 11 years of being together, I’ve learned to get in the food line ASAP and not move until I get my food! 😂
That’s hilarious, Jen. Being the youngest, I’m sure he especially had to learn to wiggle his way in to get the food he wanted. LOL.
Ellie
Sorry Mr. H but I couldn’t read your post which I usually enjoy. It just reminded me of being a single mom of 5 kids with the dad running from paying child support. Once, after paying bills, I had only $35 to buy groceries for the week. I don’t know how He did, but the Lord multiplied our food. That’s only a fraction of what the Lord did for us. There are so many kids that have no food at home, they will steal food from the serving lines at school. I have seen kids stuffing food in their pockets. I had 1 child tell me she just wanted fruit for Christmas. My Moma told me that once when my brother and I were little, she didn’t have anything but ketchup and mustard in the house, but the Lord provided. I don’t want to offend anyone, and I’m not seeking sympathy for going through hard times, cause we all do, but imo, the title of this post needs a little tweeking, because your family didn’t experience real food shortages.
Oh how I can relate! There were only 3 of us but still there was competition to get the ‘best’ part of the chicken, the ‘good’ slices of bread. My mum also didn’t believe in wasting anything so we didn’t dare leave anything on our plates- as that meant it was reheated as leftovers for our next meal! My mum has passed but she left us with many memories to laugh about now as adults- and admittedly we all still can argue over who gets ‘more’ when we have family dinner 😂
I love the honesty and truth in this post. The struggle is real and solutions similar in all kinds of families. When I met my second husband who is a bit older than me his emphasis on buying and consuming good food was foreign to me as I was a single mom of 3 and food was where I curbed my very small budget keeping my children in the home they were accustomed to even though I couldn’t keep their dad, my ex. Plus my siblings and I were picky eaters who had plenty of food at meals we just didn’t really choose to eat much of it, even snacking was rare. My current husband told me about him and his brother sneaking down the night of shopping day to consume a loaf of toasted bread or box of cereal. Also, stealing a rotisserie chicken from the meat market, which might’ve actually been his dad and uncle when they were young. My husband made good money that we still live on and he won’t go to bed hungry and still treats his adult children and their families to great food and meals and education because he wants them to afford food. Food insecurity is real and balancing that thought with the fact that junk food can often be gotten cheaper than the really good stuff is the other fact that we have a lot of overeating the wrong foods and eating disorders. Life is a multifaceted mystery to me. Your post is good and real with the touch of humor we use to laugh not cry!
I’m sorry, but I don’t see how this mom bashing was remotely funny at all?
Mr. H’s mom found it to be hilarious, so no need to worry about mom bashing. 🙂
How did Mr. H’s mom feel about Mr. H claiming they had “food shortages” when that family had nowhere near real food shortages? Is pretending to be without enough food something that family likes to laugh about? They find that hilarious?
She thoroughly enjoyed the post. Their family does a great job seeing humor in life’s challenges and remembering to laugh even when things are hard. His family was not destitute, but they had years that were very difficult financially. At certain points, they had to pinch pennies to meet basic needs.
As the third oldest of twelve siblings, this made me literally laugh out loud. Oh boy, the memories. While we never skipped a meal or were actually starving, we definitely weren’t wealthy and some days there just wasn’t enough for seconds for everyone. There was no messing around when it came to food. My younger sister never got up early to eat the good food, but she was guilty of hiding ” the good food” from the pantry in our closet to eat at a later date!