"Finish Your Dinner..."

I don't know why my mother went to Tupperware parties.

Maybe it was to win a mini-yellow-burp-able-bowl-on-a-keychain? Maybe it was the satisfying 'schwoomp' of a Jell-o (not a sponsor) mold slooping into place when the specially-made insert was removed? Getting a little time away from the five kids? It's not because we needed the containers. That is why we bought the BIG and mini containers of Imperial margarine. With their reusable storing cavities we didn't need to spend money on pastel Squares and Bowls.

In face, we didn't have many 'leftovers'. We had food cooked for a meal and we ate it. It was portioned out at the stove and placed in front of the family member, always in this order: Dad first, then second-oldest (because he is a male-child) then me, my sister, my little brother, and the youngest sister. Then my mom. Then we prayed and ate. I did dishes, using a small handful of Tide (not a sponsor) swished through the hot water to make grease-cutting suds.

(One Tide to wash them all, I suppose. We did not use dishwashing soap, although I yearned to have Palmolive every time I saw Madge dunk her clients nails into that clear green liquid... ah well. Boomers gotta Boom, I guess. Back to the story)

We didn't have a huge variety of meals. Due to family history it was mostly meat, potatoes, pasta. Fish in the form of a block of cod (is that still available? It was a rectangular block from the freezer section, no plastic, just popped into cardboard like the Bird's-Eye boxes. I box portioned out for the seven of us.), or for fancy-times two boxes of Mrs. Paul's (not a sponsor) fish sticks or fillets. Maybe even a box of Howard Johnson's Frozen Clams (not a sponsor), with the kids eating mostly the clam-less bits that charred while the cookie sheet was in the oven.

Fried chicken- my mom made great chicken, and we went through many, many, many big carboard/foiled containers of Crisco (bnot a sponsor). Ah- the lifeline of Crisco! First use was satisfying as it melted in pristine mockery of frosting. Then it was drained through a colander and placed into the 'used Crisco' container, to emerge as needed for non-chicken uses... and NEVER ever for baking or greasing cookie sheets!

Our salads were usually lettuce, with the rich green outer leaves carefully set aside, and the cores chopped in a bowl with a fork-scored cucumber and a diced tomato. I had no idea that salad wasn't akin to cabbage shards until I ate leafy lettuce in the high school cafeteria.

The vegetables were generally canned: either bought from the store or home-canned in marathon sessions of steam and sharp knives. Peas (Le'sueur Baby Peas for my dad and the white and black generic label for us plebes), corn both nugget-y and creamed, and the exotic wonder that is green beans cut French-style (oooolala!)

Sometimes, likely in-season in Pennsylvania, we would branch out into organ meats and 'other' green veggies. These were grim times around the table. Grim indeed.

Liver and onions. Chicken gizzards and livers. Head cheese. Frozen spinach. Brussel sprouts boiled into submission and rolling like monstrous weeping ogre eyes to merge with the boxed whipped potatoes.

We would stare at our plates, our underage tribe of five children, and scheme how we could eat these things without involving our tongues or taste buds. How we could take the very smallest bit without engaging teeth or lips.

We schemed because we knew we would eat them. There was no other recourse. They were cooked and plated. We ate. This was The Way. There was no other.

Long ago, back in the time that only I, the eldest child, remembered, there was rumor of an uprising. A revolt against... what was it? The spinach? Probably the spinach. The Resistance presented itself as "I don't like this", and a petulant push towards the side of the plate.

The Empire didn't overreact, they wore the calm hood of Power and proclaimed "Eat your dinner. Children in China are starving."

There is no way around this, thus was the food consumed.

~

This is not an article about my childhood memories. Not about the submission of freshness that was the cooking of the 60's and 70's in my family. It is about that admonition, the shame, and the very real famine. My mother was not unique in raising the specter of starvation in foreign lands to shame children into eating food.

The Great Chinese Famine is a fact, and occurred between 1959 and 1961. I was born in 1960, smack dab in the middle. It is considered one of the deadliest manmade disasters in history killing millions of people.

This Famine was due to the Chinese Communist Party Chairman, Mao Zedong executing his 'Great Leap Forward' and the actions he demanded that disrupted food distribution, changed farming methods and practices, over-reporting grain production, and making the farmers produce iron and steel instead of food, as well as the impact of natural weather disasters.

The country's Leader listened to discredited quacks, hoarded the food, lied about the success of the project, and took people away from tending the crops. Food was piled in granaries while people died pounding at the doors.

Tellingly, local leaders sided not with their people but with the Party and Moa while their community died. Those chose their political reputation over speaking the truth. Blame for hunger was often placed on the peasants, or people not 'working hard enough'.

Local Party leaders declined to speak of the famine, deaths, and even reported cannibalism. Chairman Mao was given sketchy success reports that downplayed the bodies seen in ditches, plummeting birthrate, reports of production were faked, and fields were increased during his visits with transplanted sprigs shoved into the ground only to die when he left. Photo ops for propaganda reports were constructed carefully and medical reports were not permitted to list starvation as a cause of death.

~

I will not try to do some mumbo-jumbo magic to draw tenuous parallels to the current US administration destroying US farms, blaming field workers, lying about the impact of tariffs, and burning food in warehouses instead of feed people.

Nor will I pummel my readers with facts about the starving people in Gaza denied food then shot when they rush in with cans and buckets to plead for grain, while Israel officially denies blocking aid and shooting at starving people.

You can find that information for yourself, just as my mother somehow joined all the other moms in that long-ago age (without the internet and only one weekend paper) to tell their children to eat the food they were blessed to have.

And maybe give to your local foodbank, or national effort since federal funds have been halted/stopped/deleted/denied. Here's some for your consideration: