The one where Sarah refuses to eat the soup.
Listen to the episode
Join hosts Merav and Batya as they delve into all things All-of-a-Kind Family. Today we talk about picky eating, childhood patterns, neurodivergence, food phases, and favorite children’s books that feature picky eaters.
Merav and Batya both forgot to eat dinner before recording this episode and this seems to have significantly increase the pun quotient. You have been warned!
Our chapter in summary
Sarah engages in a battle of wills with Mama when she declares that she doesn’t want to eat her soup at the midday meal. Mama insists that Sarah will get nothing else to eat until she eats her soup. Sarah endures family entreaties through dinner, afternoon snack, home and piano lessons, before finally capitulating and eating a few bites of soup at the supper table and being rewarded with a supper that doesn’t consist of soup.
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Show Notes:
Handwashing and the spread of disease
Jews have spent centuries in rituals of cleanliness, including ritual bathing with hand and sometimes foot washing before meals, especially in hot climates. This has helped us prevent the spread of disease, but it has also resulted in Jewish populations being targeted during times of plague, because our habits protected us from disease while others fell ill.
Masking your emotions outside the house
It’s not atypical for kids, teens (and even adults) to ‘mask‘ their emotions with strangers, school friends, teachers, and other kids their age. Masking is a form of self protection that allows you to show the world the traits they want to see, like outgoing, cheerful, friendly, high achieving, etc. However, the danger in masking is that you’ll subsume your anger or sadness and force it inward, which can create physical and psychological issues down the line.
What’s in the soup?
The soup has vegetables and seems to be based around a beef stock, with softened pieces of meat. With enough solids, this soup could be a meal all by itself, but in Mama’s house it’s a single course in a multi-course meal.
Stewed fruit
Sarah never manages to get to dessert, but if she had, it would have been stewed fruit, a fruit dish that concentrates the naturally sweet flavors of fruit using heat to render them tender and delicious.
You can make your own stewed fruit by following this recipe.
Crying when you’re angry
This phenomenon is also called “rage crying” and it’s a way of letting out emotion to allow your limbic system to calm down and let you sort out what you’re really feeling. It also functions as an autonomic reset from the upset that you’re feeling and can help you to feel better, even if the situation that made you cry hasn’t been resolved.
Hunger in city schools
Childhood malnourishment is still a problem today. Many modern schools offer a school lunch program to make sure kids are getting at least one balanced meal with complete proteins once a day. Some school districts leave the lunch program open over breaks from school to make sure that the children aren’t deprived of meals during their time off.
Other references in this episode:
Hammurabi’s code. Pink Floyd’s Another Brick in the Wall Part 2. from their seminal album The Wall (1979). The Adrian Mole books by Sue Townsend. Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfeild and E. Nesbit books. Lloyd Alexander’s books. The story of the exodus from Egypt. The magicians Harry Keller and Howard Thurston. Froggy the Gremlin. Dybbuks. The Yezer ha’rah or the inclination to evil. The “taste the soup” joke. Minimum viable product. Dirt Candy the best Canadian-run vegetarian restaurant in NYC that also has a comic book with recipes! Bread and Jam for Frances by Russell and Lillian Hoban. Gregory the Terrible Eater by Mitchell Sharmat.