Our diet has gone through various stages in the raising of children.  We have been healthy vegetarians and we have been unhealthy fat and sugar eaters.  I have prepared well-thought out meals and we have had Breakfast Before Bed dinners which consist of pancakes.  I have struggled with making menus since we first married.  I have also shopped once a month and cooked my main dishes for the month all on one day and froze the results.

The whole food thing is a fascinating process of frustrations and joys.  What would family life be like without memorable food experiences?  Food falls in the category of health and it certainly has been a focus of our raising children in general and Ben specifically.  Here are a few choice Meal Moments from our family memories.

I was asked to bring a couple of pumpkins pies to somebody's home for a special dinner.  I made the pies and put them on the counter to cool.  I covered them with a clean dish towel.  Leaving on the dish towel, I took the pies to the friend's home.  Imagine my horror when the mother took the lovely, clean cloth off my freshly baked pies only to find cat paw prints in each pie!

Once just after the birth of a baby, Neil came into the room while I was taking a Sunday nap.  Holding the phone to his chest, he asked how long it would take for me to make Jell-O.  Groggy, I asked why.  He replied, "I promised Mom that we would bring Jell-O to the family dinner.  We were supposed to be there thirty minutes ago."

My patriarchal blessing tells me, "You and your family shall never lack for bread to eat."  This is a wonderful, wonderful thing.  About four years ago I was down in my Ryan's pregnancy and couldn't go anywhere.  We had no bread here for lunch.  This went on for three days.

Then out of nowhere our neighbor came and asked if we could use some bread.  He then brought in box after box of wonderful bread.  I froze all that came and it lasted two months with us eating one to two loaves a day.

Then three days after the first delivery he brought some more.  We started calling people we knew and passed it all out.  I tease the Lord that because he got a few days behind he sent an overabundance.

Tony brought us bread from time to time ever since and we never run out. One day I told Neil that we were out of bread as there was no more in the freezer.  The next day I had Chamrie prepare the kitchen for bread making and just as she got it cleaned we got a call from Tony.  He had a van load of delicious bread, candy canes, pies, and donuts!

There has been a lot of  talk in the media about the importance of having old-fashioned sit down meals with your family.  Well, with lots of children in the home they outnumber us.  Sitting together is a rare occurrence.  At one time, Neil  worked until about 8:00 p.m. on three nights a week.  On the other four nights we had the following activities: one was our date night, one was Scouts, one night was Saturday and getting  ready for Sunday while the last was Sunday with church,  family time and everything else family oriented.  If we get a family type meal the closest is that Sunday meal.

For years we put the prepared food at one end of the table.  We put the plates and silverware by the food.  We would have a blessing and then one person served everybody else.  After dishing up food, we passed the plates around. The children sit at the table.

When Neil was at work I usually did not eat until he came home.  I preferred to wait anyway until the younger children were in bed and life was less hectic.  If Neil and I were both home the children would eat at the table and we would eat either in the same room on the couch or the extra table.

Whenever I begin to feel like a dinnertime failure, I remind myself of all the other family things that are regular stuff in our home such as prayer, scripture study, reading, Home schooling, weekly outings, church, specific TV shows that have become an activity for us, weekly family time with lessons and sharing of talents, and so forth.  I hope those other things overcome the horrible social loss of our not sitting down at the table together.

Neil and I were awakened one morning with the strangest sound of SQUIKTCH over and over.  We got up and our little Chani was looking at books while Ben and Chamrie were at the open refrigerator door and had eighteen eggs cracked in a circle around them on the floor.  Quickly Neil grabbed them and put them in a bath while Chani watched me clean the floor.  The next morning came the familiar sound of  SQUIKTCH and this time only twelve eggs hit the floor.

When I was bedridden while expecting our seventh child, I sent Neil to the store with a simple list.  He returned much to my chagrin with a square dish too small for our family, a fat-free ranch dressing and cornbread stuffing.  After a mini tirade on my part he returned to the store. He walked up to the manager's table and one by one pulled the items out of the bag.

"You may not believe this but," he said, "this is not a baking dish, this is not Ranch and this is not stuffing!"

The manager looked at my husband, smiled sympathetically and replied, "Your wife must be pregnant."

Meal time has a specific stress all its own.  People have unique likes and dislikes in matters of food.  Due to the simple fact that there are so many people eating at my table it is an impossible task to serve something that everybody likes.  Years ago I gave up the thought that everybody would be happy with what was for dinner.  Now, I strive to serve things that Neil and I like.  If a child is adamant about not eating the dead lizard or the orange marinated corn on the cob then a sandwich is always available.  Of course, there is the one child who hates sandwiches!

I have heard, "I have never liked....and you know it!" more times than I could ever count.  Some dislikes do seem to stem from before birth.  I have one child who will sit quietly and starve if rice is the main dish.  I have another who shudders at the thought of oatmeal.  One who dislikes anything green except for creamed asparagus on toast. (Go figure that one!)  I have one that I am convinced doesn't like anything that I serve not because she doesn't like it but because she wants anything else.  Gratefully, I do have a couple like their dad who will eat nearly anything.

What a relief it is when they begin to prepare the meals.  I will give the suggestion and if they don't want to do that they have to come up with their own plan.  It has to be a more reasonable plan than just ice cream!

Right now the 8-year-old can fix pancakes and other breakfast meals.  He is beginning to do grilled cheese sandwiches as well.  The 10-year-old likes to follow recipes and is the best soup maker in the house.  The 12-year-old like to come up with her own dishes and they are wonderfully fatty and tasty.  The 13-year-old likes to fix anything that he can fry in a skillet.  He is his grandpa's favorite chef.  The 15-year-old can do most anything but much prefers to do what I suggest.  She is the one who has taken off on the low fat cooking.  Now they are all learning how frustrating, "I don't like..." can be.

If there is one thing that is the most frustrating of all moments it is when your child will not even taste something that you know will taste good.  When I was a young mother with only Chani, Ben, Chamrie and Chiya to feed, I was usually quite patient with my children.  However, one evening I had made a delicious potato soup that is a favorite.  At least it was a favorite for the parents!  Chani ate it.  Chani usually ate anything.  Ben on the other hand never ate anything.  Chamrie decided this evening to follow Ben's lead.

I had served the soup.  They wouldn't taste it.  Chani said it was great.  They wouldn't taste it.  I added cheese.  They wouldn't taste it.  I offered desert when finished.  (I know, poor judgment but I was beginning to go past intelligence.)  They wouldn't taste it.  I took the spoon and tried to make Ben open his mouth to eat.  He wouldn't taste it.

The soup had become almost cold and I was looking at these two children and suddenly I decided that I was a child too. I took the bowl of soup from in front of Ben and quickly placed it upside down on his head.  Poor Ben started crying because his hair was now dripping, Chani was awe-struck, Chamrie felt for Ben and wondered if she was next but it looked so funny she started laughing.  What did I do?  I joined Chamrie in the laughter and soon everybody was in hysterics.  I also never let, "Just taste it," become an issue with any child again.

We went on vacation and stayed at a lodge that served breakfast.  Ryan was three years old.  He loved listening to Dolly Parton.  He crawled under a table at the lodge and in a loud voice where everybody could hear he started singing his version of one of her songs.  "Jolene, Jolene please take my man!"  Followed quickly by a line from Dolly's other song, "Touch your woman, touch your woman!"  I went and hid.

Ryan likes to sing.  When he was almost five, he was sitting next to his grandpa at the table and suddenly started singing, "Have you ever, ever in your long-legged life seen a long-legged sailor and his long naked wife!"

Cheyanne at age three wanted to take a bath.  It was past bedtime so we told her it would have to wait.  The rest of us were watching television when Chamrie went into the kitchen.  There she found Cheyanne smearing butter all over the floor and herself.  She looked up at Chamrie and said, "I want a bath!"  She got one.

Chamrie was making peach crisp when she was about eight years old.  When making the topping instead of putting in one-half teaspoon of salt, she put in a one-half cup.  I had to multiply like mad and we ended with tons of crisp topping stored in the freezer.

Chani (age 12) and her cousin Jenny (age 13) were making brownies for Thanksgiving.  Chani was using the hand mixer and leaned forward.  Suddenly her hair wrapped in the beaters!  Jenny quickly pulled the plug and Chani was OK.  Not long after that there was a news article of a woman who had done exactly that but it scalped her in the process.  Again we were so grateful for the watchful care of the Lord and for Jenny's quick action.

Chani learns very quickly.  She does something once and that is enough for her to know how to do or to not do something.  She was making brownies again when she was 14 and after putting in the boiling, melted fat and chocolate she turned on the mixer.  She had forgotten to put on the lid and the fat went flying.  She blistered up and thankfully healed quickly.

Now, it may sound as though there is no supervision in the kitchen activities.  This isn't true at all.  However, there are some pretty quiet children when they think they know how to do something because they have seen an older child doing the task.  I walked in on one child who was toasting the bread.   He had buttered the bread and then popped it into the toaster!  It is a wonder that any mother survives her children's learning processes.

Chani was making cinnamon rolls and we had run out of powdered sugar for the frosting.  It was Sunday and going to the store was not an option.  I had remembered that we could make powdered sugar.  I couldn't remember if grinding it in my wheat grinder made it or by running it through my blender.  I told her to run it through the grinder.

The grinder started smoking and making a sick whir.  Well, that was a $300 mistake.  She then used the blender and it worked.  Neil had to repair the grinder so we could make bread.  He managed to do so and retain all ten fingers.

I did learn how to eat from the food storage.  We went to a mainly vegetarian diet while I gained the skill.  I got so that if I had carrots, onions, celery and potatoes along with tomato sauce and fruit I could make meals that we enjoyed.  Of course everything I made had cheese in it and that could be a problem as far as food storage goes.

I have tried different methods of stocking up and my favorite is fairly simple.  You buy double of everything canned for a month.  Every time you come home from the store you put half of everything in the pantry and you place the other half in a box labeled for that month.  Thus, you might have three boxes full of cans labeled January.

The following January you take those three boxes out of the storage spot, empty them and replace them with duplicates you have just purchased.  This allows for rotation.  It is more expensive the first year but then it balances out.  Plus the yearly upkeep and adaptation is easy because as you find you need to go to the store for a bit extra, you just buy double of the extra, use half and store half.

Another help is to come up with a set menu plan.  We purchased two full sized upright freezers and I started to cook once a month.  I would make the meals and freeze them.  This helped as my children started to cook and put together meals.

When we lived in my grandfather's house in El Cajon, we had a huge side yard separate from the backyard.  We decided to have a garden.  Neil went out and tilled the ground, planted it and we watered it.  It started growing nice plants when suddenly tons of weeds took over!

When it came time to try and eat the produce we found that absolutely everything tasted  bitter.  I had left the control of this gardening business to Neil because I knew nothing of gardening and his family had always supplemented their food budget with home-grown vegetables.

We asked his mother what went wrong.  She responded by asking us how we had prepared the soil.  "Prepare?" Neil said. "But Mom, all you ever did was put the seeds into the ground and everything came out tasting great."

Years later we told this to an old friend of Neil's mother.  "Why Neil," he said, "You forget all those hours of work your mother put into that acre so that the soil would be perfect for gardening?"  It is interesting to discover just how selective even the best memories can be.

We are now attempting another garden.  Currently we are living in Utah and a neighbor is holding our hands through this process.  Surprising to me is that Chamrie seems to have both of her grandmothers' love of the garden.  She has studied and shown such dedication and joy that I have placed her in charge and the other children, young and old, answer to her instructions.

This same neighbor helped me get started in canning.  She would tell me what was ready to can and then I would purchase some for my family.  I canned beets, carrots, potatoes, green beans, peaches, grape juice and we froze corn on the cob.

I hope to never again freeze corn on the cob.  It was easy to do but never tasted right.  I also didn't like the potatoes.  Everything else was wonderful and I can understand the love/hate relationship people have with canning season.  I think next time I would like to can through the church as then for the labor you put in you can bottle what you purchase with much less time and mess.

It has been a few years since I wrote my little ditty on gardening.  This year life changed for me when we moved to a place that has six acres of dirt.  No grass, flowers or trees.  Just dirt and a few prairie dogs.  Gardening has become a passion out of a drive to have something beautiful surrounding my home.  And something that won't track brown dust with every opening of the door.

I discovered Square Foot Gardening and I actually got some vegetables to grow big enough to make it to my table.  Squash, green beans and a few peas.  The tomatoes grew but only a couple turned red.  The corn grew but I planted them too late to be edible.

Speaking of corn, I did freeze corn this year.  I worked with a team of ladies who knew what they were doing.  Then I came home and did some more.  I heard that you can take corn fresh from picking and not even blanche them.  I'm trying it.  So far the corn from the freezer tastes wonderful.

I have planted tulips and other flowers and will know in the spring if they will and be pretty.  I planted some seedlings but they sure look like dead sticks.  I guess I'll find out in another six months if there is any life in those twigs.

Learning is never over.  We just need to learn when we are interested and then the windows of heaven can hardly open fast enough to let out the flood of knowledge waiting to descend upon us.

I won't put anything on the walls over a bed except paper posters tacked to the wall or tapestries.  We bolt  everything to the wall, even the water heater.  I consider the most dangerous spots in an earthquake to be near windows, near dropping books or in front of the television.  My children love to lie in front of the TV which is up on a low shelf and I am always after them to move because of earthquake awareness.

We even practiced getting the things together that we thought we really needed and seeing if it would all fit into the van.  It is surprising what seems important then.  We had all of the children sleep in our room on the floor one night to practice.

They think these things are great fun, but for Neil and me it is serious business.  We feel that by practicing emergencies we might be better prepared to care for all these children in a real emergency.

I think our most vulnerable spot is that none of the children likes to wear shoes, myself included.  Just finding them when needed would be disastrous.  I have heard the suggestion to buy an extra pair of shoes and clothing and place them in a clean trash can with a snapping lid.  Leave this weather resistant can outside.  That way you will have your clothes and shoes and whatever else you place in the can where you can get at it if you have to leave your home quickly.

Every year for about a month we go over some sort of emergency preparedness drill and lessons with our children.  We practice the Stop, Drop and Roll routine in fire safety.  We practice what to do if the smoke alarms go off.

When we lived in a two-story home with the bedrooms upstairs, we actually climbed out of the window with the children.  This was important to do.  I discovered the first time I tried it that I couldn't climb down those emergency ladders that have round rungs.  So we purchased another more expensive type.  It has flat rungs which hang supported, away from the wall.  I also found that I could not climb one of those ladders with a baby in my arms.  So stored along with the ladder is a sling that I can pop in a baby of any size and a baby carrier backpack.

After a month of fire safety practice we once set off the alarms after the children were asleep.  No response.  They continued to sleep through it.  The lesson? After all the preparation, act as if the children will know nothing at all.

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