Something Awful to Eat

When I was younger, if anything set in my plate was green, a tomato, or had an uncertain texture, I would refuse to eat it and would even refuse to look at it. That is how picky of an eater I was. My mother used to make up lies explaining that if I do not eat apples, bananas, green beans, and tomatoes, I will suffer consequences like living one day less of my life or becoming ill. At this time, my mother was not working because she had just had my younger sister. Therefore, she was cooking all the time. Many Serbian foods that she would make were stews containing the vegetables I hated, but even when we would go out to a restaurant I would have to ask them to take out everything in my sandwich with exception to the meat and cheese. Though my parents would become highly frustrated with me, they were not ever too strict in force-feeding me all of these much-needed, but intensely disliked foods.

            The case was different, however, when my Uncle Vlada, my mother’s brother-in-law, would come into Houston with my aunt and cousins. Each night we would sit down to dinner, especially when he cooked, if I ever denied to accept a certain part of the meal in my plate or denied to try it, he would punish me to sit at the table until I had eaten it fully. He was not as strict about it when my mother was cooking, but when he took all day preparing one of his fine meals, he felt highly insulted at my wrong-mannered approach to table sociability. One night he prepared stuffed green peppers for my family, filled with rice and ground beef, and covered in tomato sauce. This was my least favorite specialty. I despised the wrinkly nature of the green pepper and the green color it turned after being cooked, especially in contrast to the red sauce poured on top. It just did not make sense to me that such a combination could taste good. He placed one stuffed pepper in my plate in front of me and by the time dinner was over I had not picked up my fork yet. My mother tried to take the pepper apart from the stuffing and allow me to eat solely the rice and beef, but my uncle would not have it. He forced me to sit there for three hours until I attempted at a bite.