My Life With Food 3: Adjusting

Eventually, I got wise to the fact that I couldn't eat certain things. I got used to beef bacon and sweet and sour chicken instead of pork and tea instead of coffee. And eventually, Chris decided to go to law school. And eventually, we got married in Mt. Carroll on our way to Ann Arbor.

I wasn't in school and Chris was very busy reading cases so I had a lot of free time that I used to take lots of exercise classes: aerobic dance and weight-training and running. I got into great shape and started eating according to the Pritikin Plan, which means lots of fresh veggies, fruit and whole grains, very little meat, almost no fat and no sugar.

We returned to the Bay Area a couple of years later, having discovered that our time in California had morphed us into complete weather wimps.

I continued to eat carefully until I became pregnant. I had given up all caffeine and alcohol in anticipation so I wasn't a lot of fun. After five months, my doctor told me that I needed eat more since I was starving my baby. I took that as permission - nay, a demand- to eat an It's It (ice cream cookie sandwich covered in chocolate) every day and soon had gained 60 pounds.

Michael was not starved after all and weighed almost 9 pounds at birth. Because of my allergies, his pediatrician wanted us to introduce foods slowly and later than normal. Michael didn't really like that plan and started grabbing for our forks by the time he was a year old.

We tried to delay as long as we could, but when he started eating solid foods, he fell in love. Except for mushrooms and tomatoes, he liked everything. After bowling one Friday night when Michael was about three, we went to Juan's Place in Berkeley and he ate an entire bowl of salsa, one chip after another, while the adults watched in amazement. Fortunately, his iron stomach held up to the challenge.

He was always fearless about food: he ate his first oyster before he turned five. (I still haven't tried one.)  However, eclectic were his tastes, his third word was "french fries" by which he meant McDonald's. For years, his big treat was chicken nuggets and french fries every Friday after pre-school.

I enjoyed making him Mickey Mouse pancakes and  cutting his sandwiches into fun shapes but his sophisticated palate quickly outstripped my meager abilities and we ate out more and more. After all, Chris and I were both working time-consuming and challenging jobs and we were surrounded by the Bay Area's thousands of restaurants.

Moving to Pleasant Hill from Berkeley put a crimp into our routine: bereft of our favorite ehtnic restaurants and surrounded by chain restaurants. But it wasn't enough to force us into cooking.