I have always been a picky eater. I blame my mom, primarily because she let's me blame her. Growing up, I survived on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. If mom made something that I didn't like, she would let me go make myself a PBJ. It wasn't always like that. I remember one epic battle between mom and me over a bowl of corn chowder (it even SOUNDS awful, doesn't it?). I don't remember how the story really went down, but in my retelling of it, mom and I argued over me eating it for hours. This happened in our kitchen at the house on Market Street in Crawfordsville, IN, so it must have happened before I was in 2nd grade. Anyway, after hours of fighting, I finally got her to let me down from the table after eating only a bite. I felt like it was victory for picky people everywhere. How I ever made it to adulthood is a mystery.
This 40 day fast has really caused me to focus on food. All the time. When I started out, I was leery of how I could survive, since two of the things I was allowed to eat -- corn and beans -- I don't like. One of my good friends, Dusty, was all over me, telling me that if I didn't eat some beans, I would do some permanent damage from the lack of protein in my diet. Now, Dusty is in the medical field (a pedorthist, no less), so I thought I would heed his advice.
If you are a picky eater, you know the feelings of dread that pop up when you set out to try something new. Well, on Thursday of this week, I finally gave into Dusty's demands and ate some beans. At Taco Villa. And while they weren't the greatest thing I have ever eaten, they were tolerable. So much so that I had them again yesterday for lunch. With a friend and fellow conspirator. At Taco Villa. (He suggested we do Rosa's, but I decided to take this bean thing slow.)
We had some friends over last night, and they were bringing the potato dish, so I was hopeful that it would be a chance to have another kind of potatoes. Friend and baked potatoes are fine, but I was down for some mashed potatoes or whatever. When they got here and opened the potatoes, I thought the grocery store had given them the wrong stuff. It had green things in it, red things in it, and looked like grits. If I hadn't talked myself into the fact that I was gonna get to try something new, I would have passed on the potato mush. But I tried it. Five servings later (I know -- that defeats the whole "solidarity with the poor" thing) I was full for the first time in days.
In one of the readings, Chris Seay (A Place at the Table) tells of some kids in Brazil that get to have watered-down coffee mixed with some sort of flour. While it has no nutritional value, it fills their stomachs up. For a little while, at least. And for some of the people of Codo, that's all they'll get some days. I wrote earlier about a family in Haiti that sometimes doesn't have enough food for all of their kids, so sometimes kids go without. I was reflecting on this at lunch with Nick yesterday, and he told me (his Compassion kid is from Haiti) that he had read that sometimes kids in Haiti eat mudpies. They have no nutritional value (it's dirt and water, in case you missed the whole "mud" part of that), but they have a digestible calcium in their dirt, so it makes them feel full.
Watered-down coffee? Mud for breakfast? This is the world in which we live, friends. Some of us spend more on eating out in one month than families make in a year. It reminds me of the point of one of Jesus' stories where he tells the people that "to whom much is given, much is required." I hope that application scares you as much as it scares me. Here I am complaining about having to eat beans and having to drink black coffee and my almost endless supply of clean water, and THERE ARE PEOPLE IN THIS WORLD THAT WILL EAT MUD TODAY! I suppose, in light of that, I can stop complaining about green things in my potatoes.
But I still wouldn't eat corn chowder.
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