Did Colonial Children Complain About What Was For Dinner?

The answer to the eternal question ”What’s for dinner?” has so many more answers today than it did when I was a kid.  Just the categories of food has more in number than I had as actual choices; Thai, Italian, Sushi, Mexican, Burgers, Chinese, Pizza, Indian, both Southern and Northern which are not to be confused with Persian, Southern, Barbeque, German, Steakhouse, American, New American (I’m sure that “new” just means more expensive that non-new), Seafood, Vegetarian, French, Japanese, Scandinavian, African…

Even with all these categories to choose from, whether we cook it at home or, throw the other choice in the pot I did not have as a kid, go out for dinner, it seems that someone is unhappy.  How can that be?  My family has almost unlimited options between my cooking and Durham’s culinary offerings.

When I was a kid, my menu was limited by the few raw ingredients my mother was likely to purchase.  See I did a lot of the cooking, but since I could not drive, I did none of the shopping.  We never ate out for dinner, so take that option off the table.  That left us with ground beef or chicken and as far as categories it was American, since new American was still just a spark in some future chef’s eye, Italian and maybe Southern, since my parents were southerners.  The complaining about “what’s for dinner?” existed then.

All this whining despite the giant choice got me thinking about kids even further back than my 1960-70’s era.  What about kids in colonial time whose menu was limited to what they could grow or raise and how long it could keep in an underground root cellar.  Did children in the dead of winter complain of another yam stew or were they thankful just to have food at all?

If you don’t have many choices does it make it better or worse?  Has the explosion of worldwide culinary offerings spoiled us so much that we don’t enjoy what we have when we have it?

When I was in college, I spent one summer living in my college town renovating my off-campus house and working many different jobs.  One of those jobs was working in the catering office of the food service department.  We served all kinds of different groups who used the campus for various meetings and conferences.

Our food service was run by the college and not a big corporate contractor and thus was really good.  Depending on what a group was willing to pay we could make a meal as nice as surf & turf or as down home as shepherds’ pie.  I will never forget my favorite group who had a conference, The Farmer’s Wives of America.  Eleven hundred women filled the dining hall as we served them our least expensive, but heaviest plated meal of opened faced hot roast beef sandwiches, mashed potatoes and gravy and cooked to death green beans with ham hocks.

When the servers went to clear the tables they were shocked to find that the women had scraped and stacked their plates at the end of each table and all were terribly complimentary of what a wonderful lunch it was.  I remember being summoned out into the dining room over the PA system by the organizer of the meeting to be introduced to all 1,100 Farmer’s Wives so they could thank me for their lunch.  Their gratitude for not our best meal was overwhelming.  I wonder if it was just that they were just pleased to have a meal they did not have to cook, let alone grow or raise.  They did not even get to have a choice in what they ate, but they appreciated it just the same.

I don’t have an answer to this complaining about “what’s for dinner?” just wondering if it is an age-old problem, or perhaps just New American.