(My apologies to the gentleman in the photo. I was only trying to embarrass myself, but I suck at Photoshop.) ************************************************** As the start date of my first high school food studies class comes closer and closer, I am starting to get curious about my students. How much will they know about food? Will they be open to eating a wide range of food? Will they be able to write a proper sentence?! My teacher friends keep telling me to set my expectations low or get disappointed. This made me think about what I was like as an eater in high school…and it wasn’t a pretty picture. Just look above! I swear my hair wasn’t always that puffy. It was purely a special occasion sort of thing. So that is going to my Gastro Fridays topic of the week: teens and gastronomy. What do they know? What did I know? Can I learn something from my memories as a picky teenaged eater? In high school, I was probably the pickiest eater of all of my friends. Wait, no, there was one friend who subsided mainly on pita bread and pistachios, so I know I wasn’t the worst, but I was close. This didn’t mean that I hated food–quite the opposite. I thought about it so much back then, it was almost embarrassing. I would day dream in class about food, I had all my favorite books earmarked to the food passages, and I had the local tv schedule of cooking shows memorized. Most of what I ate was processed, high fat, bad for you food. I never ate breakfast because I was too lazy to wake up early enough to eat brekky AND get to school on time. For lunch, I would either bring it from home or buy in the cafeteria. I am pretty sure I ate a hot dog with mustard every single day for lunch my freshman year. I would also spring for pizza from my favorite local pizza place (Marchelonis!), and of course, I was first in line on taco day to get my two fake tacos with french fries. Occasionally a giant soft pretzel with cheese would work it’s way into the line-up, along with a box of candy from the snack bar. I vaguely remember vegetables being offer, but it was usually the frozen peas-carrot medley that I hated. I ate VERY few vegetables, and none at lunch. If the lunch came from home, it was probably even more unhealthy for me. A sandwich, usually a cheap, processed beef with mustard. A bag of potato chips was a must, as was a sweet, typically a Little Debbie snack cake or Star Crunch. Sometimes fruit snacks. If there was a new snack preprocessed snack on the market, I always had it first. Soda. Always. It was pretty much all I drank. Dinner became more of a solo event in high school because I was always busy with after school activities like soccer and theater. My mom stocked frozen lasagna, chicken nuggets and fried mozzarella sticks that I usually made into my meal. Occasionally I would have a proper sit down meal with my parents, but I hardly ever touched the vegetables they offered, and they didn’t it force it on me. McDonald’s, Taco Bell and pizza were other popular dinner choices for me. My family HATED eating out with me, because I was so picky and had a loud mouth to match. I could NEVER agree on where to eat out at, unless it was pizza. Oh, and I probably ate a lot of ice cream, because that was my after school job, scooping ice cream. I went on a trip around Europe in high school with my school band, and I am pretty sure I survived on Tombstone sausage sticks, Handisnacks and Nutrigrain raspberry cereal bars. I remember encountering chicken cordon bleu in Paris and hating it. I had fondue in Switzerland, and was pissed that all I got to eat for dinner was bread and cheese. The only part of it I liked was breakfast in Paris, because every person would get a giant basket of fresh bread including a chocolate croissant. I would wake up early to take other people’s chocolate croissant, and would replace them with my plain ones. I did venture out and try to eat brie in Switzerland, which I liked. But when I went back to buy some more, the shop owner (who didn’t speak English) misunderstood me and hooked me up with goat cheese. I threw it together with some crackers and cured meat, hiked to the top of a mountain and had myself a feast. I suppose when confronted with such immense gastronomical delights, even a picky teen has to crack sometime! So does this mean I am doomed to have a classroom full of picky kids who will probably turn up their nose at most food? Probably. But I am hoping to meet them halfway and introduce the importance of food within a culture by focusing on their favorite foods, like pizza, hot dogs and hamburgers. Hopefully something will stick. And I am also banking on the fact that when I was their age, the biggest treat in the world to me was eating food in class. If I can’t win them over with the history of the S’more, then maybe I can at least lull them into a state of happiness and minor alertness by feeding one to them. What did you eat in high school? Were you an adventurous eater, or a picky nicky like me? ~LTG!
