A writing exercise from school
Un edited as written.
Food, I hated cabbage.
I remember so clearly the first time I ate green vegetables without feeling sick, I was seventeen.
My mother who I must add that I love dearly learnt all her culinary skills from her mother, so there was a lot of history at work here she had been evacuated to Wales during the war growing up during the austerity of food rationing.
When I appeared, rationing was almost at an end, but sugar was still considered an extravagance.
Sunday dinner was always a family affair meat potato, and cabbage, oh how I hated cabbage. Peas and beans were fine but cabbage, indeed anything from the brassica family of which there seemed to be a plentiful never-ending supply all year round would make me physically sick.
Why you may ask, after all, cabbage is such a wonderful source of vitamins minerals fibre and other health-giving nutrients all of which I would agree with.
The problem which I found out years later was the one ingredient.
t that must have been measured by the shovel, not a spoon. The source of my teenage nausea was nothing more heinous than sodium hydrogen carbonate more commonly known as bicarbonate of soda.
Such was the effect I would line my pockets with polytene bags that I might spirit the evil green away from the table and flush it into the sewers of Birmingham, the place I firmly believed had spawned the foul cabbage. Both my parents believed there was something wrong with me. So, my eating habits were discussed analysed and debated by grandparents aunts uncles medical professionals even the man in the greengrocers got to put in twopence worth, all to no avail. Mysteriously camping with the scouts and on holidays my ailment disappeared, however, my polytene-lined pockets were a constant mealtime companion. Then I left school hurrah.
I was almost an adult; I could begin to make my own decisions about what to eat.
It had long been my plan to join the army on leaving school and my father took full advantage of this by informing me I don’t get to choose if you don’t eat your cabbage, you go hungry it’s not a hotel where you can pick and choose. Wise words indeed but the army is a volunteer army times have changed all the posters show multiple choice happy smiling chiefs with lavish spreads of brightly coloured vegetables.
On my leaving day, I was packed off with sage advice about not living on chips.
After my first day jumping over things running along roads and marching in a smart soldierlike manner swinging arms with stomach in and chest out, with some degree of trepidation after a days hard work I joined the queue for dinner there were chips, potatoes boiled and mashed, carrots peas and this bright green leafy stuff which didn’t taste half bad this is when I realised that cabbage was green, not pale and anaemic.
On my first leave, I asked my mother not to use the dreaded bicarb, and as if I had turned lead into gold my father commented on how tasty the cabbage was. From that day on bicarb was never used in vegetables.
I also remember that the family flatulence problem disappeared shortly after.