My mother was a fantastic lady. She was also a survivor. She survived the Great Depression. My mother knew what it was to be hungry. She knew what it was to be poor. There was a time in her life that not being wasteful was the difference between survival or not.
Fast forward to 1980. The Great Depression was in the history books for most of us. For those who lived through it, the experience was anything but an abstract historical concept. Mom would tell me of these huge, ominous dirt clouds that would roll into town and black out the sun. She had the pictures to prove it, too. In those days food was scarce. When you had food on your plate, you ate it. You ate every single bit of it. No questions asked.
During my childhood, I was held to the same standard. Waste not, want not. It served me well. I learned that a dollar is hard earned. I learned that hard work equals pay which equals survival. I also picked up the concept of waste not, want not. Food on the plate gets eaten, period. It goes in your belly and not in the trash can.
That last part was fine in high school. My metabolism was about a million times better. Instead of sitting behind an air conditioned desk in 104 degree weather, I was usually outside. You see, I worked for this small town version of Walmart. So I spent my summers tending the greenhouse, throwing freight, or unloading merchandise from the back of a semi.
Thank God, there's no more unloading semi's. I went to college in hopes of avoiding more of that, and it worked. What no longer works for me is to clean my plate. God help me. I'm sorry Mom. The fact is that we eat out alot. A lot more than we should. You probably do to. Most places here in the good old U.S.A. serve huge portions. In fact, the portions are big enough to split right in half. You could eat one half for lunch and one half for dinner. In fact, I would suggest that.
But what about cooking at home? A good rule of thumb is to refrain from eating more than one full plate. Now here's the trick. A full plate is not the same thing as a stacked plate. A full plate has enough food to comfortably cover the surface area. There is no stacking food on top of more food. There is no squishing two plates of food onto one.
Another thing that I'm still learning to do is listen to my stomach. Our stomachs never stop talking. Think about it for a minute. Think about the last big meal you had. The one when you were hurting afterward. There was probably a point during that meal where your stomach felt full. You knew that if you continued to eat you would hurt, but you did it anyway. To listen to your stomach is to stop eating at that first full feeling.
How in the world do we do that? Sorry Mom, here comes another rule breaker. We get up from the table and excuse ourselves so that we can get away from the food, even if that means leaving others at the table. If you can't stomach the idea of breaking protocol by excusing yourself before everyone is done eating, then I have another suggestion. Take your plate and your fork. Walk to the trash can. Scrape the rest of that food right off your plate and into the trash can so that eating more is no longer an option.
Hope this helps for anyone going through the same struggle as we are.
