Battle of the Foobish Food

One of my favourite stories is the one where my mother was determined to get my sisters to eat spaghetti with onion in the sauce. My sisters steadfastly refused to do it, and unlike me, who never had an occasion where I refused food, going without a meal was not any problem to my sisters. My mother would slice and dice and run the blender on that onion, so it was nearly invisible. But my sisters would check over their spaghetti sauce fastidiously and if they found even the slight transparent something that could be a bit of an onion, they would refuse to eat it. When I asked my mother at an older age why she went through this struggle, she replied, “Because onions are good for you.” That makes about as much sense as anything I suppose.

In today’s For Better or For Worse, Elly Patterson is in the classic struggle between cook and child, that of getting the child to eat their vegetables. It was with great amusement I noticed that carrots showed up, since that seems to be Deanna Patterson’s vegetable of choice. The sequence where the child refuses to eat food on the premise that they are full, but they still want dessert is an old family life parenting joke. I know the theme this week was supposed to be Michael teases Lizzie, because she is cuter than he is; but really the theme of this week is turning out to be strips which use the same old standard jokes about parenting. There is not an original joke in the bunch.

Monday, the boy who can’t decide if he prefers picking on his sister to punishment,
Tuesday, the boy who likes something common instead of his fancy toys to play with,
Wednesday the girl with the inappropriate item on her head,
Thursday, the boy who hates to be cleaned, and
Friday, the boy who wants dessert and not vegetables.
Saturday will probably be along these lines also.