Did the children get enough to eat in the homes?

Re: Did the children get enough to eat in the homes?

polly wrote:

I was curious as to peoples experience with mealtime being in the family. Was there enough food to go around? Did the babies and children get enough to eat? The teens and adults? What were the main staples of food, or was it nothing particular. Were there specific reccomendations of what was to be eaten or even certain recipes that were used often?

Oh boy, that's going to be different from home to home. I know my son's biggest complaint was that all the milk and good food was kept locked away for mothers and babies. They still talk about going out witnessing and being hungry while pregnant moms were able to stop and get a snack. Not good, not good at all.

In the early 70â€™s, when â€œprovisioningâ€

Onward to more modern times (born in '84), I've always had enough food to eat, though as most of it was "provisioned" (I don't get that word - pro + vision (v.) would mean to like "see ahead" or something...) it wasn't often good quality.
Sometimes we just had to make do with what we had. But it was alright.

Working in the kitchens was one of the best jobs as we were able to nibble at stuff.

Yes most of the food was "Provisioned" (ie, begged) at markets and stores, usually unsellable and out of date stuff.

I remember in spain (San Sadurni) they'd had a bag of carrots that had had gasoline spilled on them, yuk! We had to eat them until the bag was finished. We also got a supply of ransid butter--after over 30 years, and I can still taste it now.

I caused an outbreak of food poisoning once at Hollingbourne through cooking and serving mushrooms that had gone off.

The use of sugar was eventually ruled as a "sin", that was a difficult time. Also, I remember being reprimanded for eating figs after breakfast--you see we weren't supposed to drink milk and have fruit at the same time.

At meal times tables boxes and what-not where placed together, old chairs, milk crates small boxes where use to sit on as every one gather around and started singing and clapping. The shepard would then come to the table and start singing and afterwards everyone would praise and thank God. After the meal was over and testimonies heard, the leader would ask"Who wants a blessing?" Every one would try to be the one to be selected. Much later in time everyone would cringe would they heard this.

my experience with food in the family is that it was always healthy (good if you're into that and you want that, but there's no choice involved), and never what you wanted. you got what you got from provisioning (begged for/donated food), brown rice, eggs, powdered milk stew type beef, lots of liver (they said that was so good for you) and overripe vegetables and fruits that we had to sort thru when they came home. a BIG job normally, as there was always rotten stuff mixed in. those were my staples growing up. If people donated things like yogurts (with any sugar in it), white bread, pork, desserts, anything considered not natural and healthy, it would be donated to an institution that needed food. (not good to "poison" OUR bodies, but we could always give that stuff to the kids in institutions, hmmm) we always had enough to eat, but never anything to snack on. Also, i remember crying so many mealtimes when i was told i couldn't get up until i finished everything on my plate, and sometimes it was gross and unflavored. we didn't ever chose what we ate, Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner were always done by the kitchen overseer. there's good in trying to eat healty, but it was so unrelenting and hard to enjoy as a child (or at any age when you never chose what you eat)

It was easly to provision meals while on the road, you go to a fast food place and ask to speak to the manager and ask "We're working with young people in the area who are on drugs, can you help with a donation of a meal?" They would look at you and say"Sure!" Then give them a milky Mo letter or a baby tract. Couple of sisters told me that they snuck out and bought sodas and candy with their lit money. Can you imagine that? Other wise it was revolutionary stew or shepards pie for meals.

Quote:

After the meal was over and testimonies heard, the leader would ask"Who wants a blessing?" Every one would try to be the one to be selected. Much later in time everyone would cringe would they heard this.

yep I remember that ploy to get people to wash up. In time things like that got rostered. So that everybody got a "blessing"!

this one time when the "teamwork" decided that we should be winning souls instead of selling material we went thru a period lasting at least 4months with cornmeal white rice and powdered eggs, due to a transport company's truck tipping over and donating it under the pretense of us in turn donating it to poor starving children living in slums... well i guess it was used as intended.
To this day I can't eat cornmeal.

I remember almost always having enough to eat as a small child. My parents were nice and caring of me and siblings. I guess I was fortunate to have good parents. When things got institutionalized(school vision), we often raided the locked fridges in the middle of the night at the risk of getting spanked. It was a fun adventure! We also got to learn lock picking. I don't think I ever managed to pick a key lock, but they rarely used those since several people needed access to the walk-ins and fridges. So picking combination locks was a great pastime. Unfortunately, we then could also steal bicycles. I regret doing that a few times for no other reason that my conscience told me not to.

More recently the food situation has gotten bad at times. I hear from many people that there is only leftover white bread and things like that - much like the "early disciples" have noted. I hear complaints about skin problems and such as a result from eating too much processed food.

I guess I am a health freak kind of person, so my judgment may be biased. Though I would also have to say that it depends on what home you are in. Some places are really quite "weak in this area" and "need to pull up their socks!" "Amen?"

ragi and dhal for months
when i was about 7 or so we lived off of dhal (lentils) for easily a month and for one week we have nothing to eat but ragi, a nasty chalky tasting burnt rice kinda slop yuck. i'll never forget it. we had ragi ceral for beakfast ragi cake for lunch and ragi soup/ stew/ curry for dinner. the only time we have a really nice decent meal was when a 'king' would come over for dinner man what a treat. i'll never forget having fried chicken for the first time. in fact i ate so much ( two chicken legs and some rice) i even got sick after wards lol, guess my tummy couldnt handle proper food portions, or maybe i was just a little piggy lol. who cares it was delish. other times the food was good, the portions normally werent slack unless you happened to be 'overweight' (slightly chunkier but by no means fat) and there were the mini's who got to eat all they wanted and have delicious mini snack throughout the day.

Re: ragi and dhal for months

alieninside wrote:

when i was about 7 or so we lived off of dhal (lentils) for easily a month and for one week we have nothing to eat but ragi, a nasty chalky tasting burnt rice kinda slop yuck. i'll never forget it. we had ragi ceral for beakfast ragi cake for lunch and ragi soup/ stew/ curry for dinner. the only time we have a really nice decent meal was when a 'king' would come over for dinner man what a treat. i'll never forget having fried chicken for the first time. in fact i ate so much ( two chicken legs and some rice) i even got sick after wards lol, guess my tummy couldnt handle proper food portions, or maybe i was just a little piggy lol. who cares it was delish. other times the food was good, the portions normally werent slack unless you happened to be 'overweight' (slightly chunkier but by no means fat) and there were the mini's who got to eat all they wanted and have delicious mini snack throughout the day.

Sounds like India to me. That would be about accurate. Though, I think we actually had buffalo meat in our curry with the dhal. "Cracked wheat" must be ragi. My dad did a pretty good job of making cereal out of it with "jugary," cinnamon, butter and what not. Oh another thing that was funny was, many times the milk was contaminated, so instead egg shells were ground up and added to the cereal for calcium. I only realized that when I saw someone doing it and asked about it. It was a fine white powder. Hmmmm... well, actually maybe, hey what are those funny swirly things on the ceiling...

haha no, it isnt cracked wheat but i remember that being our main breakfast ceral, that and a grits like substance suji. atually i googled ragi and its some kind of flour found in india, and only india (big surprise) we lived off of buffalo meat since chicken was very expensive, and cow beef of course is sacred. but i dont remember them ever cooking it with the dhal. so where in india did u grow up then? i was all around but mostly in the late 80's and early 90's

alieninside wrote:

haha no, it isnt cracked wheat but i remember that being our main breakfast ceral, that and a grits like substance suji. atually i googled ragi and its some kind of flour found in india, and only india (big surprise) we lived off of buffalo meat since chicken was very expensive, and cow beef of course is sacred. but i dont remember them ever cooking it with the dhal. so where in india did u grow up then? i was all around but mostly in the late 80's and early 90's

Oh holy shiva! The gods have permitted us to have this most excellent conversation. The greatness of ragi is not to scorned my kindred cosmic brother.

Ach, I cannot come up with the long words they do...

We left in 87 I think? Or maybe 88. Before YES I think.

leftovers
was it just in my home that only the adults were allowed to eat leftovers for lunch the next day due to food poisoning?

Re: leftovers

alieninside wrote:

was it just in my home that only the adults were allowed to eat leftovers for lunch the next day due to food poisoning?

Hmmmm... I have never heard of that one. I think we had a refridgerator - rented BTW. Wink

lol yeah we had a fridge too, not one we were ever allowed to go into though. lol i remember at dinner time instead of using cups to measure the rice they used to measure it by the pitchers (jugs) and kitchen prep stringing all those beansand sorting though all that rice to pick out the stones...wow. that was a lot of veggie prep. and mopping those huuuge dining room floors, on your hands and knees with the cloths? and sweeping with those brooms u had to kneel and sweep with, remember those?

What is more striking to me is how _little_ current SGAs have to put up with. They have it SO MUCH easier than we (born in the 1970s) had it.

In between cooking dinner for 200 people (and then, of course, washing their dishes), having sex with an adult who spanked you the day before, taking care of 10 screaming babies, spending your weekend marching up-and-down the city streets begging for money, getting the sh!t kicked out of you by some random (weirdo) adult for what he or she thought was foolishness (but was really just kids being kids), being randomly asked to quote verbatim some Biblical verse and getting into trouble if you didn't know it, zero privacy, zero rights, zero control over anything, etc., etc. . . . I should think that current SGAs (i.e., those still in) are living in luxury compared to us. And yet, and of course, they are entirely oblivious to this.

They don't even know! Oh, well!

i honestly have to agree, i guess technically i would be considered and SGA if i hadnt have left, but i remember those days all too well.

my baby sister was 2 they used to beat, yes i mean BEAT! the crap out of her when she wet her bed, one family night the power was out and she woke up with her bed wet from sweating and she screamed and cried because she thought she had wet her bed and was going to get beat for it. zero privacy is right, being accompanied to the bathroom by an adult or teen (my bad you're an adult at age 12). supervised phone call to your folks only allowed on your birthday. family day once a month unless someone has chicken pox, measles or somthing, usually resulting in a school quarantine for 6 months. i remember us kids screaming and crying and holding on to our mommies begging them not to make us go back.
i would tell my mom about getting 42 swats and being on silence restriction for months and she replied i prolly deserved it (i was 7)

getting demerits for every single thing, missing get out for every 7 demerits, getting spanked at the end of the week in fron of your classmates if u missed 3 or more get outs in a week. if u got two or more spanking in a month they upgraded the humiliation to the enitre adult home (providing you arent in quarentine)
i got more, but u all already know this stuff, so im going to keep ranting in my head =)

xFamily

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