Dinner Mutiny

Every summer my father went fly-fishing in the rugged Canadian wilderness. I dreaded the years he returned with fish. A good year meant not only smoked salmon, which was a special item too good to be wasted on the children and thankfully reserved for cocktail parties, but also fresh fish brought triumphantly home.

Salmon are not small. One or two big fish could make for a freezer full of salmon steak dinners.  I distinctly remember the sight of one freshly vanquished specimen, on display in the kitchen sink: so large it was draped, head and tail up, a silvery u-shaped accusation all scales and smell and dead round eyes lounging in the sink.

I knew, the way a child knows such things, that we were supposed to admire the fish. There was a whiff of conquering hero in the air when the fish steaks were brought in from the barbeque. We were to admire not only the fish, but my father for catching it. What’s more, we were supposed to eat it with a smile.

Ours was a typical Canadian home: of largely WASP extraction, children were expected, when allowed to eat with the grown ups, to earn their place at the dinner table with good manners, elbows tucked in and food gratefully eaten.  The nights when the dreaded salmon was served were a misery for me.

Now a grown woman serving dinners of my own, I find myself from time to time in that dinnertime ghost town of my childhood, plates drawn, the words “sit up straight and eat it” shooting unbidden from my lips.

An over-cooked salmon burger may indeed be nutritious, but tasty it is not. If the meal has been home-cooked with love, even if it is not a success, I find myself insisting. Faced with recalcitrance, I pull out the heavy artillery: ketchup, with a side of guilt.

“I thought you would like it.”

No one wins in this scenario. I know this. I learned the lesson the hard way at lonely deserted dinner tables staring at plates of cold food. The showdown does not make the food any more palatable. Nevertheless, after having thought of the meal, shopped for the ingredients, cooked, balanced the nutritional and taste requirements of the various participants at the table, when I put those plates down I want to see happy people eating, gratefully eating, the food I have so carefully prepared.

Faced with dinner mutiny I might as well have come home from catching and killing the salmon in a glacial stream with my bare hands after having foraged for the garlic and fresh herbs growing wild on the stream’s shores, pounding the carcass and herbs into patties with a smooth stone, and then cooking them over an open fire started with two twigs so entrenched do I become.

“Eat it!” I want very badly to snarl.  And maybe beat my chest just a little.

Biting down on my feral instincts, I try “it’s good for you,” firmly but with a smile. Once I meet the abjectly miserable eyes around the table, I know I’ve lost. The afternoon spent on the creative dinner-making exercise is gone. The battle is over.

Against my entire upbringing, I return to the kitchen, scrape the plates and warm a bowl of soup or make some toast if there has been a total dinner failure.

Going to bed hungry and scolded teaches little in the way of life long enjoyment of mealtime. Punishing those you would prefer to feed holds little satisfaction when the dishes, however empty, are done.

What I learned from the cold polite uneaten dinners of my childhood is that food should not be a battle and that guilt is not a guest I want at my table. Meals, especially family meals, should be shared, not fought over.

This is an original post for CanadaMomsBlog by EarnestGirl who writes about the triumphs and tribulations of motherhood at The YummyMummyClub and who has come around to the pleasures of salmon, both smoked and bbq'd.