Skip to main content

What We Eat

Check out the good looking crew.  Just to clarify.  I'm the pretty one.

There's a little mountain resort in Northern Utah that is invaded every July by this group of people. We are an intimidating bunch.

5 years ago my brother brought his Nepalese bride to the United States.  She lived in a country where she had no expectation to ever drive a car.  She bought her food daily from the market and ate it.  She taught English, although her accent was so strong when she arrived I questioned her grasp of the language.  We tried to be friendly and accepting.  We ended up scaring the daylights out of her.

She thought we were crazy.  Her words, not mine.

Although I think she tolerated me a little better than the others because I had the brand new fair-haired baby that she continued to steal.  She wanted a blond haired, blue eyed baby and wondered what her chances were now that she married an American.

We take turns cooking for the family dinners.  We noticed she wasn't eating.  In fact, my brother informed us that she was hungry and didn't eat any of our food.  He intimated that we didn't really know how to cook.  Actually, he said it like this, "No offense, but you really don't know how to cook."  Okay, single-brother-in-his-middle-forties, you've just ended all dinner invitations.

We also passively-aggressively spit in his food before serving him the rest of the week.

By Monday, my brother and his wife went home.  She was too hungry to stay.  We felt bad and wondered if the lasagna was over-seasoned or she didn't eat meat or perhaps the rolls were too sweet.

This summer she told the story.

That night she was so hungry and determined to eat.  The food was blessed and her crazy new family took large servings of green stuff that she'd never seen before.  It was green.  It looked disgusting.  That's when she started to cry.

It was lettuce.

Fortunately, she stayed.
And added to the cousin count.
And is now a member of this crazy family.

She took her turn serving dinner this year, as she has the past four years. 

She served a green salad as a side dish.

Comments

  1. June Freaking CleaverJuly 26, 2010 at 7:35 AM

    So instead of getting her to "drink the Kool-aid" to indoctrinate her into the family, you merely got her to eat the salad?

    Cute story.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Kristina P.July 26, 2010 at 8:00 AM

    Very funny. Lettuce can be quite evil.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Mrs WoogJuly 26, 2010 at 2:31 PM

    Such a cute story. You have to introduce lettuce slowly as to not startle people! What else does she cook now?

    ReplyDelete
  4. Read it or See itJuly 26, 2010 at 4:09 PM

    That's such a cute story...we tend to think of our food as "normal" and forget that in other parts of the world they don't eat anything like us.

    I'm a delayed new follower for follow friday! come say hello sometime... http://readitorseeit.blogspot.com/

    ReplyDelete
  5. TyneJuly 26, 2010 at 7:29 PM

    Salad freaks me out too.

    Just kidding, I love it, but I can see how it might be slightly intimidating!

    ReplyDelete
  6. CountessLaurieAugust 2, 2010 at 9:54 AM

    I have often said that if I went to Asia, I would only eat white rice. It's interesting to hear it from the other side...

    Poor thing!!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Braces!

13 year old got braces today! She also had a little helper on her.
Post a Comment
Read more

Christmas Gifts

Jill is the slice of home baked pie you long for. Her dad was a farmer. His dad was a farmer. On a hot summer day Jill would call me up to go floating down the canal or ride the slick rocks with the stream into a barely thawed pool of water. She's also the girl I called one day when I was bored and offered to drive two hours and try out this new thing called "Bungee Jumping." We did although I can't remember why . The first year after my college graduation I found myself particularly low on pride.  First of all, I was a college graduate working as a sales clerk.  Too late I discovered that a bachelors degree in sociology is equal to a high school diploma and, in some cases, a G.E.D. and got you hired at JC Penney trying to upsale with a colorful scarf.  On top of it, I'd been dumped.  It wasn't that he was the love of my life.  In fact, it was quite the opposite.  He started planning the wedding aloud and I freaked out, pointing out that we'd only bee...
17 comments
Read more

They Call Me Grace

I was nearly 8 years old when my baby sister was born. This was quite fortunate since I was well adept at reading. I was tired of my name. Nancy. So plain. The Sunday comics included a comic strip called Nancy. She hung out with her stupid little boyfriend named Russell, was very boring and cried all the time. Why would parents who love their child name her such a boring name? I assumed they had run out of originality by this point. I was, after all, their third child. There was Mike, then Suzy, after me they had Joey (short for Joanne) and finally Jene Marie. The "j" a soft French slur. It was fitting. We had a French surname. But clearly Jene Marie was their crowning glory. Do I hate for taking all the love from my parents and hogging it for herself? Of course not. She's my sister. She's my baby sister. But if I happen to feel the need to speak to her when she's at work, I always ask for her by using both names; Jene Marie (with the schwa). I don't want her...
22 comments
Read more