| [December 03 2003] |
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I owe it all to the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Fuckers.
Two things I cannot eat: fish and raw onions.
Three things: fish, raw onions and beetroot. And spam and tinned spaghetti, now I come to think of it.
Five things I cannot eat: fish, raw onions, beetroot, spam and tinned spaghetti.
Oh, and how could I forget the biggest one of all: TINNED RICE PUDDING, TOPPED WITH A BROWN "SKIN".
Why?
I'll tell you why. Fucking nuns and my mother. That should bring up a good bunch of Google search hits.
But anyway. The raw onion thing was not malicious on my mother's part. Unusually. It was all about her having good taste but unfortunately only one wooden chopping board. The one also used for chopping onions and garlic. Mum used to buy very nice unsliced loaves of bread which would rest on the chopping board ready for slicing and toasting. Lovely thick doorsteps of toast dripping with butter. Oh the anticipation.
Oh the fucking shock when you took a big mouthful and got unexpected onion-bread. God, just the memory of of retching at the taste makes me want to retch again. There's nothing like vomiting a mouthful of half-chewed onion toast into the bin to scar an impressionable young child.
In time, (as I'm sure my sister and brother would confirm) I became a chopping-board nazi. Anything SUPPOSED TO BE SAVOURY was banned from resting on the BREAD chopping board. On pain of a giant huge massive tantrum from me. I insisted my mother buy a plastic bread board that was officially ONION FREE and fucking woe betide any fucker who had the temerity to place an onion or any fresh garlic anywhere fucking near my BREAD board of purity. It's about the angriest I would ever get when that happened.
Now I love onion and garlic - don't think I don't. I just don't want my toast to taste of them. Various flatmates through the ages have had to put up with my onion/bread board dichotomy. Mostly they have born it with resigned good grace. But to this day, I can't eat raw onion as it brings back the memory of bread retched into a bin.
But the fish and the beetroot and the spam and the tinned spaghetti and the rice pudding with skin - well they come courtesty of the bitch-nuns of the Insitute of the Blessed Virgin Mary. You remember, the ones who caught me with the porn mag.
This school was just chock full of extremely rich children. Unfortunately, they were extremely rich English children, so when it came to food they were used to eating the culinary equivalent of a baked turd. They also had flat feet and teeth that stuck out in that peculiar upper class way. My mother was an excellent cook and made us wear shoes with slightly raised heels and put me in braces to correct my teeth. You can tell we weren't really English or posh.
So at this expensive, rich school they charged about $70 a term extra for lunch. Not like you had any choice about the matter, packed lunches were banned, so you had to cough up. And for that princely sum (and it was a lot in the early 1970s), we got a plate with raw pickled beetroot, lumpy instant mashed potates and a a couple of slices of spam. Jesus wept. But the girls lapped it up.
I think I was initially puzzled by this awful food, and may even have attempted to negotiate with the nuns along the lines of don't make me eat this, I'd rather die. I was an articulate three-year-old. No dice. So I came up with a compromise. I just threw my food on the floor secretly. It worked for a few years.
The worst, the absolute worst was on Fridays when they gave us what they hilariously referred to as "fishcakes". God, I'm grinding my teeth in horror just writing this. These round orange blobs were low-grade fish arseholes ground into a pulp, rolled in batter and vomit and then baked and served to defenceless children. The mere smell of them cooking was enough to send us all into a panic. I tried to think of them as a punishment from God and I was convinced that if I was more pious and studious then God wouldn't send down the plague of fishcakes. Well, either God doesn't fucking exist or I'm just not *good* enough but those fishcakes kept coming.
So they went on the floor, along with the spam and the beetroot and the tinned spaghetti. Until the day that fucking bitch Nina F told on me. I don't hate many people but I still hate that bullying cow even though I haven't seen her since I was 11. She was big and mean and enjoyed sadistically picking on everyone. If she wasn't beating us herself, she was delivering us up to the nuns for a whack. My whole class was extremely relieved when she was in a car accident and had to miss months of school. Even though we knew it was sinful to rejoice in another's misfortune, it was just so fucking fantastic that she wasn't there terrorising us all. I can feel the euphoria, tinged with guilt, as if it were yesterday.
The day bitchface told on me was a rice-pudding day. Christ that stuff was bad. They'd bake the fuck out of it until it developed a brown skin. Then someone from each table of ten children would walk up to the nuns and take two plates and ask for large, medium or small. If you were lucky, you got Sister Philippa who would allow you to ask for a "tiny" of something you really hated. If you were unlucky, you got Sister Peter, who would scoff: "Nonsense!" and heap a giant bastard blob on your plate just for having the cheek to ask.
Sister Philippa was known for being mild-mannered and true to form she gave me a "tiny". I was grateful and immediately began spooning it onto the floor. Bitch-face told on me and Sister Philippa came over and was rather cross. It developed into a classic confrontation. She demanded I eat it, I refused. She demanded, I refused again. She put jam in it and mixed it in. I still refused - just the smell made me want to puke and I did warn her it would make me sick.
Everyone finished lunch and I was left behind sitting with a congealing bowl of rice-pudding and jam and skin. Sister Phillipa demonstrated an unexpected inability to deal with confrontation and decided to take direct action. She wrapped an arm around my neck, reached up and held my nose closed and began to force the rice-pudding into my mouth. It certainly worked, up to a point. I was forced to swallow the stuff or I couldn't breath.
She enjoyed her triumph for a couple of minutes. Until I leaned over and puked all over her shoes. They were black woven sandals and some of my puke ended up seeping through the airholes and into her thick black tights. She was so fucking angry I thought she'd pop but she couldn't say I hadn't warned her. So I cleaned her shoes and mopped up the floor and took my beating and a couple of weeks later my mother got permission for my sister and I to take packed lunches in, as my sister had decided she was a vegetarian. I love my sister dearly for that. And I'll bet Sister Phillipa's puke shoes were in some way responsible the fact that for once, the evil psychotic headmistress Sister Richard didn't even bother to put up a fight.
We were the only children in the school allowed packed lunches. Like I say, I love my sister dearly for that.
Posted by eurotrash at 8:58 pm |
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[Comments count: 24] |
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1: I had close to the same thing happen. Tomato Soup. The Head Master told me I had to finish it before I went out to play. (Think I was about 4 at the time) I sat there looking at the cold bowl of soup for about 3 hours until he came back in and poured it into a glass and force fed me.
I did not blow Chunks, although I did not take any eathor. The result was a 4 year old and a Headmaster covered in what looked like blood. Right when my mommy walked in.
Needless to say after the screaming stopped I never went back to the Church Daycare again.
Posted by v at 9:12 pm on 12.03.03 |
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2: boy, those nuns did a fucking number on you... years of therapy...
Posted by my big ego at 9:37 pm on 12.03.03 |
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3: Ah, years of therapy. If only.....
John Cleese (he of Monty Python fame, for you Yanks) once said that after he'd been in therapy he stopped being funny, as his fucked-up psyche was largely the inspiration for his humour.
I'm no John Cleese, but I do sometimes wonder what I'd be like if I'd had remotely normal parents and not been exposed to the IBVM in the latter stages of their institutionalised fanatical child-hatred. Knowing my luck, it would have been even worse.
Posted by eurotrash at 9:49 pm on 12.03.03 |
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4: I thank God every day I was brought up an atheist.
Sounds like you'd love Hungarian zsiros kenyer -- pork lard slathered on bread, seasoned with diced raw red onions. Delicious. Honestly. Especially with red wine.
Posted by Rick Bruner at 12:41 am on 12.04.03 |
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5: Holy Mother of God. And I thought the Sisters of the Holy Names were nasty. But they didn't harm us physically or nutritionally... heavy doses of guilt was their specialty. In second grade our class had to sign an 'official contract' that we would not forget our homework, be late, talk in the halls, etc... They told us that by signing the contract we were giving our Word that we would honor it. And breaking your word is a very grave sin, and breaching a contract is against the law.
Obviously they left out the part that as eight-year-olds, we were legally incapable of signing a contract. My mother explained that part to me when I came home crying one day because I'd left my homework at school.
But I'm pretty sure most of those nuns broke their vows of chastity quite regularly. After we'd all gone home for the day. (They lived upstairs)
Posted by Lux at 1:29 am on 12.04.03 |
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6: god bless the Sisters of Little Mercy....
deja vu w/ the rice pudding - it's already puke when it's dished up. one of my first acts of defiance as a newly minted teen was to refuse to eat the stuff when served at home. i've never looked back ;)
Posted by EB at 1:33 am on 12.04.03 |
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7: It's not only your brother and sister that can confirm that you're the chopping board nazi..... and I love onions.
Posted by Freddie at 5:01 am on 12.04.03 |
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8: I didn't realise how widespread this phenomenon was. I, too, had to sit in the canteen HOURS after lunchtime with the big nun waiting for me to finish my lunch. I, too, ended up on packed lunches for the rest of my schooling career, and a life-long abhorrence of rice pudding.
No force feeding, just good old-fashioned guilt. Which is worse?
Posted by Yuck at 5:09 am on 12.04.03 |
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9: Rick, the pork lard sounds fab. I was brought up on dripping and fucking love it. I also love black pudding which is actually jolly nice raw.
Posted by maccers at 10:08 am on 12.04.03 |
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10: I bet you're glad your Mum made you wear braces. I never did understand why in England it seems that the richer and more hoity-toity you are, the more steadfastly you refuse to fix your overbite. Prince William would look great if he just invested in a retainer.
Posted by lotus at 10:39 am on 12.04.03 |
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11: yummy!
Posted by * at 11:32 am on 12.04.03 |
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12: i feel your pain, for i too have endured the torture that is the british school lunch...we were finally given a reprieve when our school kitchen was shut down by the health inspectors as a result of a major mouse infestation. stereotypical, but true.
i used to get out of school lunches by getting my mum to write notes saying that my mouth was sore from having my retainer adjusted, so i could only eat soft foods.
every trip to the orthodontist equated to a week of packed lunches enjoyed in the peaceful solitude of the warm classroom. i'd wolf down my mushy dairylea sandwich and a carton of juice and then spend the rest of the time drawing pictures on the blackboard. brilliant.
Posted by Kristen at 11:56 am on 12.04.03 |
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13: oh dear.
i'm so glad i am not catholic and just went to public school where you only had the fear of rubbery salsbury steak and overly greasy square pizza to contend with.
although i had a lunchbox i thought was quite hideous compared the the *fancy* ones my classmates had. i'm sure i was ever-so slightly scarred from that. well maybe not...
no wonder you loathe catholicism! those nuns were so cruel!
Posted by snowshoe at 12:48 pm on 12.04.03 |
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14: I'm a big fan of Jewish food and one of my favourite cookery writers is Claudia Roden. But I love it for the Sephardic food, can't bear the Askenazi boiled stuff and chopped fish.
Our next door neighbours used to make Gefilte fish regularly and the smell was horrific. Especially for one as fish-avoiding as me.
I recommend The Book of Jewish Food, just skip the first third of Ashenazi and delve into the wonderful Middle Eastern and North African stuff. Divine.
Posted by eurotrash at 12:49 pm on 12.04.03 |
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15: Sister Peter? Sister Richard? Did they have beards? I went to a non-denominational comp and had bible study in the local convent after class with Sister Etna each day. She wasn't allowed to touch you or feed you, just to bore you to death.
Posted by Vanessa at 4:23 pm on 12.04.03 |
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16: I love you're screwed up untherapied self.
Posted by happygirl at 6:04 pm on 12.04.03 |
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17: Most of the nuns had men's names, but we were so terrified it never struck us as odd.
Sister Peter
Sister Dennis
Sister Ignatius
Sister Richard
Sister Raphael
And so on.
There was one Sister Philippa and a Sister Anna, who both let the side down somewhat.
Posted by eurotrash at 6:23 pm on 12.04.03 |
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18: What is it with British schools & force feeding you. My experience was with liver when I was a 5 or 6 year old (wow - so long ago!). In this case it was a rather nasty woman teacher (who I think may have been able tot ake on the nuns). I've never eaten it since.
Posted by Delboy at 9:07 pm on 12.04.03 |
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19: That Jewish cookbook looks great. I have not been able to tell the difference between Spehardic Jewish food and "Arabic" food (in quotes because I bet Arabic food is not delegated to just falafel and hummus). Ali Baba on 86th and Amsterdam is a good Sephardic Jewish eatery, complete with beets and raw pickeld onions in the salad bar; closed on Saturday; they make their own falafel-like bread; I recommend it. Ali Baba is certainly better than Catholic boarding school food lorded over by psycoligically deficient, sexually repressed nuns. I am glad that I was not raised Catholic, as it sounds like it really affected you.
Posted by * at 10:40 pm on 12.04.03 |
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20: How long did you get away with heaping your food onto the floor? I can't imagine they didn't notice this & no one slid on it & broke their rich, little heads.
Posted by Lisa Chau at 1:59 am on 12.06.03 |
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21: Excellent! The same thing happened to me when I was 4 with some liver and onions. This latent paedo teacher forced me to eat 5 bites of this stuff that looked and smelled like dysentary. It stayed down for about 3 minutes until I barfed it back up into my plate, the plate of the child opposite and in my haste to leave the table, the lap of the child next to me. The other kids were pretty appalled although it was worth it to see the smug face of the teacher crumble. I also enjoyed the death looks the dinner ladies gave him for making me ill. It stands out to me as a fond memory as it was a creative and successful challenge to pig headed and stupid authority/hierachy the like of which I would dearly love to be able to recreate now. Although obviously not by covering my surroundings in vomit.
Strangely enough after that the school made me go home for lunch. Every lunch time I would trot home to sit and watch The Sullivans with my mum and eat spagetti hoops. Result!
Posted by Jenny from the village at 9:06 am on 12.19.03 |
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22: sister stanisclaws was my favourite by a long shot.
Star Trek
Posted by Trevor at 5:26 pm on 04.25.05 |
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23: its rediculous.
Posted by at 1:32 am on 10.15.05 |
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