The cooking dilemma

I come from a huge family by today's standards.  There were 14 children (one died in infancy) so my mother had to cook us huge brood food each and every day.  She told me later in life that she didn't really enjoy cooking.. So I really feel for her dilemma..  I find it hard to come up with what to cook for me and my husband, who will eat anything I put in front of him, but I can't even imagine trying to cook for a whole brood of fussy kids.  I remember her telling us, when we were small, to "just try it" and would coax us to take a small taste, and if we didn't like it we could have some home-made bread or biscuits and molasses or peanut butter for supper instead.  She wasn't one to make each person something different, you either ate what was in front of you (if you didn't like it there were always others that would relieve you of your meal.. lol) or you just had a snack you made yourself.

Growing up we had a huge garden and raised a few chickens for eggs and meat when they got bigger. Mom was a stay at home mom and  when I was young in the early 1950's we didn't have electricity or an inside toilet.  My dad was a painter, both of the walls variety and painted on canvas in his spare time.  I remember watching by lamplight as he worked on one or the other of his paintings and he would put it to dry on the warming oven of the stove.

We never just went into the fridge to get something for a snack because it might be an ingredient for a meal for the whole family.  But whenever we had company mom and dad would always offer whoever was visiting a cup of tea and a meal.  We always had cookies and various deserts to eat at each meal.

As kids we always played outside no matter the time of year so we really worked up an appetite but we always seemed to have lots to eat.  I think love expanded the amount of food we had so everyone had lots.