Mollygo
When we were first married I had £6 per week ‘housekeeping’ and the 2 of us ate very healthily. Then we had children.
What puzzles me is feeding a family with children.
Did/do all your children/grandchildren eat with no complaints or did you/do you cater for their likes and dislikes?
Do you allow any
“Please don’t give me” when you say what’s on the menu?
Did you/do you say, “You stay there till you finish,” or “No pudding till you’ve eaten that,” the way I remember from school dinners?
Did/Do you find your hungry children/grandchildren will eat anything?
Starving children probably would.
I went the route of "I'll just put a teaspoonful on your plate, then, so you try a tiny smear" if it was something new to them that they were suspicious of, and "Sometimes you like things better the second time round, when you are more used to it" and a teaspoonful again, if it was a repeat of something fairly new. Quite often subsequent servings of it were eaten without comment, when it was no longer seem as weird and dangerous.
Some things were never liked, in any form, and I accepted that. One daughter couldn't stand mushrooms, and if a dish contained any, her plate at the end of a meal would have a ring of the detested things round the edge. She now loves them!!!
Forcing children to "Eat it all" and clear the plate before getting pudding are doomed to put them off for life. I solved the "empty your plate" problem by letting them help themselves to as much as they thought they would eat, and then expecting at least an effort to finish it. Often someone who thought they only wanted a small helping would return for seconds. I didn't produce the pudding or even mention it until everyone had stopped eating the main course. The mere sight of, say, an apple pie, was enough for knives and forks to be laid down and spoons taken up! Sometimes (randomly) there wasn't any pudding, so it was a big risk for them to declare that they had no more room for shepherds' pie, but they might just manage a plate of pud.