Maggie's Farm

My spouse and I were raised by Spartan New England WASPs who were a bit extreme about food. First, every meal was accompanied with injunction NOT to be greedy or one would end up a fat piggy. Second, our mothers were abominable cooks, so one wasn't much tempted. Third, one was eternally reminded how fortunate one was to have dinner at all, and if one whimpered about the disgusting bony fish and the limp green beans one would get the "think of the starving children in India" lecture. Since our Sunday School and elementary school had big posters of Third World children with huge bellies (from starvation) and we all grew up carrying around those UNICEF cardboard boxes, hitting up people for money for said starving kids, we tended to gulp and swallow the hated food. I recall that our family had pretty much the modern low carb view on food, even back then. Starch was seen as a villain. When we would whine for sugar, candy, fruit, cookies, juice, soda, etc. like our friends had, our parents would tell us we had plebeian tastes and should eat our meat and veg.

The net result was that tho I grew up TOO thin in my early years, and my sibs were slim as kids, we all grew up completely out of control with junk food as young adults, as if making up for lost time. To this day, if there is chocolate in the office, I will eat without restraint. I think perhaps being too strictly raised food-wise, can backfire.

When I was a young mommy, we were very broke, so I served no junk food at all, as I couldn't waste money on anything that wasn't nutritious. When my spouse was out of work, I used to shop in a grocery store in a slum, because it was very cheap. I resented the overweight people I saw there with food stamps and carts piled high. At the time, I was buying disgusting 39 cents a pound chicken legs (I don't like dark meat but it was cheap), 25 pound bags of dried beans and rice, 10 lb sacks of potatoes for 99 cents, many heads of cabbage when it went on sale for 19cents a pound, etc. We had a huge vegetable garden in the backyard as well.

You can get anybody to eat healthy food if you offer the good stuff first, when they are hungry enough to gobble up anything. Also, people who complain that kids won't eat veggies are probably the same morons who stunt their kids' brain growth by depriving them of fat. Kids will eat raw veggies if you give them yummy dip for them. They will also eat cooked veggies if you make good homemade gravy or give them lots of butter and cheese on them. There is probably nothing so scrumptious as deep fried cauliflower, a staple at our local Indian restaurant, tho plain cauliflower makes everyone in my family go YUK. The point is, one compromises a little to get the little monsters used to the idea that vegetables and the like are NOT nuclear waste and eating them won't result in immediate death...

Hi, Apple Pie,

We haven't yet been on one, tho I am planning to as soon as I can. But one thing you should DEFINITELY research is the height of the river and the clearance of the bridges on the rivers you might be cruising on. I say this because when Mr. Retriever and I were in Prague, Budapest and Vienna a couple of years ago in spring, there were torrential rains that led to floods and the river being so high that (when we were there) the riverboat cruises having to send their passengers off on busses instead of the boats. http://www.travelweekly.com/River-Cruising/River-cruise-lines-lose-millions-of-dollars-to-European-flooding/

This obviously depends on which river you are cruising on. The key issue is how many feet of clearance there is between the top of the boat and the arch of the bridges you go under.

Bird Dog is more of an expert than me, as he has actually gone on one of these trips. But I saw the wretched passengers who had spent thousands upon thousands on their Danube cruise only to have to go on a mouldy old tourbus. Springtime is I think the likeliest time to have lots of rain. And there are probably routes where one isn't so likely to have this problem.

Even as I say this, we are planning a trip to another part of Europe during a time when we might have a lot of rain, but at least our transport won't be affected.