In My Day Food Remedied Everything | Lynn Ruth Miller

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Spinach could cure anything a prune wouldn't do.

My mother believed in food. It was her remedy for everything that bothered us. If I was constipated, she’d say, “Stop complaining and eat prunes. I don’t care what color they coat your tongue, they clean you out.” If I had a fever, she never called the doctor. She fed me an apple and told me to watch my sister while she went to the movies. She said she had to get away from all my complaining, but I think she needed a cheap babysitter.

If I was listless, she’d cook up a batch of spinach, sprinkled it with lemon juice and said, “There. That’ll put hair on your chest.” What she meant was, it would make me strong. But I had no ambition to lift weights. Bulging biceps can spoil the effect of a strapless dress. The cleavage is all wrong. My mother thought spinach was the answer to anything fruit didn’t cure. If I gained weight, she’d boil another batch of spinach with even more lemon juice and say, “Eat that and you’ll get thin.” Actually, that worked really well, because I hate spinach. When she put it on my plate, the smell made me so ill, I couldn’t eat anything. It certainly made me thin. I got so skinny that you couldn’t see me when I stood sideways and that’s why I don’t have to wear a bra.