For Better or For Worse by Lynn Johnston for August 17, 2014

Even though legumes aren’t weeds, the Man Upstairs sure did make (after the Fall) nasty-tasting vegetables to afflict and torment children.

Good one Lizzie, I don’t like peas either.

Maybe if they were sweetened?>I eat my peas with honey,I’ve done so all my life.It makes the peas taste funny,but they stick well to my knife.

Funny how things taste so differently to each of us.. Peas are my favorite vegetable.

(Actually, they’re a fruit… but you know what I mean :)

My husband hates peas, and his mother made him sit at the table until he ate every last one of them. They had a linoleum topped table with hollow chrome legs with removable caps. Guess where the peas went.

Actually, vegetables can come from any part of the plant; leaves, stems, roots, seeds … and fruits. That’s why we call all plants vegetation. So while not all vegetables are fruit … all fruits are vegetation.

Not in this house, thank you.

OGDEN NASH:“God, in His wisdom, invented the fly,And then forgot to tell us why!:

oldest trick in the book, that and giving them to the dog.

I’ve always hated cooked peas but really like raw peas. As a child, I used to hide as many of my cooked peas as possible under the last bit of mashed potato.

My favorite pea story….some 55+ years ago in Elementary school…the Principal tried to force another little boy to eat his peas. She was making him put them in his mouth and swallow. Thinking back on it now, that’s the first time I ever witnessed projectile vomiting! “Get the custodian over here to table three!” I hope that Principal learned a lesson that day.

I still remember my mom making me sit at the dinner table – well past dinner time – until I ate my peas. I hate them to this day.

Ha-ha! This reminds me so much of something my sister would have done when we were little girls! :) Ahhh, memories!

Thanks for the tuna-tip, I love fresh peas! :)

Thanks for the tuna-tip, I love fresh peas! :)

I love peas, but they are way to high in carbs for us. Blow the blood sugar every time!!

“This would be a better world for children if the parents had to eat the spinach.”Julius Henry Marx

my son used to hide his peas under his plate, just like Elizabeth.

Eat every bean and pea on your plate.

You reminded me how much I used to love to sit and shuck peas with my grandmother. I probably ate more from that bowl of raw peas than I did later at dinner. Maybe that’s why I love peas.

Plant some peas in the backyard. Tell them some cutsie stories about “peas in the pod”. Introduce them to popping the pods to eat the raw peas. You won’t be able to keep them out of the garden after that.

So relatable. I used to have to sit at the kitchen table long after dinner was over until I cleaned my plate and the culprit was always the vegetable, except corn. Slowly, at age 7 or 8, I started liking veggies…peas first, then beans, carrots next… There are still some I won’t eat to this day, like radishes and turnips, but I gradually made my peace (or peas) with vegetables as a concept.

Peas are super yummy! When I was in grade school, I would get the other kids’ peas at lunch. Yummy!

God made the fly as part of the plague in Egypt with Moses

the fly swatter came later

The food rules when I grew up.1. You served your self.2. You ate what you served yourself.3. If you missed the meal through your own fault. You had to wait till the next meal.4. Only the food served was available to eat. No Substitutions allowed!!!!

I found the best way to get a kid to eat a food was to simply put it in front of them and ignore any negative reaction. Don’t push, don’t say you have to taste a bite, just put it there and clean off the table when dinner is over. After the third time I did that, my fussy kid who wouldn’t touch salmon actually asked for the salmon while his older siblings’ jaws hit the floor.

I eat my peas with honey, I’ve done it all my life. It makes the peas taste funny, but it keeps them on the knife!

When the song first came out, I thought that was what they were singing!

Hey, Morton, you are not alone!!! Chassimmons does it too!

Tenth panel:Elly{talking to herself}: Elizabeth will not be deceptive for long. And tommorow morning she will have cold peas for breakfast!

I don’t remember my mother ever serving canned peas, alone or as a side dish. Maybe she did, before I was too young to remember, and most of it ended up on the floor.When we had them, it was always on top of mashed potatoes, before the gravy was added; same with canned whole kernel corn — and I’ve continued that tradition.Topping Stouffer’s Turkey Tetrazinni with a helping of canned peas also works for me.

This is a portrait of my life as a picky child! Need to frame this strip! Mine always went into a napkin and got stuffed behind the china hutch…good hiding place until we moved…

@EgrayjDid kid actually manage to throw up ON principal?

This is too late for anyone much to see it, but when my mom was little, Granny would make “cracklin’ biscuits.” Cracklin’s, or cracklings, were little rendered cubes of pig fat, kind of like pieces of pork rind. They lent flavor and crunch to biscuits. Mom would pick the cracklin’s out and eat them. When Granny gathered up Mom’s plate at the end of the meal, she’d find a neat circle of decracklin’-ized biscuits under the plate.

Just because they rhyme doesn’t mean they can say them. My daughter could say “froggie” but doggie came out as “goggie”. It had to do with when she learned the words. Doggie (goggie) was one of her first words. She learned it wrong and it took a long time to fix (4 yrs).

Elizabeth thought she could get away with it! I guess she figured the peas would stick to the bottom of her dish. Wrong! =-O

RootsInDM: Peanuts do not form on roots. They blossom just like any legume, but then, still attached to a branch, descend to the ground where the pod (peanut shell) develops underground. They are harvested by pulling up the whole plant and you can see the “nuts” are quite separate from the roots, but still attached to the branch (unless broken off in the pullinng).

I wish my dad was still alive to see this strip! One of the very few memories I have back when I was 4, was of dad making pancakes for me and my two brothers for breakfast. Dad did not make very good pancakes. The boys just poured plenty of syrup on their pancake and gobbled it down so they could go outside and play. I just couldn’t get mine to go down my throat….so I put it under my plate and told him I had finished. I was just at the door with my hand on the knob when he picked up my plate. I spent the rest of the morning in my room.

I like every vegetable but peas. Yuck!

I will eat fresh peas, snap peas, frozen peas and the snow peas they put in Chinese dishes. However the only ones I was offered as a child were the ugly gray/green shriveled canned ones. They would be wadded up into a napkin, fed to the dog, stuffed in the trash. My best one was I unscrewed the top of a wooden saltshaker and stuffed them in. Went outside to play and everything was cool till my dad came home for dinner and thought the salt shaker was empty and opened it. BUSTED! I had to gag my way through a whole plate of them. Feel the same way about creamed corn. I don’t even like to get it on my hands.!!!!

Nice try Lizzie!

Apparently my mom and her sisters did the exact same thing when they were younger and my grandmother wouldn’t let them get up from the table. Good thing I inherited my father’s palate.