I wish I was laughing with her, but me and my partner laughed at her today. Shes getting ready to move into her new remodeled apartment. Shes just SO into food. My partner told me that a long time ago, but I never really believed it. He often criticizes me for trying to avoid certain items and being health conscious. He says that hes tired of hearing about food all day.

Well, she does watch cooking shows daily, perhaps more than once. Constantly cutting out recipes, sometimes she actually gives me some that she thinks I might like. I usually just say thank you, and say I will think about trying it.

Shes constantly cooking, and clipping coupons, and planning meals. This evening she got a flyer for coupons. This one was a 'welcome to the neighborhood' set of coupons. Its kind of funny, she is moving, but its only a few hundred feet away.

Well she got so excited that if she buys $30 of stuff she gets a free ham for moving into the neighborhood! Via so and so local shop! We just couldn't help it, we started laughing at the way she was talking about this ham. She just paused and said "what". I stopped, and my partner just said 'oh nothing'. I don't know maybe its not that funny, but at the moment it just seemed very funny. I thought I would share. Maybe I am studying too much, or its just stress of everything.

I don't know what she thought about us laughing, but I think she will quickly forget, but I worried for a moment if she thought it might be hurtful. Thats really the first time I actually laughed at her. I guess its an improvement I usually find her annoying or boring. Don't get me wrong she is very nice, sweet and considerate, just perhaps a little too conventional and old fashioned, maybe thats a good thing.

I think I've asked this before but has your MIL suffered privation, like going hungry a lot in childhood? This might explain why she is almost obssessive about keeping the larder stocked and being prepared in the kitchen. It's kind of sad to me.

She grew up during the depression, its true. She said she ate mostly vegetables from the family garden, beans, bread. Very little animal products, like dairy or meat. Maybe just major holidays. She actually says she likes that, but I wouldn't know that by what types of food she eats now. She does equate vegetarian eating patterns or low animal diets as missing something or a hardship. I guess I should be more sensitive to that.

She criticizes her son for being 'too thin'. But not her daughter who is in shape also. The other two she says nothing, which is probably the best, as they are a bit heavy. She refers to the thin ones as being 'lucky', as if being trim had nothing to do with them exercising and watching what they eat to some degree.

In Newfoundland, traditionally if you are thin they say you look as if you are poor. The consciousness is raising as nutrition is being promoted.

Explains why the Newfy Gran is round .

I think thin is relative. Way back when if you were thin it was due to lack of food in general, and I am sure it did look worse than being normal or even slightly heavy. But way back when I am convienced that it took some doing to get even slightly fat. But today it seems like getting fat takes no effort at all, and food is abundant, but most of the time its not food that is going to bring you to optimal health.

I am thinking that my mil is really truely loving in her heart 99.99% of the time with everything she does. Its just that she makes poor choices a lot of the time in reguards to food she makes for herself and her grandchildren. Too much and maybe not the best stuff.