RouletteWeekend

Beans. Growing up, I hated them. For me, beans weren’t just beans. They were power, poverty, and punishment in a pot. I didn’t like black beans, lima beans, or kidney beans, and I detested chili because chili usually had more than one kind of bean in it, and one kind was bad enough.

I’ve always blamed my aversion to beans on my mother’s “goupla,” her specialty end of the month dish. A small detail I put in my work of fiction that was actually based on true events. Growing up we were poor. We were always poor, and I always associated beans with that scarcity—just like the off-brand shoes from Kmart. The first time I bought my own pair of Nikes at 19, it felt like freedom and wealth.

But back to the beans. When the end of the month came, and we had eaten all the bread, the peanut butter and jelly, all the bologna and cheese, all the ravioli, and all the hamburger helper, we always had beans. And we always had different kinds of beans. I don’t recall if my mom always made this meal or if this was a meal she made after she met my stepdad, who we shall call Mr. G.

Mr. G came from a farming family. They raised dairy cows and they were hunters and the only girl in the family was the mom. The rest were boys and there were quite a few of them. Mr. G’s family taught me a lot about life and about people. Grandma G. (Mr. G’s mom) was the definition of a “wife and mother,” even back in the 80’s when women were taking on the role of working outside the home, Grandma G. was staying busy tending to the cows and spending most of her day in the kitchen making sure the men had breakfast, (packed lunches if I had to guess) and a hot dinner every night.

I remember her making us pancakes with homemade syrup. I’m pretty sure they had maple trees on their land, because I have these very vague memories of tapping a tree or seeing a tree being tapped for syrup, although I don’t recall who was doing it, but I can’t think of anyone else as self-sufficient as this family. Grandma G. used to mix white sugar with water and heat it until it boiled down into a thick syrup to pour on our pancakes. I’ve tried re-creating it as an adult, and while it does do the trick, mine was never as good as Grandma G’s. So I just buy maple syrup.

It’s interesting, the things I remember about this family: drinking unpasteurized milk out of a ladle, getting locked in a silo with my sister while the brothers stood outside laughing, watching those same brothers drown a litter of kittens in the creek. Maybe that’s why I rescue every cat that shows up on my doorstep. Those memories are flashes that don’t leave you, whether you want them to or not. But mostly, I remember the goupla…and the beans.

All different kinds, added to a pot with who knows what else. I know there was ketchup, mustard, and maybe barbecue sauce. Condiments, I imagine, all thrown together into what was supposed to be a meal, but instead felt a lot like torture. Like I said, I’m not sure if goupla was part of the rotation before my mom met and married Mr. G, but it definitely was in the rotation after she met him.

Even when I was young, I felt like he was just making us eat that food so he could sit back and enjoy our misery like an older kid who gets a kick out of making a younger kid cry on the playground. That’s what I thought about Mr. G. Like he was a bully, just doing anything he could to torment us because we weren’t his kids and it was made abundantly clear in that pot at the end of the month. I remember the feeling of trying to chew the beans, my tongue pressing them against the roof of my mouth, wishing for just one little piece of texture, a cracker, a crouton, anything that would make it go down just a little bit smoother. Instead, it was always a big glass of milk that made it go down, followed by the urge to throw up. Whether it was the beans or lactose intolerance, I cannot say.

My mom eventually divorced him and I don’t recall ever eating goupla after we left, so in my brain, it was just a Mr. G thing.

But as I got older, the only beans I could tolerate without gagging was green beans, preferably the French, stringy kind.

It wasn’t until I stopped eating meat in my 30’s that I had to learn how to eat beans of all kinds. I think my favorite would definitely have to be black beans now, with garbanzos coming in a very close second (hello, hummus), and all the rest that come behind it are just fine. I don’t mind that mushy texture anymore, but it took a lot of work to get to that point. Same with avocado. I was never introduced to avocado as a kid. I wasn’t introduced to much of anything fresh besides iceberg lettuce and even then, if it wasn’t on a burger, it was swimming in french dressing with croutons and shredded cheese so I don’t even think at that point it could be considered a vegetable anymore, or fresh, for that matter.

Avocado was new to me. I definitely did not like it on its own. It started as guacamole. I could eat it with lime, tomato, onions and salt. Then, it was avocado toast. It was fine on toasted bread, with a little olive oil, and maybe an egg. Now, I can cut one open, scoop it onto a plate, add a little salt and eat it like I’m spooning butter into my mouth.

They say it takes somewhere around a dozen times of you trying something before your taste buds accept it if they are going to. My current conquest is olives. I still haven’t learned to like olives. I see people just eat them plain, and actually enjoy them. Even when I eat them on a pizza, they still give me that little dirty after taste that I just don’t care for, which is ironic because I will drink matcha straight up, no sweetener, and have no problems at all when most people think matcha tastes like straight up mud.

My mom still hasn’t learned to think of beans any other way. I told her once that I was having rice and beans for dinner and she immediately asked me, “are you broke?” To her, beans will always mean the end of the month, stretching what little you have to make it last.

These days, I eat beans by choice. I buy them fresh, cook them slow, season them with care. But every bowl still carries a shadow of that pot at the end of the month. Maybe that’s just how it works…the things you detested as a child never fully leave you. But one day, you stop gagging them down out of obligation and start eating them on your own terms.

Today’s prompt from The Autobiography Box: Is there a food you detested as a child that you like now?

My question to you: Growing up, what was your family’s “end of the month” meal?