Hot Lunches

The other night I was talking to my mother and we stumbled upon a conversation about foods that some mothers won't make for their children. One friend of mine (I don't know if she'd like her name shared in this story) won't make spaghetti, and never has in her marriage. In her family, they only ate spaghetti when their dad was out of work. So it has negative connotations to her, so she doesn't make it. My grandmother (Mom's mom) was raised to believe that making sandwiches and cereal wree a sign of a bad mother. A good mother makes her children home-cooked meals. My mother's sister doesn't make her children sandwiches either. My mom, however, has no problem with it. On Sunday night I said I was hungry and she told me there was food for a sandwich in the kitchen. I kindly reminded her that I don't consider sandwiches to be real food. I grew up on hot lunches. Not because Mom didn't believe in not making them for us, but because she never made lunch for us. I had a hot lunch every single day in school. And as a result, I have never been able to eat a sandwich, apple, and chips, and consider myself decently fed. I only like hot foods. Cold sandwiches just don't cut it for me. So my mother rummaged through the cabinet and pulled out a can of Chicken a la King. Now in most households this food item has been out of fashion for a good twenty years. But not in ours. But I couldn't eat it if Mom was the one making it for me. (Not that she was going to, she would have given it to me to make for myself.) Chicken a la King is a Dad food. When we were kids any time Mom wasn't around to make dinner for us (on those very rare occasions), we had the Dad Special, of Chicken a la King over toast. He even somehow convinced us that it was best eaten over heel of the bread (always wheat). But now at the ripe old age of whatever I am, I can't eat Chicken a la King, unless my dad has made it for me, and my mother is not in the same house.
So I'm just curious, does anyone else have food theories?