Kin and I have very different tactics for filling our dinner plates. He will take enough food so that, when he’s finished he’s done. He’s full. Me, I don’t take a lot – enough so that I can finish. The point, for me, isn’t to be full. The point is to have a clean plate.

Then I go back for seconds.

As kids, my little brother and I had to sit at the dinner table until our plates were clean. He struggled to eat his vegetables. I could barely choke down meat. There were plenty of nights when one or other of us would be sitting at the dinner table long after everyone else had gotten up, staring down at cold food, willing the plate to be clean. (For me, it was a bit easier to convince our dog to eat my unwanted meat. She refused to help Fred eat his peas.)

If you didn’t clean your plate, you were wasting food. I never heard the “starving children in China” admonition. Instead, there’d be a lecture about the war and rations, about how lucky we were to have a bounty of food on the table. And sure, sure, we were. (We are.) I just don’t want to have too much of that bounty on my plate.