I spent my earliest years in rural West Virgina. My grandmother owned a chain of restaurants.
The food was considered to be of reliable quality but the miners and truckers from the area didn’t exactly have world class standards.
Such Jed Clampett cooking was passed on to my mother. Nothing was ever harmful but it made for a rather skewed perception of food for me as a child.
Years later I move to Atlanta, I go to all manner of great restaurants.
I learn that food doesn’t automatically come from a can. I’m talking everything from green beans to salmon.
I start eating so slow and deliberately that sometimes my tongue would be sore, or at least fatigued.
I still eat slower than everybody I know, this includes by classically trained Italian wife.
Working in the dining industry has taught me that it is rude to linger on with eating when it’s obvious that all others at the table have clearly finished up.