Oh, I see, yes. That’s good. I was just especially fortunate in that way. My mother read Diet for A Small Planet when it first came out and I wasn’t a year old yet. I tried white bread for the first time in 6th grade at a sleepover (though I was also bullied about my tofu and bean sprout pita pockets at school ,). But my husband’s food background is like what you describe. He’s had to find his way too.
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Sadly the first person in my family to adopt healthy eating was an out of town aunt. Going to visit and being offered only “whole wheat” bread, steamed veggies like broccoli, etc left me longing for my favorite lunch of a chocolate milkshake with peanut butter and ritz crackers. LOL. Sadly, also, she was the first of 6 brothers and sisters to pass away at the age of 58. She was also non-smoker, tee totaler and not overweight. So her adoption of good habits didn’t help convince me to be healthy in my youth. I didn’t get the correlation is not causation thing yet.
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My mother was a Adele Davis fan. We had a fairly standard 1950s American meat and potatoes diet, but there wasn’t any pop, sugary breakfast cereals, candy, etc, around my house. Unfortunately, my mother was a pretty bad cook, meat was always “well done” to the point of dried out, and despite her trying to provide a healthy diet, she used a lot of canned vegetables and I don’t recall fresh salads being a part of daily dinners, although we had them sometimes.
Raising my own kids, we ate really healthily and yes, my kids were sometimes teased about what they had in their lunch, although they liked their lunches just fine and never complained. They were each allowed to have one thing they hated and not eat if it was part of dinner, otherwise they had to have at least some of everything. Sometimes we’d go to a friend’s for dinner and when dessert was served, they would occasionally lean over and whisper “Mom, it’s too sweet- do I have to eat it to be polite?”
Once I got them McDonald’s take-out, because I was fasting, and they all took a bite and said they couldn’t eat it. As adults, they all have very healthy eating habits- junk food just tastes awful to them.
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I’ve been here (USA) for 26 years now and have always (as an English person) have had a proper electric kettle. 
Not just an electric kettle, but a “proper” electric kettle 
What is an “improper” electric kettle, I wonder? One that only whistles when attractive females walk by?
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Electric kettles are awesome. Really can’t say enough nice things about them. They stop at the perfect temp for brewing tea & coffee. We own 3, and all are remarkably accurate regardless of price. They are nearly as good as commercial brewers that can be set to precise temps.
That said, we also have a nice kettle for the gas cooktop. These days, it is mostly a perch for our conure to keep a close watch on us.
The microwave is great for what I mostly use it for — thawing out the stews, soups, and casseroles in the freezer. When you live alone, it’s a lot easier to cook for 4 or 6, and freeze the leftovers. Slow cooker, vacuum shrink wrapper, freezer, and microwave are the single person’s friends.
That said, I have kettles in both my space and the upstairs kitchen. But most tea I drink is homemade chai – I buy organic Assam in bulk and organic spices. I’m still trying to figure out how to make a decent concentrate that I can freeze.
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Neither of us is a tea drinker. I don’t think we’ve tried chai.
I wouldn’t know how to make tea, even with a bag. No idea how hot the water should be, how long to steep, etc.
We have bought tea bags of various types for guests. And a tea box! We have a tea box, like a restaurant would have. I know that true tea drinkers wouldn’t want teabags, but it’s what we have. Some of our tea-drinking guests bring their own teabags. No one has brought loose tea.
At least we do have an electric kettle and the accoutrements for brewing loose tea.
My 84 year old stepmother, who is English, came to visit me. I know she’s a black tea drinker so I let her know that good quality black tea isn’t available here, and she brought her own. Tea bags, not loose tea. (She was actually far more addicted to her one daily late-afternoon glass of whiskey 
)
And none of my guests who have been tea drinkers has ever complained about tea bags nor mentioned that loose tea is ever so much superior.
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You have much to look forward to. Making tea is easy. A few billion people do it all the time.
Bring water to boil. Let it sit for 1 min. Then brew tea for 1- 5 min, depending on desired strength.
Stash makes nice chai tea. We have the bags but we prefer to directly infuse with a tea ball ($3).
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Oh dear, that myth! Microwaves do NOT cook from the inside out. You only have to make a sauce to see that. I have been using one since 1978 and have not developed any strange excrescences. I cook almost everything in mine. Vegetables are so much nicer and fresher and the saving on my electro bill is great!
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Yum corn on the cob steam cooked in the microwave 2-4 minutes
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We just found out about this cooking method about two weeks ago. We’ve microwaved sweet corn right in the husk every night since then. So quick, and no mess!
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@KKC For the past 10+ years I have placed a tea bag in a cup of water and microwaved it for 2 minutes. I know some think such practice is barbarian but apparently science is on my side…
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I’m a tea drinker who has the occasional coffee with a shot of Scotch/Brandy when I have the sniffles. Instant coffee-2 sugars and milk. Loose leaf tea brewed in pot for 7 minutes - milk added first in cup to save on cleaning a spoon. Efficiency matters.
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As if the Zojirushi hot water dispenser with multiple temperature settings didn’t exist. Once you you go Zoj, you look at stove top boiling as stone age relic.
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Alrighty…we have a “current” thread where tea, kettles and microwaves came up. I just realized today that there’s a difference between a tea kettle and a tea pot (in retrospect I should have known better) AND I’ve spent over an hour comparing electric and stainless steel kettles. I’ve decided pots are out for the STR. I’m drawing the line, y’all!
I did order a stovetop tea kettle, though, for the STR to replace the one I swiped so @muddy, who apparently is now a tea drinker, won’t be mad at me 
Oh no, I’m not a tea drinker at all. I’m a coffee gal. But I make coffee in a French press- you have to boil the water in a kettle for that.
$2 from the thrift shop…?
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Moravian Christmas candle tea coffee is brewed in milk instead of water. Yum yum-ity yum yum yum
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