Since she is your Mother, while you were growing up,
do you remember her EVER making any kind of zoop?
Angelaid, you say that she is not a cook . . . please
give me/us your definition of cook, as I have never
known a woman that raised children to adulthood,
that didn't know how to cook 'something'. Of course
I never knew any rich kids that had nannies, and all
that. I imagine that there are many people that think
that throwing two, or more, ingredients together, and
heating it, is considered cooking. My, my, my, my, my.
Personally, I have never followed a recipe for zoop.
If I come across a zoop recipe that looks good, I just make
a mental note of the main ingredients, and go from there.

Great grandmother was in and out of mental institutions her whole adult life. Grandmother was shuttled from foster home to foster home. Mother was in and out of foster care during parts of her childhood. No one really in their lives to teach either of them basic skills that most grew up with. Mom raised three of us on her own. Worked at IBM during the day and for years when we were younger, at a tavern a few nights a week. I think I got five dollars a day to walk up to the "burger barn" up the street to get dinner for us three kids. If my aunt was babysitting (she was 16 or 17), she'd put together some soup or sandwiches for us. Only thing I can really remember my mom trying to put together for dinner was a Tamale Pie recipe from the side of a Bisquick box (blech) and some sort of noodle casserole (double blech!). If she did attempt to make a meal, no matter what it was, a can of peas was dumped in as the "vegetable". She was married to a man for a few years that loved to cook and showed me the way around a kitchen. He was from Mass and every dinner had bread and butter, meat, starch, veggies and another tray of fresh, raw, veggies on the table. Had never seen such a thing! I don't think I had ever seen a radish or cucumber until she married him. I certainly never realized that meat came from live animals. When I found out bacon came from pigs, I don't think I ate pork for years! (He is also the one that showed us the proper way to steam an artichoke - you did NOT boil them to death!)
I think the hot Shredded Wheat/egg thing must have come from one of her foster families, because I never saw my grandmother make, or eat, them.

I was shuttled off to grandmother's for a while as a teen. Again, she was NOT a cook! But anything she put before us for dinner that night, went into a brown bag for my school lunch the next morning. Her husband drove me to school every morning. We'd stop at Dunkin' Donuts (secret!), get a donut, he'd toss my brown paper sack in the garbage and hand me a few bucks to buy school lunch. Bless his heart!

I have a friend with a husband and child who does not cook at all. They snack all day long. The child, now 8 or so, will eat almost nothing of real food. I was once at a very large breakfat/brunch buffet with an enormous range of food and the child, then 6, could find nothing to eat.

I don't know how my brother's daughter lived to grow up. One of the few things she would eat was the "crispies" off of fried chicken from a take out place.