I have always been a picky eater. I don't eat cheese. I don't like the idea of eating something moldy. You can only imagine my feelings about yogurt - I am not eating something that is still alive. I am not eating baby sheep or baby cows. Some dark green veggies taste like metals or something nasty. I think pigs are too cute. Cottage cheese looks like someone already tried to eat it once. When I eat out with my daughter, I order my meals with cheese on the side so she can have extra.
So I am not gastronomically very adventurous. I admit it. I can pick out 1/32" sized pieces of cheese out of a salad and not miss any. I can be starving and still refuse to eat a perfectly healthy meal that I know I would not like. There is a reason for this. I have learned to trust my taste. I recall once when married having dinner at an in-laws house on a holiday. I told my ex not to eat the meatballs, that they didn't taste right. He noted no one else was concerned, but he listened after trying one or two. He didn't taste anything wrong, but he trusted me. The following morning the uncle of the house called, telling us to get to the hospital if we had any symptoms, because several family members were violently ill from the meatballs. I can imagine, since I had a small reaction 24 hours after one bite. My ex suffered, but did not need hospitalization.
So if I take a bite of something and I don't like the taste, I don't eat it. I have learned, if I continue to eat something I don't like, I will pay. Violently. I have no idea why, but it is something I have just learned to accept. I refused to finish a Chinese meal a few years ago. I thought the chicken was "funny." I asked my lunch partner to try one little bite, he said it was fine, but I quit eating. I only missed two days of work from food poisoning. Once my temperature went below 100 degrees and I could stand, I went back to work. I would have gone to the hospital, but I didn't have anyone to take me. That was my only brush with real food poisoning, and I don't intend to do it again.
Nevertheless, every now and then I try to force myself to try new foods. I can now eat raw spinach. I like it. Cooked spinach looks suspect to me. It looks downright icky. I decided to try it anyway, since it is a healthy food. So I followed a recipe using fresh spinach and pasta. I added some mushrooms, hoping to kill the taste if I didn't like it. I didn't like it much, but it wasn't suspect. I had made more than I could eat, so the dogs got the leftovers.
My dogs will eat almost anything. Molly loves lipstick and will eat a candle if her dinner is late. But it turns out she doesn't like cooked spinach either. Baby wolfed her share down in one bite as usual, then hovered over Molly to get anything left behind. Molly was picking at hers, like a lady, trying to get the pasta and leave the spinach behind.
I could relate. I found myself sitting on the floor, picking pasta out of cooked spinach and feeding it to Molly, piece by piece.
4 comments:
LOL... Excellent entry. I have been a pretty much meat and taters sorta-guy most of my life so when I met a good friend of mine while she was an undergrad here.... I got a real wake-up call. She was French-Canadian and her Mother loved to cook all kinds of exotic things. I confess I began to have UNcooked Spinach and even got bold with asparagus.. but eating Escargot and Veal, etc as well as a number of other exotic things did nothing for me. I was nodding my head in agreement while I read your entire entry :-)
Suz, I must have the iron constitution of my German forebears. I can eat almost anything and have very few food aversions. I'll never like liver and onions. No one should have to eat that.
You could have been an official food-taster for royalty or the Mob... --Albert
Having been raised poor and a hillbilly, I wat almost everything. I don't eat roadkill. I prefer not to eat any animals, but can't stand to see it wasted. I also PAY very careful attention to what I fell like when I am eating, though.
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