Eating

There are two things about me that I wish I could change (actually if I thought about it for more than two seconds, I'm sure I'd come up with a much longer list):

• my shoe size (it's very hard to find ladies shoes in size 10 1/2
• my squeamishness about various foods

I can’t do anything about the first, but I suppose I could at least work on the second. Despite the fact that I love cooking, I have a horrifyingly long list of “don’t likes”:

• seafood (canned tuna excepted)
• mushrooms
• organ meats
• Brie
• blue cheeses
• goat cheese
• artichokes
• avocado
• eggplant
• olives
• tofu
• butter brickle ice cream

As you can see, I have X’ed out huge swathes of the food world, in some cases without having so much as a taste. How can I say I don’t like seafood? What is “seafood”? All these animals (actually the idea of eating seaweed doesn’t appeal to me much either…) have in common is that they live in water. There must be hundreds of varieties of fish, mollusks, cephalopods, and crustaceans eaten by man and yet I can say that I don’t like any of them?

I recently had an opportunity to try a number of foods that I generally steer clear of. I was in a very nice restaurant with my brother and his partner to celebrate my brother’s birthday. A tasting menu was offered, but if one person wanted it, everyone at the table had to order it – including me. It helped that I was kept well lubricated throughout the evening – each course was paired with a specially selected wine. I have to say, while I didn’t relish many of the foods I tried, none was quite as scary as I anticipated, and it turned out to be a memorable and even enjoyable meal.

So the moral of my story is I’ve got to give new and different foods a fair chance before I pass judgment. I will try ever so slowly to do that. I’ll seek out recipes for foods that are foreign to me and at least give them a shot. I will not, however, ever eat butter brickle ice cream again.

signing on

Here goes - my very first experience with blogging. I'm still finding my way around, but eventually I would like this to be a place where I can talk about what I've been cooking and other food-related experiences. I'm going to go poke around some more now...