On Food

HELL YES

I was inspired by a blog post I read, by someone I happen to have married, regarding her curious food habits and preferences. So, hey, why not blog about my own thoughts regarding food and other things I eat?

You know, since no one's asked?

LET'S GET THIS STARTED
All right, then. Let's start somewhere randomly:

In my present state, I am a very finicky eater. However, I was even worse when I was younger. Every child has a unique set of eating habits, and mine was pretty frustrating for my parents. I could compile a Ten Five Commandments of Eating When I Was Younger, had I known how to chisel commandments into slabs of stone.


I. Before trying any new food, thou shalt smell it first.
My mother likes to tell a story — one of those potentially embarrassing stories that parents like to tell your friends or a romantic interest you're trying to impress — about the time when I was 5 and was offered a handful of cherries but refused to eat them because I smelled them and couldn't identify any aroma I politely refused them.

They smell in my hand like they do on my monitor.

But even if the cherries passed the smell test, eating them would have broken the next commandment, which is...

II. Thou shalt not eat any food containing unwieldy seeds or pits.
Even today, when I bite into anything, I don't want any surprises. (Wow, that sentence sounded a lot less creepy in my head.)

Don't get me started.

Even today, I can't stand discovering a pit in a navel orange, or raisins in oatmeal cookies. (I know raisins aren't pits or seeds, but you get the idea.) Worst of all is biting into a brownie and finding walnuts, which belong in a brownie as much as lug nuts. When I make brownies — and I've made many kinds of brownies — the last ingredient on the list is usually chopped nuts, with the parenthetical notation of "(optional)."

You're doing it WRONG.

You shouldn't even have the option. While you're at it, Mr. or Ms. Recipe Author, why not add a few more "optional" ingredients?

BROWNIES THAT TASTE GOOD RECIPE

• 1/2 cup (1 stick) butter or margarine, melted
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2  eggs
• 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa
• 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup chopped nuts (optional)
• 1 bicycle tire (optional)
• 1 canned ham, including the can (optional)
• 1 teaspoon Liquid-Plumr (optional)
• 1 cup dodo intestine, diced (optional)
• Your mother (optional)

Brownies with nuts is another commandment-crossover violation, because:

III: Thou shalt not consume any peanut products. 
I don't have a nut allergy, but it wasn't until I reached my teens that I abandoned my distate of (most) nut products. I didn't even try a cashew until five years ago, and now I can pound them by the fistful. And chocolate-covered cashews ought to be regulated as a controlled substance.

HOLY CRAP THESE ARE GOOD

As in, when I start eating them I can't control myself from polishing off an entire bag and/or can.

Being grossed out by nuts can be very inconvenient: I had to sift through my Halloween candy past the Snickers bars for Milky Ways, and the Almond Joys for Moundses; and eating a box of Cracker Jack took about an hour, which made me envy my brother, who could just tear open the box and pour the contents into his mouth. (Did I actually envy him for that?)

My gateway drug into the world of nuts was Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, probably because the chocolate acted as the spoon full of sugar (21 grams of sugar, to be precise) to help that medicine go down.

In case you're wondering, my nut abhorrence has nothing to do with the crunchiness, because:

IV: Fruit must be as hard as a baby's skull after it has just completely fused into one piece.
Don't know why I went with that metaphor, but anyway. This is a habit commandment that I still follow. Dealing with bananas is a fine art, because there is a very small window between when a cavendish that's lost all its green and when those deadly dark spots begin to form.

This reminds me of a delicious Granny Smith apple I ate last night.

Apples, grapes, pears, and peaches must be crunchy. (All right, the grapes won't be crunchy, but they have to have some bite.) I've come to understand that I'm eating food that most would consider unripe, but I'm grossed out by fruit that has the consistency of, say, fresh bread. Or a baby's cheeks.

V: DONUTS ARE AWESOME
Yes, this rule has never changed. AND NEVER WILL.