If you call me a picky eater, that is an understatement. As a child, people told me I'd grow out of it as I grow older. I didn't. I was urged to, "try it". I tried it and as I knew, I didn't like it. My pickiness carried over into other aspects of food that most people never give a second thought.
I don't like mixed textures. The crispness of chips and the softness of cheese dip just drives me crazy. Soft tuna, boiled eggs, mayonnaise, and bread shouldn't be mixed with hunks of onion and pickles. Few people can chop these crunchy ingredients fine enough not to be annoying. Vanilla ice cream can have small chocolate chips but not big globs of cookie dough. Cookie dough should be eaten alone.
Tomatoes should only be eaten once they've been turned into smooth soup or smooth spaghetti sauce. Raw tomatoes and chunks of cooked tomato in soups are to be avoided.
Catfish should be fried in corn meal. Boney fish such as trout should never be served. Believe it or not I did enjoy ota, a raw fish dish in Samoa. Fresh tuna and wahoo should be grilled or broiled. Shellfish is for people who will eat anything, and that is not me. Canned mackerel makes better croquettes than salmon.
Green vegetables got a bad rap when I was little. I knew I never liked green vegetables of any kind. I simply avoided them at all costs. Beazle said it was because I ate some greens at my grandmother's house that made me sick. Beazle always thought Mammow's housekeeping wasn't up to par. Beazel said I was so sick she had to take me to the hospital. So, as a little kid I must have concluded all green vegetables, and to be safe fruits, will make me sick. I will eat green M&M's, SweetTarts, and popsicles, but not green ice cream.
Most foods shouldn't touch each other. I don't want my potatoes touching my meat. I don't want anything touching my bread. Put the corn in a separate dish so the juice won't run into the other foods. There are a few exceptions to this rule. Chicken fried steak can have white gravy on top of it. You can also put sauce on top of my spaghetti. But never pile my foods on the same plate and expect me to eat it. I'll never forget the horrific plate someone fixed for me at my grandparent's fiftieth wedding anniversary celebration. Someone had the bright idea to fix all the kids' plates. Instead of asking us what we wanted they piled some of everything on each child's plate; meat, veggies, potatoes, bread, relish, cake, pie, everything. Who ever heard of putting cake on top of food? Haven't we all been told to eat our meal before dessert? Beazle doesn't follow this rule at Thanksgiving. She says if she eats the meal first she won't have room for dessert. So she eats cake and pie along with her turkey and dressing.
There are two parts of a chicken worth eating, the breast and the liver. The rest is uneatable. How can you enjoy a leg with all that cartage? If I want to gnaw on bones give me ribs. Chicken thighs have got to be the worst part of the chicken there is. Beazle used to try to trick up into eating thighs. After all they look almost like breasts. When my sister or I remarked the chicken meat looked dark Beazle would say there's white chickens and black chickens just like there's white people and black people. She tried this ploy two or three times before she gave up.
I came by my pick eating habits honestly. Dad was picky too. "Aunt Less asked me if I wanted some goulash," Dad said, "I didn't know what goulash was but I didn't like the sound, goo-losh. I told her, no." Dad wouldn't eat canned spaghetti because he said it looks and smells like puke. He liked foods he could pick up and eat. He didn't like to cut meat before he ate it. Beazle wasn't an adventurous cook. She stuck with the tried and true. Maybe with people lime us she didn't dare try something new. After searching diligently for a cookie recipe that didn't call for brown sugar I broke down and asked Beazle to buy some.
"I think I'll make a pumpkin Pie," Aunt Maple said one day. I wanted to know if it was good. She said it was and she'd let me try a piece when it gets done. For reasons known only to a four-year-old I thought pumpkin pie would be crunchy. I was looking forward to pulling the pumpkins off the crust and crunching on them. Imagine my surprise when Aunt Maple brought me a piece of pie that looked a lot like sweet potato pie. But it tasted much, much better than sweet potato pie.
I encountered more strange foods when I went to school; pickled peaches, cottage cheese, tapioca pudding, tomato juice, cobbler, and watery beans. That was nothing until my house mother, Miss Broach, asked me if I wanted butter on my bread. I was dumbfounded. Cold butter, cold bread, together? At home we had toast or we melted butter and dipped raw biscuits or brown and serve rolls in it before we cooked them. We ate our light bread plain. Miss Broach must have gotten tired of waiting for me to answer; so she buttered a slice of bread and handed it to me. I tasted it and like all the other new foods, I didn't like it. I couldn't believe the other kids were eating such a thing and enjoying it.
Foods were eaten at different times a day at school too. Rice wasn't a breakfast cereal there, it was a side dish for lunch or supper. Salmon croquettes were served at supper instead of breakfast. I could have sworn we had beans for breakfast once. Beazle thinks I probably had a nap and then ate, thinking it was breakfast time. Because I have only one memory of beans for breakfast she is probably right.
A few new foods did turn out to be good. Around Thanksgiving of my kindergarten year all the stories were about turkeys. People were talking about eating turkey for Thanksgiving dinner. I just knew I would like it. I asked Beazle to buy a turkey instead of a hen for Thanksgiving. She did, it looked like an enormous chicken to me. Just so you know, we didn't have giblet gravy. Beazle knew nobody would eat it.
When I traveled I was willing to try more foods. In Hawaii I liked kalua pig, mango sherbet, mangoes, and guava juice, but not macadamia nuts or poi. In Samoa I liked their pancakes, fermented breadfruit bread called masi, and koko Samoa. Samoa is where I learned I liked yellow fin tuna. I didn't like taro. I tried squid and didn't like it. I couldn't bring myself to try octopus. I'd already tried and liked that raw fish ota so I was tasted out.
When I find myself in a Chinese restaurant I stick to the familiar as much as possible. A Chinese restaurant is no place to be adventuresome. With Beazle calling it rats and rice and the exotic smell, you just can't taste many dishes.
I vote Chinese if my only other choice is Mexican. I don't want to go out to eat just chips. We tried all kinds of Mexican food in Spanish class and I didn't like it. I don't like spicy, I won't eat green, and what are re-fried beans anyway? And again the smell.
People say try eating raw vegetables if you don't like them cooked. Raw vegetables taste the way leaves smell if you crush them in your hand. Raw carrots do not taste like raw sweet potatoes. Radishes are too hot. Cabbage tastes like, well, cabbage.
We like to watch Food Network for some reason another. The judges on Chopped and Master Chef are fond of saying a dish tastes good but needs texture or sauce. I'm thinking why ruin it that way. And why do they pile all the food on top of each other? They don't do that on Hell's Kitchen. When we watch these shows we wish the vegetarian or vegan cook off first; and they are usually the first to go. In my not so humble opinion veggies can't beat out meat when it comes to taste.
Being so picky is detrimental to social events. Barbecues pot lucks, and fish fries are safe, there is always something edible there. Going to someone's house is tricky. First you can't be hungry until you know what is on the menu. When I was on my Summer Mission I hated it when we were invited to dinner. there's no telling what the hosts may serve. For those who will eat anything in any condition, no problem. For the picky eater dread city.
To this day I haven't learned to like a food. If I liked it then I still like it. If I didn't like it then I didn't like it a year from then, a year ago, or now. We've always thought if we got hungry enough we'd eat anything. A while back I read how some older people will starve before they eat something they don't like. I hope I never have the chance to find out which is true.
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