For Richard
It was 1984 and we were pretending to be spies.
It was one of those "adult" games that twists your arm to mingle. Our host, David, greeted us at the door with a card that had ou
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An Essay after the Style of Montaigne:
Though I’m always game to try new foods—strange sea creatures boiled in wine, caviar on crackers, beef carpaccio—there’s a solid list of foods I cannot stand, and this makes me feel like a picky eater. Cooked tomatoes are one. A fresh garden tomato is one thing, mixed with avocado and sprinkled with lime juice or tossed in a green salad, but as soon as it’s heated some chemical change occurs, a break in flavor and texture that I literally cannot swallow—it makes me gag. This is especially true in soups. Tomato-based broths are horrible, but all the more horrible are those slimy bits of loose tomato flesh drifting in the minestrone or the tortilla soup. There are some circumstances where I can stand the flavor—pureed and drowned in basil or hot peppers—but the texture of a solid piece of cooked tomato is enough to make me spit it out.
What other foods do I hate? American cheese. Ketchup. Mayo or Miracle Whip. Sloppy joes. Pulled pork—or pulled chicken imitating pulled pork. Most steak. Meat in general when it’s the main dish, like a hunk of chicken breast or a slab of pork roast.
This makes me sound like I don’t even like eating. But I love eating. I love food. I love noodles: Japanese ramen or Italian pasta or chewy gnocchi. Artisan bread with the springy center and crackling crust. All varieties of Asian soup. I especially adore raw fish. I could eat sushi and salmon poke bowls for days and live happy. But give me a cheeseburger and I’ll spend most of the meal carefully scraping the cheese itself off with a pile of cheap napkins.
Despite being a picky eater, I’m a terrible cook. Actually, terrible’s the wrong word. I just don’t do it. My husband cooks in this family—enchiladas or white bean chicken chili or potstickers with homemade fried rice. He’s talented. Sometimes I dump frozen meatballs in a pot of store spaghetti sauce (semi-pureed and drowned in basil) and pour that all over some pasta. My husband likes that. He says I make good spaghetti. I say Classico© does. I mean, at least they put enough basil in their marinara sauce.
But I still pick out the chunks.
What other foods do I hate? American cheese. Ketchup. Mayo or Miracle Whip. Sloppy joes. Pulled pork—or pulled chicken imitating pulled pork. Most steak. Meat in general when it’s the main dish, like a hunk of chicken breast or a slab of pork roast.
This makes me sound like I don’t even like eating. But I love eating. I love food. I love noodles: Japanese ramen or Italian pasta or chewy gnocchi. Artisan bread with the springy center and crackling crust. All varieties of Asian soup. I especially adore raw fish. I could eat sushi and salmon poke bowls for days and live happy. But give me a cheeseburger and I’ll spend most of the meal carefully scraping the cheese itself off with a pile of cheap napkins.
Despite being a picky eater, I’m a terrible cook. Actually, terrible’s the wrong word. I just don’t do it. My husband cooks in this family—enchiladas or white bean chicken chili or potstickers with homemade fried rice. He’s talented. Sometimes I dump frozen meatballs in a pot of store spaghetti sauce (semi-pureed and drowned in basil) and pour that all over some pasta. My husband likes that. He says I make good spaghetti. I say Classico© does. I mean, at least they put enough basil in their marinara sauce.
But I still pick out the chunks.