Food Musings

   A few days ago I was cutting up a tomato. C was making an egg quesadilla for us and wanted to put tomatoes on it. While I was chopping the tomato, I remembered something. When I was a kid, I didn't like tomatoes. I would eat tomato sauce on a pizza or on pasta, but I would not eat a raw tomato. If I encountered a chunk of tomato in chili, I would pick it out.
  I thought about other foods that I didn't like but now do. I also thought about things that I used to eat that I now wonder why I did.
  One food I would never eat was fish. The only fish that I would eat would be a fish sandwich at either McDonald's or Hardees. I always ordered it with tartar sauce only as I didn't like the nasty orange cheese thing that they put in the sandwich. Now I like fish. It doesn't have to be fired in batter. It does have to have the head, bones and skin removed.  I don't want my dinner to stare at me.
   C steamed brussel sprouts for me once. I instantly liked them. We never had them when I was growing up, probably because of the smell or because my mother didn't like them. So far I have not met a brussel sprout that I didn't like. I've had them steamed and sauteed. I like that fact that they look like tiny cabbages. They're cute and they taste good.
  When I was a kid I would only eat white rice with milk and cinnamon and sugar like cereal. I would only eat white rice. (Although I don't remember ever being served brown rice at home.) I'm not sure when I made the switch to eating it plain. There was a period of time where I preferred brown rice. The only time I'd easy white rice is if I got Asian food. Then I had to make sure to put lots and lots of sauce on it.
   I would never eat mushrooms either. I'd pick them out of everything I saw. They tasted bad and even worse, they were slimy. I have a very low tolerance for slime. Then someone introduced me to the portabella mushroom. I like them. They have a sort of meaty texture and they don't taste like a science experiment. I've been told that you can fry portabellas and eat them in a sandwich like a hamburger. I'm not brave enough to try them like this. For now I eat them in things.
   Like most kids I brought a sandwich to school for lunch every day. One of my favourite sandwiches was bologna with mayonnaise and lettuce. I had to have the lettuce in there for a it of crunch. Otherwise it would be too slimy. I look at the bologna now and wonder how I could have eaten it. It looks gross, it's loaded with salt and who knows what else.
  We always had Jif peanut butter. It had to be Jif, not Skippy and certainly not Peter Pan. I've always liked a good PB&J sandwich. A few years ago I bought a small jar of Jif for sentimental reasons. I opened it and took out a spoonful. I though my teeth were going to rot out on the spot. It was so sweet. I didn't remember it being so sweet. I can't imagine putting jelly on this. It's like adding sugar to sugar.
  I could go on and on about this, but it's getting close to suppertime. We're eating a meal I would never have touched as a child. We're having BLTs. The only thing my younger self would have liked about a BLT is the lettuce, but only if it was drenched in Western dressing or in a bologna sandwich....