Brigitte always comments on how picky I am, and she's right. But just let me explain why I think this is so: until about age nine my parents basically fed us what we wanted. Spaghetti or rice with ketchup (I was born and raised in Calcutta, India) and other stuff I can't remember. There were hardly any vegetables except the usual: onions, garlic, potatoes etc. and none of the unusual, ie. squash, artichokes, asparagus and so on.
There was no fish at all, since my father disliked all forms of it. Chicken was rarely on the menu. It was usually beef, if I recall correctly. My nanny, who lived with us, used to mainly make simple things like flatbreads, rice, and simple sauces. So that's what I ate until about age nine. No hot dogs. No hamburgers. No sandwiches. No American food at all.
Then, The Horror: British boarding school. The food there was barely better than prison food; think of every cliché you've ever heard about bad British food and that was it. The worst food I've ever eaten. The worst food I've ever been FORCED to eat, as we were forced to clean our plates and there were no other choices. I was a very thin little boy, almost skin and bones.
You have to put quote marks around everything we ate: "Fish." "Roast Beef." "Pudding." "Rice." (They even had a dish called Chocolate Rice! It was VILE!)
So . . . I developed a serious allergy to food I did not like.
I don't think I ever ate a shrimp until I was age 25 or so (now I love them) but the list of what I won't eat is still long:
Any type of squash
Asparagus
Artichokes
Eggplant
Beets
Turnips
Parsnips
Rutabagas
Sweet potatoes
Most cooked fish, with the exception of salmon
Lamb (I'll eat it, but I'm not very fond of it)
Anything that I can't identify
But on the plus side, I like a whole lot of other things! And being a vegetable for eight months opened my eyes to a lot of possibilities.
No sweet potatoes? No beets? (I like them roasted.) No ASPARAGUS? Well, at least you are more adventurous than my in-laws, who only eat red meat, potatoes, turkey once a year, fish and chips, mushy cauliflower, mushy broccoli, mushy green beans, iceberg lettuce and tomatoes.
ReplyDeleteI had asparagus soup at the Greek place last night. It was really good! If forced, I'll eat this stuff but I would never volunteer for it.
ReplyDeleteI met someone last night who won't touch a crustacean but who loves cooked fish. Exactly my opposite.
Who knew?
And there is simply NO excuse for mushy ANYTHING. it's simply bad cooking. Put them in a bus and ship them to English boarding school. I have all the addresses.