2013
each and every one
maura @ 2:56 pm
Avocados! Lately I cannot eat enough of them. Is that some sort of deficiency? I don’t know, but if it is then I’m happy to address it often, daily if possible.
I came to avocados kind of late in life, like lots of other tasty foods (and especially vegetables). My family ate a pretty conservative British Isles-type diet when I was growing up, lots of meat and potatoes, punctuated by the occasional Chinese takeout. I wasn’t exposed to non-Taco Bell Mexican food until high school, and even that was pretty bland (better than Chi-Chis, but not by much). Like many who spent their formative years in the suburbs I didn’t really start eating lots of different foods until college (in the city): Thai, Indian, Greek, Japanese, and, yes, Mexican and Cal-Mex.
Once I started eating Mexican/Cal-Mex food of course there was guacamole and chips, yum. I’m kind of sensitive to textures — can’t really eat yogurt, pudding, or smooth/slimy foods that are similar — but guacamole was so delicious that I tried it anyway. Plus the chunks of tomatoes and chips for dipping cut the softness so I could eat it. I resisted moving on to plain avocados, though, for fear of texture issues. They always seemed kind of bland, too, unless they were mashed up with spices in guacamole. But little by little I’ve found myself eating them more often — sliced up on the occasional sandwich, maybe in chunks in a salad.
Then all of a sudden, earlier this year, Jonathan started buying avocados and serving them up in halves on salad or as a side dish. And bam, I was hooked! Now I greedily eat them first, and it doesn’t even matter if there’s no dressing or seasoning. (I think my tastes are changing as I age, as lately I’ve found myself much more willing to eat lots of vegetables without any sauce or spices at all, just their actual veggie taste.) They taste so green and summery and delicious, how could I have ignored them for so long?
5 comments on “each and every one”
p.s. I take “perhaps with good reason” back when talking about frozen bananas. Who doesn’t like them? They are the perfect food. They also come in red.
Yes, Korean for us too! I’d have thought we had Korean early in our time in NYC but J remembered that the first time was actually when we were in New Zealand on our honeymoon in 1999, in Auckland. Yum. Gus is still super picky but we keep meaning to take him to a Korean BBQ place because of the whole cook your own meat thing (and he’s generally less picky about meat).
Bananas are my deadly Kryptonite, but I bet J would like them frozen. Also I should get points for scrapple as a kid, right? Gus eats it too, amazingly enough.
Not just frozen…frozen and chocolate-coated. (Or red-coated, if that’s your thing.)
I was thinking about foods I didn’t eat until college — there are many, but my mom is a huge foodie so even in Ohio we were a little bit cutting edge, at least for here.
Visiting my soon-to-be in-laws in South Carolina, I had pickled pears for the first time. I had NO idea what they were. Not awkward at all at Thanksgiving, nosiree!
There is much odd food here that nobody else has (perhaps with good reason) — Cincinnati chili, goetta, frozen bananas, pan schnecken!
Ben says other places outside this town do not have double decker sandwiches, but I do not believe him. (See: Big Mac.) Alexander calls them “3-bread sandwiches.” He made one out of lettuce and mustard.
But still never had these until college — sashimi, caviar, Thai, pesto, proscuitto, Korean (did I even have that in college? Maybe after). Working with international students helped expand my gastronomic horizons quite a bit! And I didn’t have Vietnamese, she-crab soup, those weird crunchy crabs (eew), or gnocchi (mmm) until we moved to Williamsburg, VA, of all places.
Some of it is just trendiness. Feta, goat cheese…I think I’d had things like that but not on a regular basis until they started to be overdone.
Either way, eat your vegetables. My daughter will only eat mashed potatoes, peas, and…well, any dessert or almost anything with sour cream on it. She weighs 37 and her BMI is somewhere around .03.