I was thinking about things to write today and couldn’t really come up with anything. I kept having to take breaks from not writing to go eat meals and to feed Eli (who informs me he is hungry by saying “apple apple apple apple”). So I decided to write about food. After all, I am a supertaster (see, it’s on Wikipedia, which makes it a real thing) and a picky eater, which are probably related. My weird sensory issues with different textured things don’t help the picky eating either. Anyhow, on to random food story time!
There was the day I decided to eat tuna and tortilla chips for lunch. It just sounded really good to me for some reason. And it was. My mom really freaked out about it because apparently my grandfather loved to eat tuna and tortilla chips. He bought both by the case.
Growing up, my mom always made Duncan Hines blueberry streusel muffins. SO GOOD. Then one day, Duncan Hines decided to be “healthy” or some such nonsense with their muffin mix, and switched it to whole grain. SO NOT GOOD. I had a box of the tasty muffin mix in our pantry and was saving it for a rainy day. Kids, that “best by” date is true. Because we had those muffins two weekends ago, which happened to be over two years past the “best by” date, and they were not the muffins I remember. In fact, they were worse than the whole-grain muffins. So let this be a lesson to you, and just go ahead and eat your treasured food stuffs while they’re still edible. Otherwise, your last memory of blueberry muffins might be sad, like mine.
On a happier note, there was a tremendous day when I opened a package of nine Bagel Bites to find… TEN Bagel Bites! It was awesome in a my-life-is-pretty-lame-if-this-is-a-seminal-moment sort of way. Of course the drawback is that now I am perpetually disappointed when Bagel Bites packages contain the advertised number of delicious miniature pizza bagels.
There’s the time I ate barbecued chicken hearts in Brasil… And I liked them. I also ate antelope when I was in Kenya. It was a bit dry but otherwise quite good. I still feel bad that I’m okay with being so picky here in the States but somehow think it’s rude not to try the chicken hearts when in Rio Grande do Sul. Sorry, USA, for being rude to your citizens about what they cook for me.
And I have been rude. According to other people, at least. I may or may not have sobbed aloud, upon seeing an enormous Thanksgiving spread of all kinds of food prepared by my aunt, that “There is nothing here that I like!” I also may or may not have put my head down on the table and cried in multiple restaurants because of similar sentiments. I may or may not hate soup because of one time when I was little that I refused to eat the broth from chicken noodle soup for some inexplicable reason and was made to drink it cold later. I am glad to say, however that all of these incidents occurred more than half my life ago and hopefully that counts for something.
I have made progress though. I recently ordered my traditional plain cheeseburger from Wendy’s and even though they messed up and put ketchup on it, I ate it anyhow. (It wasn’t very good.) I keep trying to change my mind about avocados, but every time I eat some they still taste like puréed wet grass clippings. I haven’t given up yet, though. I eat barbecue sauce – and love it – as well as eat pasta with sauce on top instead of on the side. And I have ordered salad! With dressing. And I ate it. The croutons helped. There was one day when I was pregnant that I ate almost an entire jar of salsa (which I hate because, well, spices! And onions! And peppers! And chunks of tomatoes!). My husband would like me to point out that it was black bean and corn salsa so he doesn’t think it really counts. But it does. I really liked it that one day.
Speaking of being pregnant, those baby-growing hormones are weird. My big craving was fruit. Mainly nectarines and apples. I’ve told this story many times but people keep laughing so I’ll tell it again. I went to the grocery store one day while I was pregnant and discovered that they were out of nectarines. I started sobbing right then and there, standing in front of that empty nectarine area. I seriously felt like that was it for me, that all I wanted was just one more nectarine and there weren’t any. Anywhere in the whole world. Some awful sudden mass extinction of nectarines was the cause of this one store happening to be out on that one day. The best part is that I didn’t look pregnant yet, so I’m sure there are five or six people somewhere in Rochester who, whenever they see a nectarine, think of that strange ginger woman weeping as though her heart was breaking because there weren’t any nectarines. No substituting peaches here, friends. No, sir. Non-pregnant me is sort of indifferent to nectarines in general but I was pretty surprised that Eli did not, in fact, have a nectarine for a head when he was born. Or an apple, since the other time I broke down sobbing in a produce section while pregnant happened when I walked in the store and saw that Honeycrisp apples were in season. Even non-prego me loves Honeycrisps, for they are the perfect apple. Honestly they are possibly the perfect food (except for maybe Bagel Bites). Anyhow, there are now five or six other people in Rochester who, whenever they see an apple, think of that strange pregnant ginger woman weeping as though her heart was breaking because, well, Honeycrisps. I also ate Perry’s Pumpkin Pie ice cream like it was going out of style. At one point a couple of weeks before Eli was born there were six cartons of that ice cream in our tiny freezer. I don’t even think there was room for a frozen pizza.
After Eli was born I subsisted on Pop-Tarts. I am not joking. That’s all I ate for two or three months for breakfast and lunch. (Ryan always came home from work & cooked real food for dinner.) That and my stash of Pumpkin Pie ice cream. My cousin informed me during a Facebook conversation that she puts butter on her Pop-Tarts after toasting them. This is one of the most delicious possibilities I have ever heard. I’ve been saving a package of blueberry Pop-Tarts to toast and butter for a special occasion. Maybe when I see the first crocuses this year or something. Because nothing says happy spring like warm, buttery Pop-Tarts.