I'm a Picky Eater Who Writes About Food
How did I get this way? 🎃 Plus a last chance to win Tarot for Storytellers!
I’ve been so crazy busy with In The Garden of Monsters promotion, so forgive me for a repost from early 2023, with a few updates. Plus, you still have a couple of days to win my giveaway of Tarot for Storytellers. And of course, you’ll find new joy at the end of this post. But before I go there, I have to tell you about this AMAZING dinner coming up with Will Gilson from Puritan & Co., The Lexington, Geppetto, and Amba.
Tickets for this six-course meal (which includes a signed copy of the book…and remember, books make great presents!) will sell out FAST so make sure you snag a spot. Will’s cooking is some of the best in the city! More information is here.
Now, about my pickiness.
Let me point out that there are a few things in the food photo above that you wouldn’t ever catch me eating. First off, the olives. Secondly, those raw tomatoes. The very idea of either makes me shudder. And yet, I love Italian food. Olive oil is perfectly fine, as is a sauce made from tomatoes. But on their own, raw? Nope.
It’s all in the nuance. Two things mark those off-limits to me, the bitterness of the olives and the weird slime of raw tomatoes.
I have a list of other things on my nope list. Spicy peppers (and no bell peppers of any kind). Any cooked leafy green. Eggplant. Okra. Most fish. Not a big fan of lamb, mutton, or gamey meats like venison. The list continues, but before I go there, let me back up. Way up.
Around the time when this picture was taken, maybe a little bit before, my father was away a lot, traveling as a salesman, a realtor, or working as a foreman for a company building the roof on the third power plant at the Grand Coulee Dam. This left my mom at home alone with three young kids. And it was the 70s! Boxed and processed food was a convenience, especially growing up in a small town in Eastern Washington state. I’m pretty sure my blood was the color of Trix cereal and Kraft Mac & Cheese. I don’t eat processed food these days, but I’m still really addicted to peanut butter (natural these days) sandwiches, and, oh, my heart for ice cream (or gelato)! We were a big ice cream-loving family.
So much of what we ate came from a box or a can. Hamburger or Tuna helper. Spam or Deviled Ham for breakfast or on sandwiches. Carnation Breakfast Bars. Jello and more Jello (hello, Pudding Pops!). Swanson TV Dinners, Campbell’s Soup, Ritz Crackers with Snackmate cheese, Hunt’s pudding snack packs. We drank Kool-Aid and Hi-C, or we would sneak cans of my mom’s Tab. We also had a LOT of hotdogs.
Now, don’t get me wrong. It wasn’t ALL out of a box. My mom did know how to cook, but it was often full of the same processed food we would get in a can. Her fruit salad, which I would still eat to death if it were in front of me today, was a curious concoction of fruit cocktail, some fresh grapes and apples, Miracle Whip, Cool Whip, and colored marshmallows. Tacos were always of the hard, crunchy kind, made with hamburger and a packet of taco seasoning, with cheese, iceberg lettuce, and ketchup (I know, blasphemy!). But she did make wonderful pasta and shells, and her baked goods were always on point. At Christmas, making cookies was one of the best things ever, and I still make many of them for my holiday party (including my grandfather’s sugar cookie recipe, and several cookies with Rice Krispies in them).
It didn’t help that my grandmother worked for Simplot, the maker of McDonald’s French Fries. She used to get big bags of fries for us, and we’d make them at home in our Fry Baby!
All this left me and my siblings with very picky palates.
We did have a really monstrous garden in the back of our house, and my grandparents had a large garden as well. We had a good mix of foods we kids might eat (all the sweet things, of course), like strawberries, corn, and peas. I hated snapping beans as a kid because it was hours of doing so every summer. Now I find it rather cathartic. There were tons of other vegetables we weren’t fond of—broccoli, Brussels sprouts, lettuce, tomatoes, cauliflower, beets, cucumbers, and on and on. We had fruit trees growing in the backyard—my father grew up on an orchard, so he knew how to care for them. Every August, my mom, and my grandparents would can everything, and the jars would go into the “fruit room” in the basement, a big storage room my father had built just for the purpose. I don’t think we kids ate much out of the fruit room save the canned cherries and peaches and the sweet pickles.
As I grew up, I realized that my picky sense of taste was a hindrance. In high school, I forced myself to drink coffee, which I really could barely manage, even with loads of sugar and cream, but I was determined not to be the odd person at the late-night Denny’s runs after we had gone clubbing.
Later, I met my husband, and he liked to go out to nice places. By then, it was already embarrassing that I didn’t like mushrooms, blue cheese, or any fish. But I really liked this guy. He had picked the spot for our first date, to a Spanish tapas restaurant, Dalí, a place where I wasn’t sure I was going to like much. But I decided there and then that I would try foods at least once before making a blanket decision not to like something.
We had frog legs and garlic soup on that first date. Both of which were surprisingly delicious!
Eventually, I learned that I liked lots of foods, including broccoli, beets, cauliflower, cucumbers, mushrooms, all sorts of stinky cheese, rabbit, duck, pheasant, and other less common foods. I’m still not partial to fish, but I like shellfish, and you can take me out to sushi—I can do some maki rolls and I do eat salmon and trout these days. Some of this was my willingness to be adventurous; some of it was my palate changing as I grew older, being less partial to overly sweet foods and interested in new flavors and healthier ways of eating.
A year or so ago, my DNA revealed that I am someone who can’t really do bitter foods. I have a sensitivity to Phenylthiocarbamide, or PTC, a bitter chemical found in foods like Brussels sprouts, coffee, and many leafy vegetables. Kale is actually a true nemesis, not just a dislike!
How did I end up writing about food? Because it turned out I liked reading about it. It was a gift from a dear friend of mine, Greg, who I knew in high school and later was my co-editor of a literary journal. The book was M.F.K. Fisher’s The Art of Eating, and oh, did I devour it! I had never read any real food writing, and it opened up an entire genre to me (I’ll share some of my faves in a future post). I began reading all sorts of food books, fiction, and non-fiction, and when I finally reached the point in my life where I thought, ok, I am ready to leap from writing poetry to fiction, I immediately gravitated toward writing about food. Turned out that was a good thing for me!
What about you? What sort of food aversions have you overcome (or not)?
Also, please tell me some of you remember all those weird boxed foods!
MY UPCOMING EVENTS
I’ve got a lot going on, and I’d love it if you come say hi!
Sun Nov. 3, 7:00 PM ET: Toronto Public Library Salon Series (VIRTUAL!)
Sat Nov 9, 12:30 PM Rozzie Bound Co-Op book signing
Tue Nov 12, 5:30 PM Boston Atheneum: Salvador Dalí and Italy's Sacro Bosco Garden of Monsters
Thu Nov 14, 7:00 PM Wellesley Books: In Conversation with Whitney Scharer, $5 ticket which can be put toward the purchase of a book
LAST CHANCE! WIN A COPY OF TAROT FOR STORYTELLERS + WORKBOOK
Learn the tarot from an acclaimed tarotist and novelist with over thirty years of experience!
Tarot for Storytellers is the ultimate guide to empowering your writing through the tarot. Written by Kris Waldherr, bestselling creator of The Goddess Tarot and author of The Lost History of Dreams and other books, Tarot for Storytellers utilizes exclusive tarot exercises, insightful writing prompts, original card spreads, and other methods honed during Kris’s decades as a tarot reader, author, and teacher. Suitable for tarot newbies as well as the more experienced, Tarot for Storytellers progressively works its way through the elements necessary to bring a story to life—characters, plot, and more—while offering down-to-earth techniques to spark inspiration, set creative goals, and conquer writing blocks no matter where you are on your creative journey.
This book is a guide to the 78 cards of the tarot and easy methods for remembering—and personalizing them—for your needs as a writer. (Think of each card as a story element!) It includes accessible tarot exercises and prompts to enrich your writing process, develop intuition, and set goals. Plus, you’ll learn exclusive tarot-based methods for developing characters and understanding yourself and the people surrounding you.
And even better, you’ll also win a copy of the accompanying Tarot for Storytellers Workbook!
Do you want to win this book?
To sign up for the giveaway, fill out this form. Your name will be thrown into the hat for a shot at a paperback copy. This giveaway closes at midnight ET on 10/03/24. Winners will be notified within 48 hours of the giveaway closing and announced in my next newsletter/post.
Important to Note: You must be 18+ and a United States resident (pesky international laws make it tricky to do giveaways worldwide). If you are someone who loves to read the rules, you can find the obligatory info here.
What’s Bringing Me Joy This Week:
This 2 hour long holiday “yule” log that you should bookmark for next year’s Halloween party!
That time that the Brady Bunch did a Wizard of Oz thing.
Thanks for Joining Me
If you love food and love Italy, and haven’t read THE CHEF’S SECRET or FEAST OF SORROW, click the links to learn where to buy your copy! And now you can order IN THE GARDEN OF MONSTERS!
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Wow! Another person that is sorta like me. My parents say that I used to eat most everything until I was about 3, when I started removing one food item at a time from my diet, until I was about 13--I don't each much more of a variety than I did at 13.
It's easier to list the things I like vs. the things I don't like. Unlike you, my mother cooked nutritious meat, vegetable, starch meals every night, even if she did murder the vegetables until they were mush.
I've discovered that my dislike is more because of texture than taste, although there are several foods that I can't stomach the taste. I have a super fast gag reflex, so even when I try to eat new things or things I used to like, I'm rarely successful because of the texture, and I start gagging. There are SO many things I've missed out on in my life because of my embarrassment of my diet. I don't go places I'd love to go because I know I won't like the food and I could go on and on. I'm a huge foodie of watching food shows on TV; I love watching the competition shows and seeing the foods the chefs create, but I know I could never eat most of what they cook. It is my life, I wish it was different, but I've given up trying to change it, and I'm getting better about apologizing for it. Thanks for writing about it .