I'm a Picky Eater, Yet I Write About Food
How did I get this way?
There are a few things in the 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 much processed food these days, but I’m still really addicted to peanut butter (Jif is the best!) 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. 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 that point, it was already embarrassing to me 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 a lot of 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. In fact, it was a gift from a dear friend of mine, Greg, who I knew when I was 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.
Join Me in San Antonio June 10th!
To my friends and fans in San Antonio, the Historical Fiction Reader's Festival has a book signing on Saturday, June 10th. It's open to the public, and there will be a TON of amazing authors signing books! I hope you come by, say hi, and let me sign some books.💗Check out the list of authors here.
What’s Bringing Me Joy This Week:
This painting by Austrian artist Carl Kahler (1856–1906), titled My Wife's Lovers, that depicts 42 of American millionaire Kate Birdsall Johnson's 350 Turkish Angora cats. Her husband named the painting. Now THAT is a crazy cat lady.
Finally, the date for the Dalíland movie! June 9th. I’ll be speaking at the Historical Novel Society Conference in San Antonio, but I can’t wait to see it when I’m back. As some of you know, one of my upcoming books has Dalí as a character. 🎨
Looking for a new daily Wordle-ish sort of game? Check out Pyramid Scheme from Buzzfeed. Fun
Thanks for Joining Me
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Yes, I remember boxed foods, especially sugared cereal. When we moved to NJ when I was 4 1/2, my new pediatrician counseled my mother to ban any cereal with sugar in the first 3 ingredients. All those yummy things disappeared.
When I was 15 I went on a summer program where I lived in a frat house with 21 other teens and 2 advisors. The program hired a cook who ordered food for us in bulk, Costco-sized boxes of cereal included. I appropriated pounds of Fruit Loops and tried to make up my lost consumption during those 2 weeks.
I'm not a picky eater, but this feels like a safe space to admit kraft mac and cheese with sliced hot dogs is still a comfort meal I eat once a year.
The biggest fallout from this is the only non Kraft mac and cheese I ever truly enjoyed was a mind-blowingly good side dish at Poppy & Harriet's in Pioneer town.
Oh. And because my mom only baked weird things from scratch like apricot squares I can'tfor the life of me replicate, I generally dislike homemade brownies. Which is not to say Betty Crocker and Duncan Hines are amazing--they're mediocre--but I only discovered their mediocrity when I happened upon the nirvana that is Ghirardelli dark chocolate brownies.
I am not taking questions at this time.