It’s time to talk food! We all have our favorite foods and our least-favorite foods. Some of us have little quirky food habits. This week, I’m sharing a few of mine.
Have you ever played along with a Sunday Seven? Basically, here’s how it works: I post a topic every Sunday that has up to seven responses. If you can’t come up with seven, that’s no problem: post as many as you can. If you can come up with more than seven, that’s fine, too: it’s just a game, not an exam! Relax!
What kind of food fun facts are interesting about you? Here’s what I came up with:
My 7 Foodie Facts
1. I only have one food allergy.
And it’s not all that common, apparently. No, I never had a problem with milk or peanuts. I ate peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with a large glass of milk when I was a kid and it was one of my favorite snacks. My allergy involves raw tomatoes: if I eat raw tomatoes, they irritate the inside of mouth. It’s not terrible and doesn’t last long, but it’s just enough to make me not eat raw tomatoes. (That, and I don’t care for the taste of them, anyway.) Oddly enough, cooking tomatoes seems to burn off whatever acid doesn’t agree with me, so pizza, spaghetti and lasagna, fortunately, are not problems.
2. I tried one of my favorite desserts because of bribery.
I love carrot cake. As of my teenage years. My parents and I had gone out to eat once and my mom tried (again) to get me to try carrot cake. For me, a food’s name has a big impact on whether I’ll even want to taste it. The thought of cake made of carrots? No, thank you! My mom told me that if I tried a piece and I hated it, she’d give me five dollars. To a thirteen-year-old (or however old I was), five bucks was decent money. Once I realized that carrot cake doesn’t taste like carrots, I had a new favorite dessert.
3. I like bananas, I like banana pudding, but I don’t like banana chunks in banana pudding.
Yeah, yeah, I know it doesn’t make any sense, but that’s how it is. Bananas, once they’ve sat in a vat of pudding, get too slimy for my taste. So give me a raw banana, or give me some banana pudding. Just don’t mix the two and we’re good.
4. I hate overly-spicy foods.
Buffalo wings? No, thanks: make mine teriyaki: I hate food that’s so spicy that you notice the “heat” more than you notice the “flavor.” I’ve never been interested in tabasco or hot sauce, either. I’d rather enjoy the food without burning out my sinuses.
5. When it comes to cheesecake, the plainer, the better.
Most of the time, when I’m at a restaurant and dessert is considered, any menu that includes cheesecake either has some bizarre concoction of various chocolates mixed — sorry, swirled — into the cheesecake itself or some very tart glaze, like raspberry, drizzled over the top of the cheesecake. I’ll pass on both, thanks. Cheesecake needs nothing added to it: it’s fine as it is. The only thing I don’t mind “drizzled” on cheesecake is a little caramel sauce, because it’s a mild-enough flavor that it doesn’t compete with the cheesecake. Otherwise, just give me the cheesecake plain and I’m just as happy.
6. My sweet tea needs to be sweetened before it reaches my table, not after.
Yes, sweet tea, the house wine of the South. Sweet tea involves adding sugar during the brewing or mixing process. You cannot make sweet tea from unsweetened tea after you’ve already poured it into a glass and added ice. And don’t even think of suggesting that I mix in the contents of one of those colored packets: neither the pink, yellow or blue truly mixes in properly. If you make your tea without sugar, I’ll have a Diet Coke. Or water. But unsweetened tea is unsweetened tea. Always.
7. Well-done does not mean burnt.
When I order a steak, I like it somewhere between medium rare and medium. I don’t want meat bleeding on my plate, but I don’t want it dried out, either. Most gourmets agree that medium rare is a much better flavor choice than well will ever be. However, when I’m ordering a burger, I don’t want to see pink. I don’t know why, I just don’t. At the same time, while I want it cooked thoroughly, I don’t want the outside of it burnt to a crisp, either. If you can’t learn how to cook meat so that the inside is cooked without the outside looking like a charcoal briquette, turn in your spatula: I’m done with you.
How about you? I’m sure you have some of your own! Give me seven of your weird food facts and preferences!
Hmm… This is a touch one. Â I’ll see what I can come up with.
1. I used to eat my eggs sunny side up when I was a child. Â I loved dipping my toast into the yolk. Â At some point, I stopped eating them this way – preferring them over hard (no dippy) and the thought of dipping toast into the yolk disgusts me. Â I’ve no idea why!
2. Â I don’t think this is really an allergy – I don’t have any that I’m aware of – but when I drink black tea on an empty stomach, I get nauseated. Â I’ve no idea why.
3. Speaking of tea, Â I really enjoy my iced tea in the summer months but I take mine without sweetener or sugar. Growing up, we drank sweet tea (my father’s family was from Virginia so they were all about sweet tea) but I really started to feel like it was too sweet for me. Â I gradually weaned myself off the sugar by making it less and less sweet until I didn’t want any sugar at all. Â I found that I really could taste the tea better without sugar. Â (I do agree with you, though. Â The proper way to make sweet tea is to put in the sugar right after it has brewed to properly mix it. It doesn’t work after the fact.)
4. I don’t know if this is really weird or not but I’m picky about my ice cream. Â With rare exceptions, I don’t want fruit in or on top of my ice cream. Â Nuts, peanut butter, butterscotch, caramel and chocolate are all acceptable but I don’t like fruit ice cream at all. Â My boyfriend likes this as he likes fruited ice cream so he can buy it and have it all to himself.
5. Something that might seem odd to some people is that I don’t eat beef, pork, chicken or any meat with the exception of fish and seafood. Â I just lost my taste for most meats and if I’m not enjoying that steak, there’s no reason to eat it! *shrugs* I didn’t realize there was a word for this until a friend called me a pescetarian. Â That is the name for someone who eats like I do – with or without dairy or eggs. Â I do eat both of those.
6. I like my bananas when there is a little green left on the peel. I like them a bit hard and slightly tart. I can’t eat them when they are over-ripe or even what most people would call ripe as they seem too sweet for me. Â Bananas that reach that level are destined to end up in banana bread or a smoothie in my house. Â (though my boyfriend will eat an occasional one with brown spots on the peel)
7. Â I’m experimenting with the idea of substituting one of my meals – maybe breakfast – with a green smoothie. Â The idea appeals to me, especially during the summer months, and it is a terrific way to get some of your daily vegetables in a tasty meal. Â Like I said, I’m just exploring the idea right now, though. Â Most of the recipes I’ve encountered contain ingredients that I normally don’t have on hand and some of them are items I wouldn’t know where to find at all! Â Maybe I’ll just have to work up my own recipe. I do make fruit smoothies now, though, so adding some vegetables seems like something I could do to start out.