Adventures in Food

I am a "hobby"cook. I enjoy it very much and things usually come out just like they should. Trying new recipes and different cuisines is an adventure and I never find it boring. Wish I could say the same for Himself.
I am a member of a site that has cooking contests and events several times a year. I entered one some years back, filled with anticipation and excitement at the prospect of learning new techniques and trying new cuisines. I didn't realize that the Alpha Male is averse to trying new cuisines and cares not a whit about new techniques. My chagrin at discovering he doesn't like nuts of any kind in anything was nearly boundless. My disappointment when he turned away from a lovely chicken veronique because it was dressed with grapes... ah! After countless attempts to cajole the unwilling would-be-taster it dawned on me that it wasn't any of the dishes I presented.
He just doesn't like anything at all different. I came to the conclusion that if his mother didn't cook it, he didn't want it. The greasier, saltier, more overdone, sugary or just plain bland a dish is, the better he likes it.
I truly believe he could subsist on nothing but deep-fried tenderloins, chili and sandwich meat.
Actually, he will eat damned near anything if it's been battered and deep-fried. In lard.
I don't have a problem with lard, and do like a nice tenderloin every now and again. I just can't bring myself to eat that all the time. I am tired of chili. Sandwich meat grosses me out. Gravy with an inch of fat on the top is disgusting. Sweet desserts aren't necessary. Dried out pork chops from cooking too long chew about like shoe leather.
He won't eat anything at all Greek. He likes that seasoning mix from the market but authentic Greek? No.
No Italian other than pasta with standard tomato/meat sauce.
Catalonian? North African? East Indian? French? Asian? Lord love a duck, you'd think I was trying to kill him with that "stuff."
Made a beautiful cassoulet for Christmas 2006. Everyone loved it. With one exception. Guess who? It's nothing more than a casserole with a lovely crumb crust.... that's it! Good thing there was a small ham, too.
An attempt at a daubé went well until one of the kids told him it was called "daubé." Here he was chowing down on what he thought was good old like-ma-made beef stew and it turns out to be some hideous concoction called a "daubé!" You'd think I had just become the worst sort of traitor... a food traitor.
There are a lot of recipes that everyone else in the family, and guests, just adore. Smoky Iberian Chicken is a good example. I made that one up out of whole cloth after having it at a snazzy restaurant in St. Paul. It came with roasted asparagus (yummy) and a great white wine-based sauce. He wouldn't taste it at the restaurant and sure as hell isn't going to eat my version at home.
Another one is Roasted Vegetable soup with blackeyed peas. Turns out, he won't eat blackeyed peas even though he's been eating chickpeas in things for years. (Funny thing, that. I had the idea they were the same thing?) Even if I present him with the soup, sans those awful round thingies, he won't touch it now. I may have hidden a chickpea or two in there somewhere. Kind of like a culinary princess and the pea.
He is easy to feed when we go out to eat. Just give him a big rare steak. That's all he eats. Unless we go somewhere like a seafood joint. Then he will eat king crab legs or shrimp. God forbid he should touch tilapia, mahimahi or salmon. Might die, right there on the spot, hapless victim of weirdly named food. Except for the salmon. He just hates salmon as a matter of conscience.
Tuna is fine as long as it is in oil in a can. Tuna steaks are anathema. I have a picture in my mind of him standing at the table, arms outstretched toward the fish, index fingers crossed, crying "Back! Back, vile piscine! Return hence to the briny waters of the deep," like some wild-eyed actor from an old B-movie horror flick. I don't think that tuna steak is going anywhere but in my tummy.
It has occurred to me that, as far as eating habits go, he is very much like my Dad. Mom wasn't much of a cook but I think she didn't have much chance of learning to be one. Dad wanted what Grandmother made.* So my mother, old-fashioned wife that she was, set all her recipe boxes and clippings aside and cooked dry pork chops, roast beef and, every Sunday, fried chicken. Every Sunday. No kidding. She was probably the best fried chicken cooker in the world.
Jello was also a perpetual resident of the refrigerator. Lime jello with grapefruit, lime jello with grated carrots and sliced green eyeballs, oops, no... olives. Lime jello with cottage cheese. Every now and again the jello would turn color, unaccountably, and become orange. It then contained mandarin orange slices. Or grated carrots. Or chopped celery. It all tasted just the same to me, yucky, but Dad liked it so that's what we ate.
We also were graced with things like beef tongue, beef heart, scrapple, head cheese, tripe, fried calf brains, all that awful offal. I ate all of it because if I didn't it was growling stomach time and nothing until breakfast.** Dad loved the whole lot. Every bit. I don't know what Mom thought.
We had avocados every once in a while. I think it was a heartfelt effort by my mother to do something different, if only just a little different. Spaghetti was nothing that would be recognized by any Italian as pasta. Put the ground beef and all the other sauce elements in a big pan, add extra water, break up the pasta, stir it in and cover. Simmer for a coon's age and serve. The garlic bread was always tasty, though.
A school chum gifted me with a container of rice and sweet/sour pork at one point. I just adored it, had never tasted anything like it and wanted more. Mom put the kibosh on that. Maybe Dad would have liked it.
One very odd thing about my Dad's food likes... he adored any kind of East Indian curry. Any at all. He didn't care one whit what it was, if it was a curry, he'd probably eat it. I know he didn't learn to like that in law school at university. Must have picked it up in India. Mom didn't have access to the ingredients to make a good curry, though, so Dad went without for many years.
I am proud to state that all my kids eat pretty much anything. SS is getting better at it, too. I don't know that I did anything in particular that enabled their lack of pickiness, though. Would be nice to claim credit for that but I can't. I count myself fortunate to be one of the parents who don't fix 4 different meals for the kids because they won't eat so many different things. DIL is getting better, too. EMS is introducing her to seafood and the many uses of onions. Good girl!
SS's reaction to the vegetarian lasagna was somewhat disconcerting, though. He spread it all out on his plate, looking for hidden meat. Listen, kid, if I tell you there is no meat in that, there is no meat in it. OK? Kind of like his Dad and hidden chickpeas.


*As an aside, my paternal grandmama could probably have been an Honorable Mention for Worst Cook in Human History. Her forte was streaky bacon, fried up until it was past crisp. My mother stayed with her while Dad was off gallivanting around Calcutta, Egypt and Australia during WWII and Mom ate so much of that damned bacon that she never willingly ate it the rest of her life.

** I didn't know what it was, either. Ignorance of youth.