A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.
The mighty oak starts as a lowly acorn.
The thin edge of a wedge is never all that far from the thick edge.
If you let a camel put its nose in your tent, you soon have a camel in your tent.
Give 'em an inch; they'll take a mile.
We're good people. Really, we are. We never set out to let things get out of hand:
- "I'll stop by and have one beer."
- "It's just a summer fling."
- "Why shouldn't I have my own photo shoot? He promised it would be tasteful."
- "That blog is so dumb."
But, we are good constantly evolving people; the future tense and the past tense rarely match up exactly:
- "Gimme two fucking jumbo slices, goddammit."
- "Of course you should move in with me!"
- "Please. Just don't get it in my eye."
- "Announcing the PeeSo wedding."
In keeping with my tradition of confessional posts, I want to share something with you, my comrades-in-lunch: I hate mustard. I really, truly hate mustard, especially that godawful, unnaturally colored yellow shit. What viler substance could one create to inflict on otherwise delectable foodstuffs? When I was a little kid, I always dreaded those occasions when someone else's parents would procure McDonald's meals for me. My cheeseburger always showed up with mustard (and pickle! but that's another story), and the mustard would make me gag. I couldn't eat a burger with mustard on it. I couldn't eat anything with mustard on it. Sure, I suppose part of it was being a picky eater, but I remember how strong my reaction to that taste was. I really couldn't stand to have it in my mouth, much less long enough to chew it and swallow it. In my adult life, I have explored (usually by accident) various other offerings of the mustard class, and I have consistently found them to be unacceptable. Mostly, because I hate mustard.
Or, so I thought.
You will recall that I made one of my semi-annual pilgrimages to Chicago for my family gathering around the Thanksgiving feast. You may further recall that I drove a friend of mine to Milwaukee that Wednesday evening in order to keep from overdosing on family too early in the game. (Let's here it for pressure-relief valves!) On the drive back from Milwaukee, I realized that I had missed most of the dinner windows at relatives' houses in the Greater Chicagoland Area so I decided I should pick something up on my way in to town. I decided to hit the Portillo's near Old Orchard. I wound up in the drive-thru because it was so crowded inside, and I wanted to keep my order simple since I'm not intimately familiar with the menu and didn't want to clog up the line like the stupid bitch in front of me kept doing. I briefly weighed my options and ordered a jumbo dog with everything on it.
And, to my shock and dismay, I really really liked it, mustard (and relish!) and all.
So, lately I've been reevaluating my food prejudices. At the same time, I've been scaring myself by peering down the long path on which my hot dog epiphany may have started me. (Sweet Jesus, please tell me there will never be a day when I consider a deviled egg to be something worthy of being put in my mouth.)
My consequent question for you today is: have you ever had any similar breakthroughs (perhaps setbacks) with a food item? Ever wake up one day to discover that your taste buds were not the buds you thought you knew? Did that lead to an uneasy detente or an exponential progression? Any items that you will swear up and down today that you will never ever love?
And, of course, WFL?
47 comments:
Let's hear it for pressure-relief valves!
Hear.
Damn it.
"God this stuff isn't getting to me - the shootings, the knifings, the beatings. Old ladies being bashed in the head for their social security checks. Nah that doesn't bother me. But you know what does bother me? You know what makes me really sick to my stomach? It's watching you stuff your face with those hotdogs! Nobody - I mean nobody puts ketchup on a hot dog!"
-Harry Callahan
Bacon. And eggs. Now, to most OWFLers the idea that I wouldn't eat either of these two items is comical, as LC has witnessed my ingestion of multiple dozens of eggs over the course of a week, and other than that freak, Miso, there isn't an OWFLer who doesn't believe that everything can't be improved with the addition of bacon.
But, there was a time... in my not so distant past, that the mere smell of bacon made me gag. (truth be told, it still kind of makes the tummy queasy) I hated it. I don't remember when it happened, b/c I ate it as a kid, but sometime around late elementary or early jr. high, I cast bacon out of my life. It didn't return until one morning I woke up at some friends' house to find the man of the house, we'll call him Uncle Daddy (as we're sometimes known to do) frying up some bacon. On this day, it didn't make me want to puke. Instead, I wanted to eat as much of that crispy, fatty, swine-y goodness as I could lay my hungover hands on. (pardon my preposition) It was fantastic.
I excused that incident as a one time deal. Until the next time I found myself hungover and awakened by Uncle Daddy's bacon fryin'. Yet again, I could not resist. For awhile, I said that I would eat only bacon prepared at the hands of Uncle Daddy, but then one morning, at some diner or other, I found myself (quite unexpectedly) ordering a side of bacon. It's been downhill from there.
On the egg thing, I don't know. I started eating them again in Hungary b/c I lived with a bunch of lacto-ovas and since my job in our weird little quasi-commune was to cook, and Hungary in the winter ain't much on variety when it comes to vegetables, I started eating eggs again. Now I go on and off egg kicks every couple of months.
i used to hate water and LOVE milk. honest to god, i used to wonder why anyone would drink something that tasted like nothing? i would drink several glasses of whole milk everyday when i was a kid.
then one day, my position totally flipped. now i prefer water over milk. in fact, i used to hate sparkling water too, but now i can't live without it. i have no clue how this came to be. but someone once told me your tastebuds change every 5 years or so. i don't know if that's a true fact, but it could explain my change of heart.
today, i think i will have b-line salad. again, anyone in the downtown area who has not tried breadline can join me.
Balogna. I used to eat it (truth be told, I'm not sure if I ever even liked it or just tolerated it), but then I stopped for some reason & I've never gone back. I didn't eat Dorito's for a long time either, because I ate them while sitting in the way back of the station wagon coming home from the store. I think I had stayed home from school (2nd or 3rd grade?) b/c I was sick with a cold. I guess the combo (cold + slight motion sickness from the way back + eating like half a bag of Dorito's) made me not like them for a long time. I think it was 6th grade before I came back to my senses.
I used to hate olives & salami. Which is weird b/c I used to scarf down the muffulatas when we would visit my grandparents in the Big Easy. Clearly I didn't know what was in a muffulata. I'm still picky about olives (kalamata yes, green not so much). I used to hate pineapples. But now I really like it.
I'm sure I still have a couple of things I don't like. Oh, I will never ever ever like shredded coconut. I've gotten to a point of toleration with it, but that's as far as it's going. Fresh coconut yes, shredded, bleah.
For me the best example of learning to love something is with liverwurst and it's cousin chopped liver. For the first 22 years of my life I thought the two were repugnant based mainly on reputation and partly due to some pate I tasted when I was 11 or 12 years old.
I never had a big problem eating liver itself (though it had to have onions with it). In fact I used to take pride in being the contrarian kid who could stomach liver without complaint. Liverwurst was out of the question.
Until the day I ordered a braunschweiger and swiss out of curiosity at Gourmet Pantry. It wasn't bad. Then I made a late night sandwich with some braunschweiger I found in my dad's fridge (he later told me they bought it for the dog). Ahain, pretty good. Then I moved to Adams Morgan and discovered So's Your Mom Deli. I started regularly ordering the braunschweiger and swiss on pumpernickel with horseradish, sprouts, tomato and onion. I was hooked. Now I can't go 10 days without my braunschwieger and salami hoagie. And I routinely order chopped liver at the deli for saturday and sunday afternoon snacking. A whole new world opened up to me.
Working lunch at Jimmy's on K Street. I think I'll get the Kobe cheeseburger and a salad.
I used to like scalding-hot meatballs on a toothpick and fresh from the Crock-Pot-brand slow cooker.
After I blanched and shocked my taste buds this weekend at lt's party? Not so much.
(I didn't mean it meatballs! You know I can't stay mad at you.)
For those of you who missed it - that was quite a scene EQ caused with the hot balls in his mouth.
Speaking of "nobody's" (LT's) X-Mas party, Good Show! The place looks great LizT and you had a house packed full of of holiday revellers who all seemed very agreeable and were representative of every generation from the Boomers to Gen X. Huzzah to you!
Highlights:
- Ginger martini (I added some sprite to cut the ginger and it was perfect)
- The Porn couch
- Getting everyone to try popping the zits on their noses
- That pork dish loin thing was delicious
- The extensive holiday music collection.
Lowlight
-Being greeted by HT with an impolite "You stink of garlic" (I had just sampled one of the dips) which kicked my social anxiety disorder into high gear and started my nervous sweating which was only cured by moving outside to cool off and being followed by other friedns which I fear segregated the party by group for a good while.
Way to go HT
Sorry, Jo. But it was overpowering. I too sampled the dip later, and though I enjoyed it, I realized that I could not continue to consume it in a setting with so many people, in such close proximity.
Good show, indeed - LT. Though, I never thought of ThatOtherEddieMoney song as Xmas music... until, now that is.
That, coupled with these, might just turn me on to (get it!) Christmas, yet!
Sorry I missed the party. I was enjoying the Gator victory and promptly passed out from the IPA after the game was over. Drinking all day is tough... Especially after triathlon practice.
I am anti Tomatoes, mushrooms, and eggplants. I'll occasionally be hungry enough, or anti-sober enough to eat a pizza with one or several of these monstrosities on it, but I draw the line there.
The only food I can think of that has come back from the brink is Peanut M&Ms.
One year my sisters were selling these little treats to raise money for a gymnastics trip or something, but they had boxes of peanut M&Ms around the house, and all i had to do wat to put 50 cents into their collection envelope and I could have a pack. Well I found the hell out of 5o cents all over the place and gorged myself on them. I puked, and gave them the boot for abotu 15 years or so. I got over my aversion with the help of Mary Jane. She relaxes your standards pretty well.
For lunch today, I have to call a friend's mother and tell her that her daughter just called me last night and that I'm afraid that she is suicidal. Not looking forward to that call.
Yecch. Good luck with the call mikey, and better luck to your friend.
Sounds awful.
Ugh, yeah, sorry about the Mikey. I hope you're wrong, but man.
Thanks all! I hope you had a good time & sorry I couldn't talk to everyone more! Those ginger martinis are definitely on my permanent list. The phylo dough cheese thingies have made it onto a separate list. The shit list. Uh, thanks for trying to get everyone to pop their zits in my house. I hope it didn't get on the couch. Speaking of which . . . porn couch?? I just thought it would be a nice way to fit a lot of people into the room. Geez. You should have seen my first couch after college - my little bro called it 'the pimp couch'.
First off, lt, let me thank you for your gracious hospitality. I should not admit that I was planning to be there for about an hour before heading elsewhere. Obviously, you created such a welcoming atmosphere that I stayed much longer and blew those other clowns off. (Two points for anyone from here on who incorporates "blew those other clowns" into their comment.)
Secondly, let me enlighten you.
Pimp couch: a couch that was designed to be fucked on.
Porn couch: a couch that was designed to film people fucking on.
While not necessarily mutually exclusive, they are certainly not necessarily concurrent.
mikeysunshine: that's no fun. Give a call if you want to do a little talk-through of that conversation before the live-fire version.
FL, I'm seriously considering another run at a sandwich from the deli across the street today. I know I just did that on Friday, but I think I may actually be able to enjoy and finish one today.
LT - i am so happy to finally get to one of your xmas parties! and man, i had so much fun...too much in fact that i had a massive hangover the next day. that is a mark of a successful shindig if you ask me.
i'm going to breadline. i'm never inviting any of you downtown dc working bastards again.
Thanks all, the phone call went well. I had to google the lady to find her email address, and I got in touch with her through that vehicle. Between the time she got the email, and me calling her, she had left her office and made contact with her daughter. And daughter is seeing a medical / mental health professional today.
Daughter was drinking last night and is in general depressed, and Like they ironically say, 'nothing chases the blues away like a depressant.' So she gave me the drunk dial, and I did what I could... tell her mom.
The call took much less time than I thought it would since she already talked to her daughter, so I found myself thinking, man I wish I had time to go over to the potbelly sandwich joint over on 19th, but it is so far away. Then I looked up and saw that there is a potbelly on 17th, just across the street from where I stood.
I got a turkey & swiss and in light of today's wonderful post (Quake;) I decided to have them put on one of my traditional veto items on it. About to dig in, we'll see how these things are.
I mean some people cum all over themselves for tomatoes, so how bad can they be right?
Mmmm. Sunshine, I kind of want to make a tomato-shroom-eggplant stew over pasta for dinner tonight.
And thanks for the clarification, EQ. I guess with the big bay window there I could make it a peep-show couch. I'll remember this next time I'm fucking on the couch.
so I notice that only folks in capital city are blogging today?
Where the heartlanders at? Where the southerners at? Where the africans at?
Tried the tomatoes, and I didn't pick any off my sammie. I don't feel like the sammie was improved any, nor do I feel like it was destroyed.
So I like the potbelly's sammie. Way better than quizno's and subway just sucks. The thing that I think Potbellys could work on: Getting better chips. They use the local chips, and I prefer the presertive rich national brands, and c'mon, how can a sandwich shop not have a soda fountain? Weak.
Glad that phone call went well, btw, Sunshine.
Yeah, I wish we had a Potbelly's around here. All we have are . . . (wait for it) . . . Quizno's & Subway. Sigh! Hm, I guess there's Gene's Deli, but it's a little far.
Maybe I'll make coconut macaroons for dessert tonight & try to get over my coconut distate. Not! Ha ha, I am kidding of course. I will never voluntarily befoul a dessert with shredded coconut.
LT, i just read your 12:53 comment, and I barfed a little in my mouth over your dinner plans.
And Quake, I would have gone to the circus with you, but after I blew those other clowns off, I didn't feel like I could face the big top.
or
What do you mean Ice Pick? I already went to Binky the clown's place and gave the blow job he paid you for and his friend was there so I took care of him too. Shit, I was supposed to go to Blinky the clowns? So you're saying I blew those other clowns off for free?
Does that get me 4 pints?
I am still hungover from Saturday night. I'm glad I wasn't the only one hungover on Sunday. I did almost nothing yesterday, aside from dragging out of bed at about noon, to drive all the way up to Rosslyn to try to get an Italian Store sub - I arrived at about 1:45, so I thought I'd be ok b/c the lunch rush would be over. Was I ever wrong! I took a ticket (#69, dude!) and looked up at the 'now serving' sign, which was at . . . #24. There was no way I was going to wait for 45 people to order sandwiches ahead of me, so I went to Quizno's like 2 minutes from my house (and tried to go to Blockbuster, but due to a 'medical emergency', it was closed.). Then I went home & slept on my porn couch all afternoon. I haven't done any cleaning. Tonight is going to suck. It was worth it though! I had a lot of fun! Yay!
Lunch was my leftover General Tsao's from Friday, b/c I forgot to take it home for dinner. It was meh. General Tsao was a lot soggy.
Turtle,
Blockbuster was closed because it is obsolete. The chumps who they got to work there, just couldn't spell that, so they went with medikel emergancie. That should have tipped you off. It's the 21st century, get your movies through the mail or over the internet like all the other lazy movie viewers do.
I would say to get your roommate to subscribe to Netflix, but you don't have one do you?
No, no roommate. Yeah, I'm going to sign up for Netflix. But doing it yesterday wouldn't do me any good. I need immediate gratification, dammit! It's just as well. I watched about 1/2 hour of Spinal Tap before falling asleep again. So I would have been out 5-6 bucks (how much does a movie cost to rent nowadays?) for not much movie-watching. Hm. Maybe I'll sign up in my next moment of downtime.
The porn couch is kind of like a roommate. A fleecy, commando-roll-inviting roommate.
ms: You do not get four pints. You get four points.
10 points=1 pint
And, in the spirit of gamesmanship: Drippy, Droopy, Sparkles, Shinebox, Breakneck, Giggles, ShaGiggles, Postcard, Post-It, Latte, High Yellow, Flowers, Plate Glass, Ped O'Phil, and Professor Higgenbotham made it out of the car unscathed, but the wind blew the rest of those clowns right over the cliff.
Damn Quake, I read that like four times and each time it said 2 pints. I swear. You only see what you want I guess.
I thought the phrase was
"blew those other clowns off"
No it looks like it is just blew those other clowns. Ok So
Hurricane Andrew to Hurricane Katrina in the retired hurricane home:
Andy: I was trying to get up to Tallahassee and destroy that damn circus school they have up there so there would be no more clowns, when the upper level winds sent me towards New Orleans, but I was pooped from giving Miami a blow job.
Kat: Well, Cirque de Sole was in town when I got to New Orleans, so I blew those other clowns for you.
Andy: Good show. The only thing worse than a clown is a euro clown.
DC OWFLers (for mikeysunshine's use and any OWFLers I missed on the email):
I just talked to Bob the Bartender from Bravo! Bravo!
We are meeting him tomorrow evening for drinks at around 5-5:30ish in the bar of The Indian Experience (formerly known as The Ascot), located on the corner of 17th and L Street NW.
and quake, it seems to me that maybe you were running out of clown names and just started looking around your cube for names.
Post it
postcard
plate glass
High Yellow (which I assume is actually a yellow Highlighter)
mikeysunshine: Having some trouble reading today, are we? And, yes, maybe some of those clown names were poached from within arm's reach. By the same token, have you ever hung out with clowns? Those are perfectly viable clown names (even with the racial and social implications of High Yellow). Speaking of which, you remember when you called in that bomb threat to the wrong rich kid's birthday party and then blew those other clowns, unwarned, up?
I just filled out my Juror Qualification survey online. Shockingly, I'm eligible. Damn it.
Time to go find sammich to eat at desk.
I wish I could have been in New york when the were inflating those Macy's parade balloons up where they filled Ronald McDonald with air and blew those other clowns up.
Pickled Beets...I heart them.
FL, I chose a menu item called the "Bucko 46: Hot Roast Beef sliced thin, piled high with Chutzpah onions and melted mozzarella cheese served on toasted garlic bread." Side of potato salad and two pickles.
Eeet's nice. I like.
Now, when you're up on the grid working the spotlights, remember it's red for the bucket of confetti guy and then blue those other clowns.
Having lived with Pennelope Lynn Cxxx (sorry for the break in etticut) for most of my life, I had no opportunity to be a picky eater. So, most things I had to eat and "enjoy" otherwise starve. It didn't help that she was an ecletic eater. Pickled herring, garlic fried chicken livers, collard greens, unsweetened corn bread (cornpone), various flavors of squash and parm, anchovies, hot mustard greens .. etc etc etc.
So, I have an adult craving, one of those epiphanies that were referred to. That is split pea soup.
I HATED it as a kid, when we would have it for 3 days straight in my child hood I dreaded coming to the dinner table. Now, I can go to a soup shop somewhere and include it in my many choices without thought to it's horrible texture or diret-like taste.
Today was Christian's Tailgate for a 1/2lb hamburger ... it is good to be back in the states again.
The only time I ever got sea sick I was drinking root beer. I puked the root beer up, and that taste was associated with nausea for many many years after that. I gave it a try about 10 years after the incident, and realized it wasn't too bad. I don't really like it, or seek it out, but once in a while i'll enjoy a root beer.
I'm a HUGE hater of bananas. But this past weekend I found that if you take a dime size piece of banana, drown it in ice cream, caramel and chocolate, I am able to injest it. It was the first piece of banana i've tried in at least a decade.
For the lunch record:
Went to Jimmy's on K Street. I had the Kobe beef burger with melted fontina and grilled onions and a clam chowder. Ginger Ale to drink.
No lunch. Interview not so great. I feel like I got beat up. In that way where the bigger guy, takes your fists, and makes you punch yourself in the face. Ugh.
Diz. Finally an out of towner. Nice to hear from diverse opinions.
I was begining to think a reverse terrorist attack had taken place and everyplace BUT dc got exploded
i fear i am dying
but in regards to the post (which was quite wonderful EQ), i cannot think of any foods i've yet to reaccept into my life after deciding them foul. There are of course those things as a childe that i refused just to anger my parents (like salad dressing and asparagus) but as for those that i didn't really like, i still don't
Mushrooms
raw tomatoes
bananas (actually i did like these at one point in my life, very early, but decided they were disgusting and then never ate them again).
oh yeah.. dying.
so i haven't smoked since the one cigarette i had on saturday.. not through conscious masochism but because i've been too lazy to get more.. well now i have a severe migraine that MUST be due to the lack of nicotine in my system (at this point i'd blow a clown for one)... last night i blew those other clowns with the thought i would get a smoke but they didn't give me shit...
i think my camel in the tent problems (wow.. that sounded dirty) are realized through every other one of EQs examples besides the food one...
that's why my liver looks like volcanic rock and i soul destined for one of those bad rings of hell.
On the upside I have five days of real work, one day of a department meeting and four days of SQL Server training before I leave for san diego. God, I hope I make it.
Porn Couch: so it’s not the couch itself that lends itself to displays of physical affection involving genitals but the windows? I would probably call it the porn window and associated couch rather than the current naming convention.
FL I had a warm roast beef sandwich with a shitton of spicy brown mustard on it. It was delicious until the bun became overly soggy. Then I cried a bit.
I love it. NPR is doing this peice on Urban birds and their song. They're talking heaps about the great tit. mmm... great tit.
Hm. If it's going to be a porn couch with a peep-show window, I'm going to have to do some rearranging.
The piano is right there, if anyone has any cheesy porn music they'd like to compose & play on it.
Sigh. I'm hungry again. Debating hitting the candy machine, which I know I shouldn't. But there are Doooooritoooooooos in there . . . .
anything like Britany?
I'm eating a piece of pizza that's been left out (in the box, in my oven) since Friday.
I share for all of you anti-mold, pro-refrigeration freaks.
HT, I think pizza gets ruined if it is regrigerated. I intentionally leave out left over pizza so that when I reheat it, in the toaster oven, never microwave oven, it it just like it was when the pros made it. Don't know the chemistry or physics of it, but I know it to be true.
Fear of germs be damned! The way I see it, if your immune system never gets a work out, it won't be up to the task when it has to be... and don't even get me started on anti-bacterial crap
I'm shut up notwitty...
notwitty: I realized that I have often heard the term but couldn't put my finger on a precise definition.
incubus - (ing´kyoobs), lascivious male demon said to possess mortal women as they sleep and to be responsible for the birth of demons, witches, and deformed children. According to one legend the incubus and his female counterpart, the succubus, were fallen angels. The belief in these demons was especially prevalent in the Middle Ages, and stories of assaults by incubi were not uncommon. There are similar spirits in many cultures. In current usage, incubus means a person or thing that oppresses, such as a nightmare.
Sure. I'll take that.
m: Camel tent...huh huh huh.
lizturtle: what kind of porn have you been watching with piano music? Sounds like some of that soft-focus, womyncentric crap that eschews the money shot for an in-depth discussion about the tree goddess my partner got tattooed on her hip bone.
And, honestly, you don't even need a piano for "the ol' ticklin' the ivories," if you know what I mean.
Good night!
I was a seriously picky eater as a kid. I used to only eat bologna with ketchup on white bread. That kinda shit. It lasted into well into my teens.
Around my junior or senior year in high school, I went on a fishing trip with Idaho Clambake up to Crystal Lake in Fremont, Michigan. We stayed at my, let’s call her Aunt Trudy, Aunt Trudy’s cottage. The fishing was good, but there was no plan to eat our catch. I’m doing some memory reconstruction here, but I believe what happened was that there was a significant amount of rain one night and we were unable to get Idaho’s car back up the mud slide driveway to get to any stores, and we didn’t know how far away they were, either. We ate our road trip provisions (jerky and Combos) and then we were screwed. There was a frozen pizza in the cottage freezer, and we had no qualms about claiming that. Unfortunately, the oven was out of commission. I called Aunt Trudy to let her know that the oven wasn’t working—I don’t remember the rest of that conversation, but I don’t think I had ulterior motives. Anyway, we tried to pan fry the Tombstone, but, somehow, we effed that up (go figure). We had no food and we were quite effin’ hungry…and drunk. On Keystone, I believe. Or maybe Colders. Unexpectedly, Aunt Trudy showed up with a big bad of Burger King…Whoppers with everything. It was a big moment for me, but that was the moment that I became a not-picky eater. Tomatoes, mustard, mayonnaise, onions…whatever the fuck’s on a Whopper. After that…all food became pretty much cool.
No. Not all. I hate capers. And slimey okra. Pickle okra good.
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