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My favorite vegetables as a child were black-eyed peas1. As an adult, of course, I realize that doesn't really count, it's a legume. But in my house growing up, it was considered in the category of vegetable. (Also, corn. And potatos, sort of.) My other favorite vegetables were tomatos (let's ignore the whole 'it's really a fruit' thing momentarily and be glad that at least it's in the proper food pyramid formation). I liked them slices with salt and pepper, I liked them with bacon on dry whitebread (a BLT - the L or mayo), I liked them diced up in my salad bowl with catalina dressing on them (which is a tomato based dressing). I did not like lettuce. I was overwhelmed by salad and if I ever tried if before the age of 5, I don't remember. I never had to eat it, in part because I had a father who hates most all fruits and many vegetables, including salad. It always makes it easier to get away with not liking certain foods if a parental figure is completely avoiding it as well.
At the age of nine, I was spending the night at a school friend's house and we sat down to dinner and there it was. A salad. I had to eat it. It was polite. I could be trouble or a bad guest. They asked me what dressing I wanted, and that seemed to make the whole operation even more upsetting, so I said confidently "no thank you." They were completely perplexed, and I nonchalantly said, "I don't eat my salad with dressing." I then proceeded to eat 2/3 a bowl of cut up iceberg lettuce. Because that's all the salad was, especially for that era, that part of the country. In that moment of trying to play it cool, I learned the lesson of why people put dressing on lettuce becuase it just tasted weird and funny and bad. This begins the period of childhood eating known as 'drowning' food.
I was thinking about all this because it's "american taco night" here for dinner at the firm. After having one hardshell taco with beef and cheese and tomato (just like my WASPy mama used to make!), I moved onto the grown up portion of my meal -- the green salad -- except I forgot to put anything on it. Except I didn't really care and ate it all anyway. With the tomatos and avocado and the corn adding enough to the lettuce that no dressing was required. Which made me think of my first salad eaten, with no dressing. No matter how many times it happens, I am constantly fascinated by how tastes change. How foods we radically despise at one point become enjoyable, or something that is even craved.
1: Unrelated to food, but related to "black-eyed peas", every time I see Fergie, I think about her getting squashed by the car in Grindhouse and Claude leaning over to me and saying "now if only we could run over the rest of the Black-Eyed Peas too."
At the age of nine, I was spending the night at a school friend's house and we sat down to dinner and there it was. A salad. I had to eat it. It was polite. I could be trouble or a bad guest. They asked me what dressing I wanted, and that seemed to make the whole operation even more upsetting, so I said confidently "no thank you." They were completely perplexed, and I nonchalantly said, "I don't eat my salad with dressing." I then proceeded to eat 2/3 a bowl of cut up iceberg lettuce. Because that's all the salad was, especially for that era, that part of the country. In that moment of trying to play it cool, I learned the lesson of why people put dressing on lettuce becuase it just tasted weird and funny and bad. This begins the period of childhood eating known as 'drowning' food.
I was thinking about all this because it's "american taco night" here for dinner at the firm. After having one hardshell taco with beef and cheese and tomato (just like my WASPy mama used to make!), I moved onto the grown up portion of my meal -- the green salad -- except I forgot to put anything on it. Except I didn't really care and ate it all anyway. With the tomatos and avocado and the corn adding enough to the lettuce that no dressing was required. Which made me think of my first salad eaten, with no dressing. No matter how many times it happens, I am constantly fascinated by how tastes change. How foods we radically despise at one point become enjoyable, or something that is even craved.
1: Unrelated to food, but related to "black-eyed peas", every time I see Fergie, I think about her getting squashed by the car in Grindhouse and Claude leaning over to me and saying "now if only we could run over the rest of the Black-Eyed Peas too."
