The Omnivores Dilemma

For the longest time, I ate raspberries, convinced that it would be tantamount to sacrilege not to like live sweet rubies. I was also sure I did not like liver, and I did occasionally drink beer. In short, it took me a while to trust my own taste and realise that what is manna and honey to one, is too sweet and mealy for me.

Well you live and learn. An excellent liver pie a few years ago turned my world, and since then I am a fan of anything intestine. But I have also developed rather a thick skin when it comes to insulting the resident cook. If it doesn’t please me I wont swallow.

 I have stopped the raspberry intake and choose a glass of wine, or even water, instead of forcing myself to sink several litres of bitter gold – even if in a swirling pub. I embrace my hatred of cantaloupe and crostini, as well as my love of stingy nettles and bloody dripping raw meat, my abhorrence of liqorice and my fanatical support of anything tart: grapefruit and broccoli and ruccola – bring them on.

With age, alas, I try to eat or non-eat based on personal taste only. There are exceptions to this rule: a certain sense of manners comes into play, of course, and I would not spit in a salad offered by a friend, even if it would contain apples and cucumbers (an unholy combination, I find). Also there are cases of extreme hunger when I may manage something pork. But as long as it is my time or money going into the pot, and I am not starving, I want the pot to live up to my standards. Or be sent back.

My theory is this: if I have paid for it or spent time making it, I should not have to go through further loss of money of time-is-money by eating something I don’t care for. And to continue my newly developed trend of obvious analogies: the same goes for men. Which begs a few questions:

Is the customer always right, or am I, as it were, ordering the cook to fire my meat to a cinder for lack of culinary experience? Should I stick to what I like no matter if it isn’t always the healthy option? Does it matter if the produce is fantastic if it has been seasoned all wrong? Can you save a sauce once burned? And most importantly: will I ever be happy with a one-sided diet or would my teeth fall out? What if over-consumtion will develop into allergies halfway through the meal?

But to close on a more optimistic note:

A man survived the WWII concentration camps to marry a Cordon Bleu chef. The only subsequent tragedy in their relatively contented life was that despite all her efforts at sautes and souffles and tangerines and cold boiled tongue with a parsnip side, all he ever really felt like eating was bread and salt. A few years of inhumane misery and starvation will have you running for the basics.

And so, I go on the dating market.