Taco Surprise

I do not eat most food found on Mexican restaurant menus.  I also don't eat most food on pretty much any restaurant menu, but that's beside the point.  Joey very much enjoys Mexican food.  Miriah practically lives on refried beans.  So last night, we made Traditional Beef Burritos.

This recipe has a couple of things that are "Do Not Eat" foods.  The first one is cumin.  Cumin is still a bit too spicy for this kid.  I've realized that chili powder isn't actually so bad, but cumin just fans the flames of any other spice in a dish.

The second big "Do Not Eat" food is refried beans.  While they are essentially the life force of my sister, I maintain that beans are gross.  If you're not going to let your kid eat paste, why are you going to let them eat beans?  Same consistency, same taste.  And before you ask, yes, I have eaten paste.

Same adhesive properties?  Who knows.  Miriah won't let me "waste" them in order to find out.

And of course, "Do Not Eat" food number three.  Taco sauce.  Mainly by virtue of the fact that it is sauce specifically designed for a food that I find too spicy and too suitable for an art project.  In fact, after looking at the ingredients, I decided taco sauce was innocent till proven guilty.

Look at that!  It's even mild!  Maybe it won't be so bad....

We browned the meat (yum), added garlic (yum) and onion (eh), and then the recipe started getting gross.  But it also started smelling awesome.  I was even starting to feel a little excited.  How could something with so much garlic turn out bad?  I hoped (since this was dinner) that it couldn't.

After trying to roll the burritos, Joey passed the task to me.  I treated it like a Potbelly sandwich, and it seemed to go just fine.  Our tortillas were slightly too small, but we managed.  We popped them into the oven to bake.  Remembering those way-too-ambitious pork chops, I started brainstorming back-up dinner options.

After we took them out of the oven, I put more cheese on mine.  Once again, cheese is delicious.  I had forgotten to buy sour cream, so we had to skip that part.  The burritos looked good but scary.  Who knew how much the cumin and taco sauce would burn my mouth?

The potential dangers are so well hidden....

The meat was a little spicy.  But I could totally handle it!  I'm quite proud.  I think this is proof that I'm maturing as an eater.

More surprising though, I preferred the beans to the ground beef mixture.  Beans go well with cheese.  I don't know if that's the magic of cheese or my continuing personal growth.  I guess the next step would be to try refried beans on their own.  I wonder if Miriah would be willing to part with them.

My First Adventure into the Sometimes Scary World of Leftovers

This meal actually occurred on Thursday, but I somehow became quite busy this past weekend.  So I will post about it now.

As many unemployed 20-somethings, I live with my parents.  I don't usually eat meals with them anymore because our schedules don't always match up.  (Also to ensure that, when I have a job and move out some magical day, I know how to prepare meals myself.)  Since I am possibly the pickiest eater in my family, this frees my mother up to create all kinds of chicken and curry and sometimes curry chicken dinners.

On Thursday, I sampled the leftovers of such a meal.

In this microwave-safe container lies the potential for great yucky-ness... or great yummy-ness.

My parents and sister had a dish called Singapore Noodles last week.  I can't find my mom's exact recipe, but it calls for chicken (gross), peanut butter (yum), pea pods (yum), noodles (yum), chili powder (scary), and curry powder (also scary).

But I love pea pods so much.  I had to try it.  I put a couple heaping spoonfuls on a plate and nuked it.  A minute-thirty later, I sat down to eat.  It was yummy!  The peanut butter covered the taste of the chicken very well.  The pea pods were oh-so crunchy and delicious.  The noodles and carrots provided a good texture contrast to the pea pods.  It wasn't even that spicy!  I had finally triumphed over chili powder and curry powder!  Indian restaurants here I come!

I told my sister, with great pride, how I had enjoyed my plate of Singapore Noodles.  My pride disappeared when Miriah said, "Probably because Mom forgot to add the curry."

Thanks.  I thought this would be the first curry dish to cross over.  Guess I was wrong.  My mother promised to make Singapore Noodles "right" (or, as I call it, "scary") next time so I can try the dish with curry powder in it.  Hopefully the peanut butter and pea pods will save me....

But at least I learned that chili powder isn't so scary after all.

A Little Too Ambitious

I have two new foods to talk about in this post.  One was a success and one.... Well, one was a little too ambitious.

Two days ago, my sister (Miriah), a friend, and I went to Trader Joe's.  I was hoping to buy fresh cooking lavender, but they didn't have any.  What they did have were free samples!

Free samples are one of the best ways to try new, potentially gross foods for the following reasons:

• They're usually small.  It's easier to shortly suffer through if it's too gross.
• They're not your whole meal.  So you don't think "Well, I guess dinner didn't work..." (More on that later.)
• They're free!  You have literally lost no money discovering that it's disgusting!

Tuesday's free sample was smoked trout on a cream cheese topped cracker.  I love cream cheese, and I'm a huge fan of crackers.  Fish is pretty gross, though.  But Miriah reminded me that adults don't make faces when someone asks them to try a new food.  They put on a polite face (or even a happy one), take the free sample, and try it.  Kids make faces when someone asks them to try a new food.

Time to decide.  Was I a kid or an adult?

Look at all the fishy bits on top of this tiny cracker!  That's a huge gross to yum ratio!

Well, I ate it.  And was so pleased I did because it was really good!  I don't pretend to be an icthyologist or even someone familiar with eating fish, but I think it was the smokiness of the trout that made it so appealing.  It tasted a bit maple-y, like bacon or smoked ham.   Add in my beloved cream cheese and you have a snack I can really get behind.

Riding on this wave of culinary success, I let my boyfriend, Joey, pick our next adventure meal.  We were looking through the Gluten-Free Bible and found a recipe for Spicy Pork Casserole.  The recipe involved all sorts of things I don't eat.  The casserole involved tomatoes, red pepper flakes, chili powder, and black pepper.  These are all safely on the "Foods I Don't Eat" list.  It also had oregano, which I'm mostly indifferent toward.

I thought, "If I can conquer trout, I can conquer peppers!"

Finished product is quite pretty, but looks can be deceiving.

We had our friend, affectionately called Chavo, over to help us eat it.  So Miriah, Chavo, Joey, and I all sit down at the dining room table for a nice grown up meal.  And it quickly becomes apparent that I am the only one second guessing the food.

My portion before I attempted to eat it.

The three of them dug right in and I sampled the corn, potato, and tomato concoction beneath the pork chop.  Not as spicy as I had feared, but we had reduced the amount of chili pepper by half.  The red pepper flakes were only bad if I actually ate one.  I did learn, however, I still hate tomatoes.  They are mushy and disgusting.

The pork chop.  Dear Lord, the pork chop.  There was so much black pepper, it caused me mild physical pain to eat it.  Joey went to get me a glass of milk.  Chavo laughed, clearing his plate as I attempted my second bite.  My throat felt like I had smoked a cigarette not eaten a pork chop.  Eventually, I conceded defeat.  I need to build my spice tolerance up before I attempt this meal again.

I had never had an unfinished pork chop on my plate before that night.

Miriah and Joey congratulated me on trying to eat it and actually managing three bites of pork.  Chavo told me that last weekend he ate a whole, raw jalapeño pepper for fun.

We'll try it again some time in the future.  Tonight, it's sloppy joes again!  Yum!