Encouragement from a Four-Year-Old

I had a babysitting double header Saturday.  I've already mentioned that the four-year-old I babysit (who told me that night that I can call her "Keeks") has a much more mature palette than I do.  She encouraged me to eat cauliflower after all.

For my morning shift, we ate sausages and toast with Nutella and almond butter.  Nothing too fancy or adventurous.  Also, it was delicious.

When I came back for my night shift, her parents had made fish empanadas.  Keeks was eating a hot dog.  Her mother graciously offered me the empanadas (and a slice of delicious pie).  I diplomatically said, "Cool," but I didn't commit to eating the fish.

After her parents left and I was trying to get her to stop running long enough to eat some hot dog, Keeks said, "I don't like fish."

"I don't like fish, either," I said.

"And that's okay, Kayla!"

I smiled at her enthusiastic acceptance of different tastes.  "You're right."  But would a real grown-up just stop right there?  Fish and chips are alright.  What if empanadas are alright?  "But I'm going to try the empanadas."

There.  Few people hold you accountable for your words like four-year-olds.  Now I had to try them.

I put one on my plate, reminding myself that if I tried this I would have totally earned that delicious pie.  Then I sat next to Keeks.

All that unknown grossness hidden in an inconspicuous pasty.

I broke off a piece and smelled it.  Unsurprisingly, it smelled like fish.  I held it out for Keeks to smell.  "It smells gross," she confirmed.  "You're gonna eat it?"

I sighed.  "Yes.  You should try new things.  So I'm gonna eat it."

"Okay, Kayla.  I'll count to five.  No, ten."

"And then I have to eat it?"

She nodded.  "One.  Two.  Three.  Four.  Five.  Six."  I put the fork up to my mouth and took a deep breath.  "Seven.  Eight.  Nine.  Ten, Kayla!"

I ate it.  It was okay.  It didn't have the texture of a slab of fish.  It was lightly seasoned, which cut down on the grossness.  Not as good as fish and chips, but better than most of the fish I've tried on this blog.

And I ate the whole thing!

"Good job, Kayla."

"Thanks, Keeks.  You need to eat more hot dog."

What's All the Hullabaloo About?

So I might have seriously neglected my blogging over the holiday weekend.  And the post-holiday week...  Whoops!  Well, I'm getting back on track.  This post was a long time coming.

Over Thanksgiving, a friend was in from out of town.  Miriah and I went to see a movie with her and then suddenly found ourselves at a sushi restaurant.

Sushi is something I do not understand.  As far as I do understand, the driving force behind sushi is people will pay to eat raw fish that has been draped over a bundle of rice and seaweed.  It is only slightly more logical than paying to eat a steak you have to cook yourself.

Miriah doesn't really do sushi either, but for the sake of politeness we took off our shoes and pulled up a chair.  I scoured the menu for something I would enjoy and luckily found vegetable tempura.  Miriah decided to try some sushi.  The table ordered four rolls, each a different kind.  There was your typical raw fish on top of rice and seaweed variety, fried crab, and semi-spicy sweet potato.

Miriah avoided the raw fish since she doesn't even like cooked fish.  (I'm not the only fan of the kids' menu in our family.)  I stuck with my fried veggies.  Till the end.

I was persuaded to try the semi-spicy sweet potato sushi.  Being the adult that (chronologically) I am, I dipped the slightly-more-than-one-bite-sized roll in soy sauce and shoved it in my mouth.  I assume you eat the rolls all in one bite, hence the shoving.

That's sushi.  That's what people lose their minds for.  I might never know why.

Despite the protests that the roll was not actually spicy, I felt the familiar burning of the taste buds.  It was nowhere near as scorching as those wings, but there was kick nonetheless.  The most surprising part came after the slight heat subsided.  After the heat was nothing.  If the sushi had not had that semi-spicy sauce, it would have had no flavor at all.

I'm not normally one to knock bland foods.  In fact, a lot of my favorite foods would never be described as "bursting with flavor."  But people are obsessed with sushi.  People who consider themselves super into food and its accompanying flavors.  So why are they into sushi?  It tasted like nothingness.  There was no complex interplay of flavors, no delicate balance of x and y.

I admit that I only had one of the apparently multiple varieties of sushi.  Maybe other varieties have more flavor.  But I'm not willing to risk my money on that.  Do you know how cheap sweet potatoes and rice are?  So much cheaper than sushi!  Maybe I'll come back to sushi in a couple months and find that there's something I didn't pick up on the first time around.  For now, sushi very securely remains on the "Do Not Eat" list.

Giving It Another Go

So after my thoroughly unappetizing encounter with tilapia (though most of the blame was probably on us), I decided to give fish another go.  Joey was on board.  This is important because he'll eat almost anything, so I might need him to finish my dinner if turns out to be more yuck than yum.

There I am looking on the Internet for fish recipes, when lo and behold! a recipe for red snapper with the very words "this one's for the haters" in the title!  How absolutely fortuitous!  Joey looks over the recipe and thinks it looks yummy.  Cue shopping for fish and subbing catfish for red snapper.

After an extremely short prep time (probably the fastest recipe we've made so far), the fillets are ready to go in the oven.

Turns out we didn't have cayenne pepper.  Mine (left) has paprika.  Joey's (right) has red pepper flakes.

After an even shorter time under the broiler, they are ready to eat.  All told, 15 minutes from stepping into the kitchen to walking to the dining room with our prepared meal.

Paired with American chips.  I figured fish, salt and vinegar chips, how could I go wrong?

Preparing to be disgusted, I bite into the fish.  Still a gross texture, but fairly palatable taste.  The fishy taste, as always, is complemented nicely by the lemon in the sauce.  The barbeque sauce has been tempered by the mayonnaise.  The crunchy carrots and chips help balance the squishy-ness of the fish.  This is a meal that I would eat again.  "For the haters," indeed.

I think I'm rather slowly getting used to the texture of fish.  It doesn't make my stomach turn as much as it did a month ago.  However, I still don't think I would ever order it at a restaurant.

Green peppers on the other hand....

Something a Little Fishy

So my mom bought tilapia a couple months ago.  It came in variety pack with chicken breast, burgers, and pork chops from Market Day.  The fish has been sitting in our freezer ever since it came into the house.  My dad, sister, and I don't like fish.  My mother mostly eats meals she cooks for the family.  My housemate and boyfriend eat fish but don't cook it themselves.

Two fillets of tilapia sitting cold and lonely in the freezer?  A recipe for Roasted Almond Tilapia in The Gluten-Free Bible?  Challenge accepted.

Roasted Almond Tilapia combines fish with Dijon mustard, two ultra-gross ingredients.  Then there's the paprika on top.  Not the end of the world, but certainly not ideal.  On the (only) plus side, there are almonds!

Before I go on, I have a confession.  The recipe asked for 6 ounce fillets.  We had a 4.5 ounce and 4.1 ounce fillet.  Turns out those extra couple ounces are really important.

Joey, once again, joined me on this adventure.  We cooked the fish beautifully, especially for our first time.  Other than that, we didn't get much right.

Yeah.  That would be the rice flour....

I think it's the texture of fish that I dislike.  Once I focused on the taste (after scraping off a bunch of flour), it's pretty palatable.  The texture just feels vaguely slimy.

Somewhat ironically, the flavor combination of the tilapia and the mustard was the best part of the dish.  The fish cut the spiciness of the mustard.  I quite like the combination, actually.

The worst part was undoubtedly the thick layer of flour on top of it all.  I can only assume that the flour and almond concoction was meant to be a crunchy exterior.  My theory is that because our fillets were smaller, we should not have used the amount of flour that the recipe originally called for.

We tried to brush the flour off, but it was no use.  The meal was pretty much ruined.  I could only force about a third of it down my throat.  It'll have to be a long time before we try this recipe again.  The feeling of flour drying out my mouth is still too fresh in my mind.  Maybe some other seafood dish?  Joey really wants me to start liking shrimp....

But flour certainly is not something you'd ever want to eat unbaked or uncooked.  Trust me.

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!