I’m a bit of a foodie. This might come across as deeply ironic, seeing as I’ve long had an eating disorder, however some experts hypothesize that anorexics and bulemics are some of the more food-obsessed people out there. Somehow this computes, as while I’ve met a lot of anorexics, I’ve never met one that actually didn’t give a shit about food. Generally speaking, apart from the obvious control issues we have about food, we’re willing to give a kidney for our favorites.

While growing up we had a lot of ready meals, and that was my favorite kind of thing. Boxed macaroni and cheese? Brownies from a Betty Crocker mix? Vegetables you boil in a bag? I’m in. As an adult I simply followed suit – I was shit at cooking, didn’t want to do it, and as a consequence if it was complicated it sailed past me.

When I moved to Sweden I struggled. Not only because I was pretty raw at this whole cooking thing, but because you couldn’t buy ready made food, it had to be made from first principles. Add on top of that the complexity involved in trying to understand just what the translated food ingredients were, and it made for some spectacular cooking failures. But I persevered – it was that or eat my ex’s meatballs (yes the Swedes eat them, and in great quantities) all the time, or be subjected to his reindeer and pea concoction, which was 1/3 reindeer, 1/3 peas, 1/3 black pepper.

I’m not much of a black pepper fan.

So I learnt to cook. I learnt how to cook…really well. I’m not a bragger in most instances, but I can cook. And not only that, I love to cook. Mind you, I don’t want to do it every day and I’m fortunate in that aspect as Alastair is also a very keen (and very good) cook, but I do like to try new things out.

- Sanguinello is the greatest orange juice in the world

- bananas are evil and must be destroyed.

- whenever I open a yogurt I lick the lid

- quinoa is something that I often actually crave.

- same with chickpeas, which we boil, skin, and then I can eat my weight in them straight out of the pan.

- and I go through sheaths of edamame, which is bad as they can be bad for you in high quantities.

- actually let’s just say I love all legumes and pulses, apart from kidney beans, which are evil and must be destroyed.

- if you make a chocolate shake, it cannot be made from chocolate ice cream. That is weird and wrong. It should be made from vanilla flavored ice-milk with skim milk and chocolate sauce. There is reasoning behind it, I just don’t know what it is.

- my favorite fish is monkfish. I despair that it’s on the endangered list.

- I love salted movie popcorn so much that I sometimes debate going to a movie theatre just to buy some. I have yet to do this, although that’s only a matter of time (this is not the same for sweet popcorn, which is evil and must be destroyed).

- although I am a veggie (and I do eat fish, which actually makes me a pescatarian but I feel like a real twat saying that) I stopped eating meat both for fluffy bunny reasons and as a way to limit my food intake. That said, I honestly have never liked pork or beef anyway, and even if I reversed my decision to eat meat, I’d not go back to eating pork or beef as I never liked the taste (although ironically, I used to love a good bologna sandwich. Arguably that wasn’t meat.) I do miss turkey and the triptophan-snooze post Thanksgiving. I don’t think turkey misses me.

- avocados belong on everything

- if it’s a fairly disgusting looking or sounding seafood, chances are I love it. Squid, octopus, mackerel, oysters, all the way down to anchovies and whitebait – I love them all. Apart from eel, that is, which is evil and must be destroyed. I used to also classify hush puppies as seafood of the must be destroyed category, but then I learnt that they aren’t seafood at all. I’d blame Long John Silver’s for the confusion, but really it’s down to my own ineptitude.

- I cannot stand overly hot/spicy food. Blowing my tongue off puts me right off of food. The bad news is, even mildly hot things are too hot for me. The babies eat food spicier than I do, and Alastair always has some natural yogurt on hand to mild down the curries he makes me, which he always aims for “Super Wuss Mild” and still it’s often too hot for me.

- I am a new convert to mustard. It happened a few years back and now I actually (no exaggeration here) am known to plan meals around mustard. A condiment is dictating our palate here, people. And not just any mustard – while Dijon is brilliant in pastas and wholegrain rocks a salad or fish meal, it’s Colman’s English mustard which owns my heart. French’s mustard is sacrilege. Colman’s is my truly beloved. The irony to the Mustard Situation is that while I cannot take hot, spicy food, I can eat me some mustard and I can eat it far hotter than Alastair can.

- I adore curry. We have it (homemade) every Sunday.

- and often with our homemade curries, we have homemade naan, chapattis, or flat breads.

- and actually, I love baking breads. Last weekend I made lavender-honey bread (beautiful), English muffins (didn’t turn out well) and a large savory mushroom-courgette (zucchini) bread.

- I used to think maybe I was loving cooking and eating food enough to be posh, but then I learnt I hated truffles. My posh card has since been revoked.

- I love corn on the cob, only I can’t eat it off the cob. It’s a throw-back to my days with braces, I simply can’t do it. I cut the corn off the cob and eat it that way, while everyone else laughs at me.

- I hate milk, except in coffee, where it is a must. Speaking of coffee, I drink a lot of it. I also occasionally treat myself to a skinny latte with a shot of some sicky sweet syrup at Starbucks. I always feed bad doing it, as I feel it’s a poncy order. Anyone who orders poncy (“I’ll have a double decaf-caf skinny wet soy latte.”) is an asshole.

- speaking of liquids: Dr. Pepper, root beer and cream soda all are evil and must be destroyed.

- I love salads. I do not love dressing.

- I am not a dessert girl. I don’t like chocolate, cream, chocolate cream, whipped cream, cakes, biscuits, tiramisu, jelly (Jell-o), steamed puddings, Christmas cake, or anything like that (including banoffee pie, which is evil and must be destroyed) and yes, I think there’s a very good chance that I know they’re so bad for me that I talked myself out of them years ago. Still, what’s done is done. If those are your ideals, I’m not the girl for you. I will, however, race you to the cheeseboard and I will trip your ass to make sure I get there first.

- If it’s a weekend, and the breakfast does not include eggs, then there had better be a good god damn explanation as to why. I’m an egg girl. I’ll eat eggs in any shape or form (including the English runny scrambled eggs). I used to loathe runny eggs and now I adore them. I’ll even eat quail eggs, duck eggs, and once I had a scrambled goose egg. Tasted like chicken.

- I eat my baked potatoes with salsa on them. I picked that up in Texas and never put it down again.

- it’s almost physically impossible for me to eat a sandwich and crisps (chips) without putting the crisps in the sandwich. I give it a miss if I’m in a work meeting. Anyone else is subjected to my Allison like lunch behaviors. Crisps are best in salted form only, and salt and vinegar crisps? Evil and must be destroyed.

Go on then – any peculiarities in your food tastes?

-S.

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