I read your impromptu poem on the romance of the vegetarian stove and I realize what a culinary invalid I am. I would love to eat more healthily - now that my LDL levels have crossed the Rubicon of middle age. But there's the small matter of my stunted palate. I have tried repeatedly to break out of my gustatory rut but I come up hard against the seemingly permanent fact that there are many, many foods I just don't like. Let's see now:
>almonds, basmati, red lentils, millet, falafel flour; <
okay (in small occasional doses), tolerable, yukkk, no se;
ginger: yukkk! Butternut? Yukkk! Apricots? Aieee! (I eat no fruit. NO fruit. I can gag down some vegetables, but I simply cannot hold down fruit that hasn't been processed into total submission. Like OJ. Lock me in a room filled with ripe strawberries, and I will starve to death.)
I can't stand curry, cilantro, cumin etc. Lemon zest for me is a "red flag" denoting the twin minefields of either fruit-based bakery or Indochinese cooking. Legumes are not my faves. I can eat black beans 9as a side dish with some greeeezy pork-based repast), but lentils have that certain yukkkkk about them. Even the way they smell - wet cardboard.
Spouse can take a large zucchini, a green pepper, a tomato, some eggplant and/or onion, dice&fry it up in a pan with lemon and olive oil (I keep her in sharp knives - German and Japanese), and call it GOOD. I envy her - it looks so-ooo healthy. But the smell makes me run from the house. I'm damaged somehow.
All these foods which are undeniably, objectively good. And yet I hate'm.
Do you avoid dairy in your diet? Eggs? Waht's your source of vitamin B12? (The sole nutrient unavailable in the plant kingdom?) |
