new foods

Yesterday I noticed a pattern, or trend, or well, something. My first “new foods” in the last year. They’re not all actually new foods, only one was that.

First up: cottage cheese. I added this into my diet last fall. I made it palatable by adding grapes, cinnamon, maple syrup, or strawberry jam. Eventually I decided it was fine and not a struggle to consume and I could just add a minimum of maple syrup. If I had to, I would eat it plain. Kinda boring, but whatever.

The second one, the truly novel one, was caviar. I forget which kind it was, err, kinds because there were several. I didn’t seek this out, an opportunity presented itself a couple of months ago, and I was with good people who weren’t going to judge or pressure so I took a chance on it. Honestly, this one had been overhyped, it was really a non-event. Neither good nor bad, just an additional flavor to add to things, I guess. Confession: it was only a little and it was, ahem, they were not the strongest types. I had them with some steak, I had them by themselves, I had them on those little pancakes (blinis) and sour cream and chives or shallots. All the usual ways, or so I am told. I would do it again, but I’m not chomping at the bit for it. I wonder how much of the appeal of caviar is it as a food and how much of it is a symbolic eating money.

I’ve saved the best for last, and it’s a personal one, because it’s one I feel even more strongly, more viscerally. I did, anyway. Yesterday I got some salad at work, and after sitting down to eat I found a food that has been on my verboten list for basically my whole life. There, amongst the romaine lettuce and semi-dried corn kernels, tucked in there and semi-hidden, there was a slice of hard boiled egg. I have found that eggs can be eaten one way and one way only: scrambled. I did manage to survive a bowl of hard boiled egg soup (I swear it was but I can’t find a picture); I may not have eaten a lot, but I didn’t eat none either. And there was another time, in the mid-to-late nineties when a little old French grandma in Chambéry prepared a sunnyside up egg in a ceramic crock dish with bacon and served it to me and I had to eat it or be rude and, frankly it was basically perfect and I still remember how that egg and bacon tastes today but when I see any other sunnyside up egg cooked like that it just doesn’t look to be up to the standard and I don’t know what magic she did but these other eggs just don’t have it. Anyway, yesterday, when confronted by this particular devil food, I found that it had little power over me. I could eat that. So I proceeded to eat other parts of my meal as normal and checked in a minute or two later to see if I had found my sense of revulsion, but I had not. I circled back again and decided that maybe today is the day. And it was, yesterday was the day. I would eat another sixth of a hard boiled egg again sometime if the opportunity presents itself. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves here, I’m not seeking these other egg preparations out.

So, what is going on here? I mean, the cottage cheese is for the gainz, for the protein, for the gym. And the caviar was just a random fluke. Coulda happened to anybody. But the hard boiled egg? I wasn’t looking for that one. Yesterday, with that egg, I was alone. I could have kept to the same old habits and not eaten that and not told anyone and no one would know. Either way, eaten it or not eaten it, no one needs to know this.

What is next, seafood? I don’t think I’m ready for that.

jg