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deathpixie) wrote2007-11-27 09:34 am
deathpixie) wrote2007-11-27 09:34 am
Entry tags:
Musings on food
So, [Bad username or site: @ livejournal.com] startecd a meme-y thing about food in her journal, and then I saw [Bad username or site: @ livejournal.com]'s video blog which touched briefly on the subject, and set off some thoughts on the train.
Like Lauren, I don't actually spend a lot of time thinking about food, or eating, unless challenged to. As the roomie can attest, when left to my own devices, most of the time dinner will be whatever I can toss together in fifteen minutes, and I very rarely plan ahead. When feeling crappy, my tendency is to stop eating rather than go for the comfort food, and when I'm caught up in something, I'll forget to eat. Most of the time, food is pretty much fuel - I need to eat to stop myself falling over, and meal breaks are usually looked forward to more for the whole "yay, not working!" aspect than anticipating food.
That's not to say I don't like food. I do, quite a bit. Having someone who likes to cook as a roommate has been awesome, because there's all this yummy food around, sometimes appearing in front of my nose as it did last night since I fell asleep on the couch while it was being made. I used to joke as a teen that I'd have an eating disorder if I didn't like food so much. But it honestly doesn't occupy much of my brain, or my time. And I don't do comfort food - when I'm feeling down, the last thing I want to do is eat, usually because the nasty voice in my head starts making comments about how I'm going to end up looking like Roseanne Barr or something if I get into that habit. I'm much more likely to make myself a cup of tea than go for the ice-cream.
That being said, here's some of my food quirks. Those of you who know me will already know most of these.
1) Sweet things. Chocolate, candy, cake, etc. I'm not the greatest fan. I'll occasionally eat a small amount, usually something along the lines of plain dark chocolate or sour candy, but most of the time I don't do sweet stuff. I'm not sure why - as a kid I had a sweet tooth, same as everyone else, although the family budget meant we didn't have a lot of that sort of thing in the house (one of my cherished memories as a kid is Sunday nights watching Disney and then the Sunday Night Family Movie, and mum or dad producing the old family-sized block of Cadbury chocolate. Mum would ration it out two squares at a time and we'd make that block last all night). I guess as I got older, my tastes changed - anything extremely sweet or creamy actually makes me vaguely ill now.
2) Temperature. When I was in Japan, I got teased about having a 'neko gita', or 'cat's tongue'. No, it's not rough and sandpapery, nor do I randomly lick people. They were referring to the fact I can't eat or drink anything that's boiling hot - I have to let tea, soup, etc cool down a bit before I can actually do it, which is frustrating when you're hungry. Uber cold things I'm not a fan of either, since they usually make my teeth hurt and my throat sort of close up.
3) Bread. I'm very fussy about bread. If I'm having a sandwich, it has to be fresh, and not refrigerated - refrigerated bread has a slightly stale texture. It also needs some heft to it, some solidity, and I'm not the biggest fan of over-processed white bread. It's one of the reasons I don't do sandwiches often; the bread just isn't up to scratch. Travelling in the States was always interesting, because Wonderbread is so popular and I have to admit I think it's the antithesis of what bread should be. Subway was good, because a) the bread's freshbaked, and b) it's got texture. I'm much more likely to eat bread as toast these days - I'm quite happy toasting my sandwich bread first, especially when I'm having tuna. Yum.
4) Snacking. I don't. Nine times out of ten, when I eat, it's a 'meal', even if it's just a couple of slices of toast. I try to eat three times a day (breakfast is sometimes a bit tricky, although I've found I'll eat if I wait until I get to work), and sometimes lunch will wind up being a bowl of instant ramen or some cheese on crackers, but I don't do the snacky thing. Unless food appears in front of me - the roomie is a snacker, and if there's a bag of chips or a bowl of popcorn on the table, I'll wind up helping myself, most of the time because it's there. I'm very much 'out of sight, out of mind' with food, especially lately - if it's not right in front of my nose, I forget it's there.
5) Vegetarianism. I tell people I'm a vegetarian, although that's slightly inaccurate as I still eat fish and seafood. It's not an ethical thing - I grew up on a farm, we raised and slaughtered our own meat and I have no issues with that. I started reducing the amount of meat I ate when I left home to go to college because I wasn't comfortable with bulk farming processes; with our cows and sheep, I knew they'd had happy, comfortable lives, and weren't pumped full of hormones or chemicals, unlike commercially-produced meat. I'd never eaten a lot of it, however, even as a kid - I'd always eat my vegetables first, so if I got full, it was the meat that got left, which was less of a 'waste' in my head (Mum would put it on a plate in the fridge and someone would invariably eat it). About five years into the relationship with Mark, when we started living together, he went ethically vegetarian - we'd only been eating mince and sausages any way, by that stage, so it wasn't a huge jump. I was only eating meat once or twice a week and finding most of the time it made me feel sick, so I just stopped as well. After some fun with B12 levels (it got to the point where I had none in my system, something which I hadn't realised was bad until I started fainting and seeing spots on a regular basis!), I managed to establish a kind of working arrangement, and now it's at the point where I physically can't digest meat. Hell, even Mexican vegetarian food is something I have to be careful with - I don't do well with large amounts of protein and/or fat, so bean burritos have been known to trigger the same reaction as meat does. Since living with Dex I've found there's a little more leeway - I can eat chicken broth as a base for sauces, for example, provided it's extremely clarified and there's no actual chicken chunks in it - which sometimes prompts me to think about weaning myself back onto meat, but it would be mostly for the convenience thing rather than any great desire to have a steak.
That's pretty much it. I adore Japanese food, partly because there's no sugary sweet involved, partly because I spent a year eating it when I was an exchange student and got hooked on things like seaweed and rice for breakfast. I'll always choose savoury over sweet. I love fruit, especially the berries, but I don't eat very much because of that whole forgetting it's there thing. With the ulcer I've had to cut back on the amount of spicy food I eat and I'll make 'deals' with it - I'll eat plenty of plain stodgy food and drink water if you let me have blackened gator at Big Daddy's, kind of thing. I don't like cucumber, or things with seeds that get caught in your teeth - kiwi, passionfruit, that sort of thing. Oh, and I seem to be developing some kind of watermelon allergy - if I eat too much of it, or have too much of the part close to the rind, my throat starts getting all tight.
Gee, for someone who doesn't think about food that much, I just spent an awful long time talking about it, didn't I? ;)
Edit: Case in point - I was busy working, glanced at my clock and realised it was 1:45 and I hadn't had lunch yet. *shakes head* I'm such a dork.
Like Lauren, I don't actually spend a lot of time thinking about food, or eating, unless challenged to. As the roomie can attest, when left to my own devices, most of the time dinner will be whatever I can toss together in fifteen minutes, and I very rarely plan ahead. When feeling crappy, my tendency is to stop eating rather than go for the comfort food, and when I'm caught up in something, I'll forget to eat. Most of the time, food is pretty much fuel - I need to eat to stop myself falling over, and meal breaks are usually looked forward to more for the whole "yay, not working!" aspect than anticipating food.
That's not to say I don't like food. I do, quite a bit. Having someone who likes to cook as a roommate has been awesome, because there's all this yummy food around, sometimes appearing in front of my nose as it did last night since I fell asleep on the couch while it was being made. I used to joke as a teen that I'd have an eating disorder if I didn't like food so much. But it honestly doesn't occupy much of my brain, or my time. And I don't do comfort food - when I'm feeling down, the last thing I want to do is eat, usually because the nasty voice in my head starts making comments about how I'm going to end up looking like Roseanne Barr or something if I get into that habit. I'm much more likely to make myself a cup of tea than go for the ice-cream.
That being said, here's some of my food quirks. Those of you who know me will already know most of these.
1) Sweet things. Chocolate, candy, cake, etc. I'm not the greatest fan. I'll occasionally eat a small amount, usually something along the lines of plain dark chocolate or sour candy, but most of the time I don't do sweet stuff. I'm not sure why - as a kid I had a sweet tooth, same as everyone else, although the family budget meant we didn't have a lot of that sort of thing in the house (one of my cherished memories as a kid is Sunday nights watching Disney and then the Sunday Night Family Movie, and mum or dad producing the old family-sized block of Cadbury chocolate. Mum would ration it out two squares at a time and we'd make that block last all night). I guess as I got older, my tastes changed - anything extremely sweet or creamy actually makes me vaguely ill now.
2) Temperature. When I was in Japan, I got teased about having a 'neko gita', or 'cat's tongue'. No, it's not rough and sandpapery, nor do I randomly lick people. They were referring to the fact I can't eat or drink anything that's boiling hot - I have to let tea, soup, etc cool down a bit before I can actually do it, which is frustrating when you're hungry. Uber cold things I'm not a fan of either, since they usually make my teeth hurt and my throat sort of close up.
3) Bread. I'm very fussy about bread. If I'm having a sandwich, it has to be fresh, and not refrigerated - refrigerated bread has a slightly stale texture. It also needs some heft to it, some solidity, and I'm not the biggest fan of over-processed white bread. It's one of the reasons I don't do sandwiches often; the bread just isn't up to scratch. Travelling in the States was always interesting, because Wonderbread is so popular and I have to admit I think it's the antithesis of what bread should be. Subway was good, because a) the bread's freshbaked, and b) it's got texture. I'm much more likely to eat bread as toast these days - I'm quite happy toasting my sandwich bread first, especially when I'm having tuna. Yum.
4) Snacking. I don't. Nine times out of ten, when I eat, it's a 'meal', even if it's just a couple of slices of toast. I try to eat three times a day (breakfast is sometimes a bit tricky, although I've found I'll eat if I wait until I get to work), and sometimes lunch will wind up being a bowl of instant ramen or some cheese on crackers, but I don't do the snacky thing. Unless food appears in front of me - the roomie is a snacker, and if there's a bag of chips or a bowl of popcorn on the table, I'll wind up helping myself, most of the time because it's there. I'm very much 'out of sight, out of mind' with food, especially lately - if it's not right in front of my nose, I forget it's there.
5) Vegetarianism. I tell people I'm a vegetarian, although that's slightly inaccurate as I still eat fish and seafood. It's not an ethical thing - I grew up on a farm, we raised and slaughtered our own meat and I have no issues with that. I started reducing the amount of meat I ate when I left home to go to college because I wasn't comfortable with bulk farming processes; with our cows and sheep, I knew they'd had happy, comfortable lives, and weren't pumped full of hormones or chemicals, unlike commercially-produced meat. I'd never eaten a lot of it, however, even as a kid - I'd always eat my vegetables first, so if I got full, it was the meat that got left, which was less of a 'waste' in my head (Mum would put it on a plate in the fridge and someone would invariably eat it). About five years into the relationship with Mark, when we started living together, he went ethically vegetarian - we'd only been eating mince and sausages any way, by that stage, so it wasn't a huge jump. I was only eating meat once or twice a week and finding most of the time it made me feel sick, so I just stopped as well. After some fun with B12 levels (it got to the point where I had none in my system, something which I hadn't realised was bad until I started fainting and seeing spots on a regular basis!), I managed to establish a kind of working arrangement, and now it's at the point where I physically can't digest meat. Hell, even Mexican vegetarian food is something I have to be careful with - I don't do well with large amounts of protein and/or fat, so bean burritos have been known to trigger the same reaction as meat does. Since living with Dex I've found there's a little more leeway - I can eat chicken broth as a base for sauces, for example, provided it's extremely clarified and there's no actual chicken chunks in it - which sometimes prompts me to think about weaning myself back onto meat, but it would be mostly for the convenience thing rather than any great desire to have a steak.
That's pretty much it. I adore Japanese food, partly because there's no sugary sweet involved, partly because I spent a year eating it when I was an exchange student and got hooked on things like seaweed and rice for breakfast. I'll always choose savoury over sweet. I love fruit, especially the berries, but I don't eat very much because of that whole forgetting it's there thing. With the ulcer I've had to cut back on the amount of spicy food I eat and I'll make 'deals' with it - I'll eat plenty of plain stodgy food and drink water if you let me have blackened gator at Big Daddy's, kind of thing. I don't like cucumber, or things with seeds that get caught in your teeth - kiwi, passionfruit, that sort of thing. Oh, and I seem to be developing some kind of watermelon allergy - if I eat too much of it, or have too much of the part close to the rind, my throat starts getting all tight.
Gee, for someone who doesn't think about food that much, I just spent an awful long time talking about it, didn't I? ;)
Edit: Case in point - I was busy working, glanced at my clock and realised it was 1:45 and I hadn't had lunch yet. *shakes head* I'm such a dork.
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