Day Thirty-One: Little Accomplishments

Today, I'm 1/12th done with my resolution. Woo hoo! 1/4 done with the foods-I-don't-like portion. Thirty-one little accomplishments. And if I had to eat a new food every day, I would be doomed. But it's practically impossible to adequately judge a food with only one taste of it, and even harder to convince yourself to like it without revisiting it. Over and over, if need be.

I also think it's important that these experiences with formerly disliked foods be pleasant ones. So tonight, eating dinner at the table with my husband, listening to Old Blue Eyes on Pandora, I created a positive memory to associate with kimchi. (Yes, it's 5:40 pm and I've eaten dinner. Yes, it was on the table when my hubby got home from work. Yes, I know it's not 1950. We eat early, especially when we're trying to whittle our waistlines. And we love our big band.)

So tonight, I revisited kimchi, and I liked it a little better this time, I think, than I did last time. And I think it's one of those foods that really works on a fork with several other items. I used to think my dad was insane when he'd fork a little meatloaf, a little vegetable, a litte potato, and eat the whole thing. I was, as a child, a bit of a food separater. I loved the plastic camp trays my mom had that separated elements of a meal like a TV dinner. I'm not that way anymore, but in eating my kimchi tonight, I remembered those days. Because I've become a food combiner. And kimchi, while it has its merits on its own, really adds to and benefits from combination with other elements of a meal (in this case, white rice and chicken with a little sweet chili sauce).

So that was good. And now "Goodnight, Sweetheart, Goodnight" is playing on Pandora and my husband looks like he'd like to dance. So goodnight, sweethearts, goodnight.

Day Thirty: Shrimpy or Wimpy?

Shrimp cocktail is one of those slightly kitschy, slightly outdated dishes that is unlikely to appear on most restaurant menus and possibly less likely to appear on a dinner party menu (though it seems that many cooks take pleasure in updating and reviving over-the-hill recipes, insisting on bringing them back from the grave). I've never thought it looked particularly appetizing, but then, I'm not a seafood lover (as you well know). While shrimp is much prettier cooked than it is raw, I still think it looks a little buggy with the tail on, and I do tend to think that the only cocktails that should be served ice cold contain alcohol. Nevertheless, I had shrimp cocktail tonight. Or, since my husband bought the shrimpies without their tails and we did not serve them as pictured, shrimp with cocktail sauce.

I thought shrimp would be fairly easy, since I've had such success with fried shrimp. Tsk, tsk, Laura. How could I be so foolish? A deep-fat fry covers a multitude of sins. Even with a generous coating of cocktail sauce, my first few shrimp were unbearably shrimpy. Not every shrimp had an equal shrimpy flavor--the few that possessed a milder flavor, I chewed and swallowed easily. The thing is, these shrimp (which were purchased pre-cooked) were simply boiled, not sauteed in butter or other lovely flavorings. And I think the application of flavor to food usually has to occur during the cooking process to be fully effective. Food that is salted during the cooking process doesn't taste salty, just flavorful. But forget to season that food and coat it in salt later, and you'll get a granulated, salty film on the outside of the food. Which is okay in some circumstances, but in general, it's not ideal. So I think next time I try shrimp I will cook it with some garlic and butter. I tried to swim in the deep end without my water wings. Next time, I will not be so foolhardy.

On a more positive note, I voluntarily ate egg salad today for lunch. It sounded really good, so I made some, and I ate it. And I still think it's freakin' awesome. It's hard to know for sure if you like a food after only one tasting. But now, the second time around, I feel confident saying that egg salad rocks. Maybe soon, I'll be able to say the same for shrimp.

Day Twenty-Nine: The Importance of Proper Cooking

Tonight, I made cod with fennel, dill, and tomato and, quel domage, I overcooked it. Rather, I overcooked my piece. Ian's was apparently delicious. I didn't realize this discrepancy until he finished off the last two bites of my dish (the cod pictured was mine... notice how it's falling apart... not moist). BUT: the sauce was delicious. And since this fish was poached, both the fish and the sauce contained fish flavor for me to overcome.

It's tough to judge this overcooked fish dish, since I know it was improperly cooked (next time I will be more careful to equally portion my fish) but it was pretty difficult for me to eat. I think I jinxed myself, really. Just the other day, a friend was asking what types of foods I was surprised to find I liked, and I included cod in that list. Because I've had it breaded, which makes it look a lot less like fish, and we all know the eye eats first. Because the last piece I had was cooked beautifully (fish-cooking beginner's luck, I guess). Because... the fish hate me.

So tonight's fish was a little hard to swallow. Literally. There's that whole my-mouth-does-not-produce-saliva-for-unsavory-food phenomenon that meant I had to use my wine to wash it down. (My dad has a funny story about using that phrase when he had dinner with my mom's parents. In his family, it's not a term of disparagement; in my mom's family, it is. So you can probably guess that asking for something to wash dinner down did not go over well. Ask my dad. He tells it better. But it brings up a good reason for my doing this project--one never wants to be rude when invited to dinner, regardless of what the host or hostess serves.) There's also a rumor I hear that overcooked fish tastes fishier than properly cooked fish. Yay. But I will not be deterred. I will have more cod, and I will move on to more fish-flavored fish. Finecooking.com has given me an excellent tip:

"Many cookbooks tell you to cook fish until it flakes; this is too long. Once it flakes, the fish has lost too much moisture and will be dry and bland."

Day Twenty-Eight: Devilish

Okay, so I know it's technically past midnight, so it's day twenty-nine, but on day twenty-eight, which was only eleven minutes ago, I helped host a soiree in honor of the poet Ed Skoog, who was visiting our university, and included in the spread of appetizers my roommate and I prepared was a platter of deviled eggs. Prepared by me, eaten by me. And eaten by a bunch of other people, too. Which is good. Because I couldn't have eaten another one.

Basically, my deviled egg was a wily fellow. He tasted good at first. Then he tried to choke me. And when I managed to get him down, he kept kicking inside my gut. Not so much fun, and not entirely his fault, since I had a much larger dinner than I've been used to lately, and the egg was sitting on top of that. It's the egg white, man. The boiled egg white. It's just not right. It's necessary, I guess, to hold the deliciousness of the yolk, but why should I have to eat it? I can imagine the lovely deviled filling on crostini or crackers--man, that would be good. But the egg white? It's healthy, sure, yadda yadda yadda. But in boiled form, it's still not topping my charts of good eats.

Day Twenty-Seven: We Got the Beets

Tonight, I was surprised by two foods I didn't think I liked: beets and kale. In fact, I was surprised by the entire meal. My lovely friend Kate was gracious enough to cook me (and several others) a dinner of roast vegetables, kale cooked in mirin, sticky brown rice, and beans. Also, some fantastic pickled radishes. The whole meal was technically macrobiotic--something I never associate with culinary delights--and yet it was delicious (adorable, ambrosial, appetizing, choice, dainty, darling, delectable, delightful, delish, distinctive, divine, enjoyable, enticing, exquisite, fit for king, good, gratifying, heavenly, luscious, lush, mellow, mouthwatering, nectarous, nice, palatable, piquant, pleasant, rare, rich, sapid, savory, scrumptious, spicy, sweet, tasteful, tasty, tempting, titillating, toothsome, well-prepared, well-seasoned, yummy--see thesaurus.com). Who knew healthy food could taste so good?

In previous taste tests of beets, I have judged them to taste like dirt. My husband concurs. And yet, when roasted in the oven, mixed with agave nectar, pecans, onions, and sweet potatoes, they are one of the best vegetables I've ever tasted. Nix the other veggies, even. The beets are good enough for me. And I'm an onion and pecan and sweet potato nut. The kale blew my mind, too. I'm going to have to try to reproduce this stuff. Who knew healthy food could taste so good? (I know I said that already, but it's really blowing my mind.)

So I have to thank Kate again, publicly, for changing my culinary mind. For blowing it to pieces. For being the best cook and hostess I know.

Day Twenty-Six: Consider the Source

Pasta salad has long been my enemy. And unlike most cold salads, it's not just the fact that it's slathered in mayonnaise, sitting in the refrigerator. Because a lot of pasta salads aren't mayonnaisey at all. It's the pasta itself that tends to be off. Either chewy or squishy or slimy. It's tough to get pasta salad right, but the folks at Rocket Bakery in Spokane pull it off.


For lunch today (early lunch... I was stressed and hungry) I had the Rocket's pesto pasta salad: bow tie pasta coated in a lovely, olive oily pesto, with chunks of tomato and a sprinkling of parmesan cheese. The odds were in my favor here, since I love love love pesto. I could drink pesto. I could put it on my cereal. Okay, that would probably be gross, but you get the picture. Pesto: good.

Still, the pasta could have been over- or under-cooked. There could have been too much oil. They could have whipped the life out of the basil (when making pesto, if you over-chop and over-stress the basil, it will start to look like guacamole). But they didn't. They made a really lovely and surprisingly comforting cold dish. I'm really coming around on cold food lately. I'm learning (and I did suspect this, but needed proof) that it's not the mere fact that dishes are served cold that makes them unpalatable for me; it's that they're poorly executed. For a long time, I put my faith in the food industry, expecting that what a restaurant/deli/grocery store served me would have to be quality, or they wouldn't sell it. I thought the food I got at restaurants, with perhaps the exception of fast food, was the best there was. And then I started cooking and discovered that my dishes often come out better than the fare at chain restaurants and small-town shops where there are no actual chefs because what chef would want to live in Pullman, Washington? That knowledge that not all dishes are created equal is starting to sink in as I find that I really do like a lot of the dishes I thought were revolting. They just need to be prepared properly.

So I'm going to start considering the source of my food more carefully, which doesn't just mean finding out where my fish came from or how the chickens who laid my eggs were treated--to a certain extent, I do that already--but who prepared my food, and how lovingly? I know any pie produced by my Aunt Lula is going to be fantastic and mouth-watering (she's won awards for them, but also, she makes her pies carefully and lovingly). Deli foods in Pullman are derived from a strict recipe, but they're assembled by college kids, most of whom have no investment in the preparation or serving of food beyond their paycheck and may well have carelessly doubled quantities, left ingredients out, or just neglected to properly stir things. The people at the Rocket in Spokane seem to be invested in their customers and their products; with the exception of a couple of poorly made lattes (new baristas, I think) they have yet to disappoint. They're part of the community here, which I think is important. They know they're feeding people who live where they do, who care about the same things. And that makes a difference.

Day Twenty-Five: It's Pronounced Chowdah! Get It Roit!

It used to be that I thought I didn't like any chowder. And it's true that the lower calorie versions are often insipid and bland. But then I had a beautiful potato chowder with bacon that changed my mind. So only clam chowder remains.

My husband, on the other hand, loves clam chowder. It would make him very happy if I could learn to love the stuff. He keeps cans of it in the pantry and takes it to work for lunch. He stocks up on it when it's cheap. And even when we're trying to cut back our calories, he goes for the lighter stuff. So today, when he came home for lunch, we split a can of "healthy" clam chowder.

Now, when I make "healthy" chowders at home, the soup base has a ghostly consistency, so that many might not think it resembled chowder at all. It's the cream that makes it thick and white, and the buttery roux in the base. Cut those back, and it's a much thinner soup. But, since canned soup companies probably use a lot of chemicals to make their light soup look heavier, this version was not quite so translucent. It was not the thick, stand-a-spoon-up-in-it chowder that some folks make, but it wasn't entirely wimpy.

Mostly, my clam chowder didn't taste any worse than it smelled. It was nice that the clams were mostly difficult to pick out, and the husband remarked how grateful he was that the soup didn't include any sand (apparently cheaper brands are not too fastidious about cleaning their mollusks). It wasn't until I bit into my first clam that I really knew they were there, and when I did, I couldn't help but grimace. It was chewy. That, I expected. It didn't taste fishy, really--it tasted like the sea. That's what it's supposed to taste like, right? But I'm still not entirely used to it. I did, however, manage to chew all of my clam bits but one--I got a particularly large chunk of clam in one bite and, as cowardly as it might be, I swallowed it like a pill.

But I ate clam chowder. I survived. And one day, I'll order it at a restaurant on the beach, and I'm sure I'll find it heavenly.