Food Confessions

 RHYS BOWEN: I confess—I am not a foodie. I never will be. In fact when it comes to food I am unadventurous in the extreme. I suppose it comes from an upbringing in England in the postwar years when things were scarce and most meals involved large amounts of starches with a sliver of meat. But I still enjoy many of those things: steak and kidney pie, sticky toffee pudding, fish pie, fish and chips, shepherd’s pie. They are all favorites.

Of course now that we are diet-conscious I rarely eat them. A treat when I am in England is to have one of them, but I rarely cook them. But on the whole I go for healthy simplicity: poached salmon with asparagus. Roast chicken with crispy roast potatoes.  Things that don’t require enormous amounts of preparation (which is why the food delivery service HelloFresh did not work out for me)

Perhaps I have an underdeveloped palate but for me certain flavors go together and others don’t. I remember arriving in America and finding the mixture of sweet and savory to be odd. Pancakes with syrup and sausage and bacon? Turkey with biscuits and honey? I guess I’ve learned to like them better over the years but still not my favorite.  I suppose we are all a product of our upbringing and the food that tastes best to us is what we remember from home.  If ever I’m sick I want my mom’s chicken stew.

 I’ve been to my share of very fancy restaurants but I can’t say I’ve gone into ecstasies over raw oysters with wilted kale and wasabi.  This is why I’ve never put myself on the waiting list for The French Laundry and paid several hundred dollars for their tasting menu, signing up for dishes you won’t know in advance. ( On a side note my daughter called me once in flat panic. She had made friends with a woman she met in a play group and invited her and her husband to dinner, only to find he was one of the chefs at the French Laundry. What can I serve? She asked in distress. I said he’d probably enjoy something totally simple like pizza for a change!)

I don’t want it to seem that I am rooted in the dishes I know and won’t try anything else. I do enjoy good Chinese, Indian, Japanese, Italian, French food. These are all tried and true flavors developed through centuries in the various cultures.  I've been brave enough to eat octopus broiled on a Greek quayside, or escargot in France.

It’s the new experiments of flavor parings that I can’t handle.  I remember once being taken to dinner at a new and very avant-garde place in Manhattan. I chose the rabbit. I have a small appetite but when the dish came it was one rabbit leg, standing upright with four stalks of asparagus making a teepee around it. Five mouthfuls of food then it was over.  My table companion was not as lucky. He ordered liver. When he cut it blood gushed across the plate. He called the waiter and said his liver was still raw. “That is how the chef chooses to prepare it,” the waiter said, looking down his nose.

“But not how I choose to eat it,” said my companion. It was whisked away in anger.  Not my sort of restaurant!

So what about you? Are you adventurous in your eating? When you go to a restaurant do you find yourself ordering the same dishes over and over (I know that I do this). Have you discovered new weird and wonderful parings that actually taste divine?

LUCY BURDETTE: I’m not as adventurous as Hallie, for example, who will try about anything. But I sure do love to eat! No liver, no kidneys, no gamey meat for me, and I don’t want to see tentacles. Those animals are smarter than we are. Ditto for pork, though it’s delicious, I try not to eat it. Most vegetables, almost all cheeses, count me in for that. Fried chicken and waffles with syrup--now that could sound like an odd combination. But in fact it’s marvelous!

RHYS; Lucy , I feel the same about pork, unless it comes from a free-range farm

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Cottage cheese mixed with applesauce. I cannot tell you why, but it is DELICIOUS,  and it doesn't taste like either of the ingredients. Brie with fig jam.  Celery with peanut butter, but I guess that’s a staple. Bacon and peanut butter-- I know Jenn is a fan, too.  Lisa Gardner taught me about hamburgers with mayonnaise--I KNOW it sounds terrible but it’s just--different. 

Snails, fine, oysters fine (basically a red sauce conveyance.). NO tentacles. And I know people put ketchup on scrambled eggs, but I cannot fathom why. (Lots of food talk around here lately, huh?) 

JENN McKINLAY: I am adventurous! I mean I regularly eat cake for breakfast and I live down the street from one of the first chicken and waffles restaurants in the country. I love brie and fig jam, Hank! I’ve never tried cottage cheese and applesauce but I happen to have both. I will give it a try. 

I’m truly  up for anything - especially if I don’t have to cook it. Octopus soup, bring it on. You get used to the tentacles curling in your mouth. Really, you do. Rattlesnake? Sure. It tastes like chicken -- make sure you have lots of ranch dressing on hand. And if you’re serving amuse bouche - just make sure to keep them coming. It takes a lot of those little suckers to fill a gal up. 

DEBORAH CROMBIE: I am definitely adventurous and there are few things I won't try at least once.  Well, I'm not too keen on the idea of rattlesnake, so maybe I would pass on that one. I'm okay with sampling new flavor combinations if I go to a fancy restaurant, but with the places that we eat regularly I have to admit I will get the same thing over and over, so call me a stick-in-the-mud on that front.

I was a little leery of the smoked eel I was offered at a fancy London restaurant, but I tried it and it was fabulous!

RHYS: Oh, smoked eel. I had that once on the Baltic Sea in Germany. Fabulous.

HALLIE EPHRON: I’m very adventurous… though not a huge fan of kale and I won’t eat octopus (they’re too smart). I draw the line at macaroni and cheese ice cream, a new product recently brought to you by Kraft. No how no way. 

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: I would say I’m adventurous in trying new types of cuisines - and considering I was raised as a WASP in the 1960s and 70s, almost everything not made with Cream of Mushroom soup or Jell-O counts as a new cuisine! I mean, I never had a bagel until I went to college… I agree with Hallie on octopus, and I’m increasingly aware of the environmental impacts of some of my food choices and am changing accordingly. 

Oh, and I must confess I have real “white woman mouth.” Thai, Sichuan, Indian - I always have to ask for the most mild spice. I’m pretty sure babies in Mexico who have been recently introduced to solid foods can handle hotter dishes than I can.

RHYS: So, dear Readers--who likes tried and true and who is adventurous? Who has discovered an amazing new paring? And who orders the same thing every time they go to a restaurant?

Food that's too smart to eat

photo by H. Zell via Wikimedia Commons

HALLIE EPHRON: Recently I read in the Huffington Post that Gwyneth Paltrow won’t eat octopus because they’re so smart. (This is what I do instead of writing my next book.)
“Octopus are too smart to be food. They have more neurons in their brains than we do. I had to stop eating them because I was so freaked out by it.” One famously escaped from its tank at the New Zealand Aquarium, slithered down a drain pipe, and returned to the ocean.

Sound flaky? Not to me. There are several foods I won’t eat because they’re too smart. Octopus. Dolphin. Guinea pig. Whale.

So why is it okay to eat dumb food but not smart food? This is a question I prefer not to ask myself.

Other foods I won’t eat for other reasons: shrimp that isn’t wild caught (they’re destroying mangroves that protect the coastline in order to farm at the little creatures and harvesting them with slave labor in Southeast Asia.) Swordfish more than a few times a year (mercury). Eggs from chickens raised in those awful cages.

What’s on your I WON’T EAT IT list, and isn’t it nice to be well-off enough to be making these kinds of choices?

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Well, I won't eat octopus because I don't like it. Calamari is too rubbery for me. I wouldn't eat anything that's endangered, and yes, there is something about dolphins that would squick me if someone put a plate in front of me.

by Fir0002 via Wikimedia Commons

In the summertime, we get fabulously free range eggs from my friends - I can literally see their chickens free-ranging around the dooryard whenever I visit. I admit, I've been too cheap to PAY for the good, cruelty-free eggs, but you're making me re-think that, Hallie. Now the Sailor is being fed by Uncle Sam and we're eating a dozen eggs every two weeks instead of two dozen eggs per week, I could afford the more humane (and tastier) product.

Food I was really grateful to find out WASN'T endangered? Conch. I fell in love with it the first time we visited the Bahamas, and I almost didn't eat it in Key West until someone told me, no, it's okay. There are still evidently plenty of Conch in the sea.

RHYS BOWEN: We had this discussion on Easter Sunday when I always serve leg of lamb. Now neither granddaughter will eat lamb because it's... well, it's a little lamb, isn't it?

Daughter Jane and I agreed that we are coming to feel the same way about eating meat. Cows are intelligent, so are pigs. Actually we don't eat much red meat any more but I do try to make an effort to buy grass fed, humanely raised beef. And chicken. And cage free eggs.

The trouble with going vegetarian is that it's hard to get enough B vitamins and legumes don't agree with my stomach. I love fish luckily. Even calamari and I cook calamari steaks so they cut like butter, Julia. Breaded, about a minute on each side.

Photo by Sandos at the English language Wikipedia

I haven't eaten veal for many years after I read how it is raised. I don't think I could eat grasshoppers or ants.And definitely not guinea pigs! we had an adorable one once who used to sit on my shoulder while I watched TV. Definitely not dolphin, although the dolphin they serve in the Caribbean is actually dolphin fish and not the mammal.
And I just saw on TV that plants send out distress signals to other plants when they are being eaten. What is left? Fruitarian?

JENN McKINLAY: I don't know, Rhys, I think the bananas would probably have separation anxiety about being ripped apart from their hand, because, little known fact (at least to me), a single banana is called a finger while a bunch of bananas is called a hand.

Okay, no more bananas for me! Honestly, I tried the vegetarian thing. I lasted two weeks. Hooligan 1 walked by me eating a burger and I ripped it out of his hands and ate it right in front of him. Wisely, he said not a word and slowly backed away.

I do try to eat all organic, cage free, not endangered foods, and I will try things like crickets just because you never know if you have a taste for them. Truly, feeding a family has never felt so complicated. And, yes, Hallie, we are sure lucky to have such first world problems.

INGRID THOFT: Tongue. I won't eat tongue. The idea of another animal's tongue touching my tongue and then swallowing it? It grosses me out!

I have no issues with lamb, veal, or anything else that is cute, nor do I give the alleged intelligence of the entrée any thought.

I agree with Julia on the calamari front; way too chewy for my taste. I'm not thrilled by the idea of bugs, but could probably swallow down a cricket or two. However, I draw the line at things that are still alive. Many moons ago, my parents were in Japan and were served lobster (which they love under normal circumstances,) and it was still squirming on their plates. Needless to say, the activity of the main dish detracted from the flavor!

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Too smart. (Well, they weren't smarter than humans, but that's not the point.) There is a weird line that I draw, and I can't quite put my finger on it.

Eels, though, those I CAN put my finger on. Pass. Sea bass and other endangered things, I don't eat. And it's either halibut or haddock that's endangered, so I just skip both of them. No veal. I'm very fond of rack of lamb, so, even though it does give me pause...I grill it and enjoy it. Without a mental picture. Ingrid, with you on tongue.

I once interviewed a guy who was the director of the aquarium. And I asked (not for the interview) if he ate sushi. he said yes, absolutely, and he ate fish. His philosophy was that fish are provided by nature, and if we are humane and not wasteful, it's a celebration of how the world works.
The big change though, is duck. I love grilled duck breast, and it used to be one of my faves. Now, though, with Flo and Eddy and their duck friends swimming in our back yard pool, I cannot eat duck. When we see it on a menu, my husband and I exchange horrified looks.

LUCY BURDETTE: Hank, I think that's how the Native American people handle eating animals--to thank them for their sacrifice, etc, etc.
I will not eat veal, and try not to eat pork (because pigs are too

Squid photo © Hans Hillewaert, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia

smart), and won't eat squid after seeing them while snorkeling. We found a whole line of them--as we'd approach, they'd back away. We'd back away, and they'd approach. It seemed as if they were curious about us! (Not that I would eat squid anyway, LOL. Just ask Hallie...)

I feel almost as though I should be vegetarian, but I'm not there yet. But I do go the "kind raising" route, definitely no eggs from caged chickens. And yes, we are lucky, lucky, lucky to even have this question on our collective tables!

DEBORAH CROMBIE: If vegetables send out distress signals, then fruit must, too, right? So where do you draw the line once you go down that road?

I would like to know that things I eat have been humanely treated. I buy good local dairy milk, and really expensive local cage free eggs, and local grass fed beef. I try not to eat endangered fish, and I support local farmers. I am a little squeamish about veal these days, but it doesn't come up as a menu choice that often--nor does octopus, although I'm happy to eat calamari. (Thanks for reminding me about the squid steaks, Rhys. They are amazingly good if you don't overcook them.)
I know tongue sounds really icky, but I grew up going to a German deli here in Dallas that sold it as one of their cold lunch meats, and I loved it! What do I draw the line at? Brains, maybe. I remember my mom cooking them when I was a kid. Was it with scrambled eggs? Or did they just look like scrambled eggs? Now we're all totally grossed out.

But I can't help but think these are all such first world issues. I'm a lot more concerned about how to feed hungry people.

HALLIE: So what's on your 'Won't Eat It' list and where do you draw the line?