Picky, picky, picky!!

So....I've been reading a lot of recipes over the past few days. In fact, I just finished thumbing through 2 cookbooks while I sit here at work.....both books are filled with recipes for ice cream, sorbet, granitas, and other such things that one would like to serve with ice cream. Some interesting ideas in there...glad that I bought the ice cream maker attachment for my Kitchen Aid stand mixer!

I think I turned to the ice cream books because I was becoming slightly disheartened with the other books I have....it seems that most recipes I have contain ingredients that I'm just not OK with...some because of flavour, but most because of texture....it is quite an obstacle:

Tomatoes: I like the taste of tomatoes in a cooked sauce provided it isn't too sour...but raw tomatoes and I are not friends. The gloopy innards are a textural nightmare for me....and if I find a tomato seed in my food, the meal is over.

Onions: There is nothing that can replace the flavour of onions...especially in pasta sauce, or in earthy stews....but the slimy texture of a cooked onion is too much for me to handle. I am perfectly happy to mince an onion beyond recognition for the sake of having the flavour without having the texture....and to the dismay of those I sup with, I am equally happy to pick onions out of my food regardless of how much time it takes me to do it...hey, if it is no inconvenience to me, why should anyone else care?

Olives: I have mapped out the olive cart in every grocery store I frequent, and become livid when they move them around. For me, there are few things worse than taking a breath anywhere near the olive cart, so I am sure to get a good deep breath in the fruit and veg department - hold it until well past the olives - and then start breathing normally again in the bakery area...

Shellfish: Wow...I don't like tomatoes, onions, olives, or shellfish....my chances of marrying a Greek or Italian just got dramatically lower. (*an aside* I went to a Mediterranean restaurant on Tuesday night...I had the braised lamb shank because it was one of the few things on the menu that did not include food ingredients that I don't like...it was amazing. Also, had saganaki - fried Greek cheese which is flambéed at the table with a loud, "Opa!!" from the waiter. It was also incredibly good). Maybe I've just never had enough exposure to shellfish...we didn't eat a lot of seafood when I was growing up. I don't even eat salmon or tuna...but, again, that could come from years of non-exposure to tuna or salmon that does not come from a can. I do like some fish, though...a nice piece of halibut steamed with lemon and freshly-ground black pepper in a tin-foil packet on the barbecue...that is good stuff.

Hot (spicy) food: This isn't necessarily food that everyone else finds spicy...I have a very sensitive palette. I am actually what is known as a super-taster. This doesn't mean that I can dissect subtle flavours in food, or nuances in wine...it means that because of the increased number of fungiform papillae I have on my taste buds, I taste bitter and spicy foods more intensely. Everyone I talked to about this thought I was making it up until Homer Simpson became a super-taster on a somewhat recent episode of The Simpsons. Basically, Homer burns off his taste buds, and when the new ones grow back, he can only eat the blandest of foods. Maybe, in my case, it has to do with having the entire top of my tongue stuck to a fence when I was 6...but that's another story...

So, in the case of the first 4 items, I suppose I could be converted. I mean, I used to hate broccoli and mushrooms, and now they are 2 of my favourite things. Perhaps my evolution as a cook will allow for an evolution in the things I choose to cook.....maybe I can even become desensitized to the hot stuff as well....I think it is a step I need to take if I am going to make any real progress culinarily. Hey...I wanted to make some life-changes...there's no point in being a coward now!