SPEAK
THE WAR ON FOOD
How international cuisine overthrew my dietary defenses by Tara Schupner
The menu was in German, but I placed my order confidently. I was taking a risk, but I was eager. I was in an unfamiliar country and, by God, I would try something new.
After 20 minutes,my meal arrived.
I stared at my dish, as pop-eyed as the trout goggling back at me. In horror, I silently questioned whether the fish was actually dead. Its tail, fins, scales and head were intact. I picked up my fork and poked cautiously at it.
Could I take the bold step of eating a whole, bony fish? It was something I'd never done before, but it would be a step forward in my life-long battle with my culinary demons.
I grew up an extremely picky eater. I hated food, and food hated me back. The day I realized that food hated me was when I was 11 and my mother told me I couldn't leave the table unless I ate my green beans. I sat there for an hour, slumped in my chair, arms crossed, pouting.
My mother finally conceded. One mouthful of green beans and she would release me from my misery.I carefully picked up two pieces on my fork and, grimacing, placed them in my mouth.
I immediately ran to the bathroom and threw up. My mother never asked me to eat green beans again.
It wasn't just the taste of certain foods I hated. It was also the texture. For a while, I couldn't stand lettuce because I thought it tasted and felt like the grass I ate when I was 5. I don't like apples because of their mixture of juiciness and crunchiness, or oranges because they're squishy and pulpy. I don't even like crunchy peanut butter.
But when I traveled abroad for the first time, to Italy with my high school Latin club, it was eat or starve. No longer could I avoid eating tomatoes. Tomatoes were everywhere.
When in Rome, do as the
Romans do, I reminded myself.
So, curling my toes with dread, I took that tentative first bite of a tomato-and-mozzarella pizza. As my toes uncurled and my eyes popped open, I realized that God had made it and it was good!
After I returned, I started trying foods I'd previously turned up my nose at. I compromised and started eating salad — lettuce only, with oodles of dressing. Gradually, the proportion of lettuce-to-dressing changed for the healthier I tried salted snap peas and liked them. After a friend twisted my arm, I tried her favorite Thai dish — curry chicken in coconut milk — and became a frequent Thai eater.
I also tried apple pie for the first time, discarding the apples but eating the crust and goo. Then I started eating the apples, too.
When I went to England with KU's London Review class, I tried
pie of a different sort: chicken and melted stilton cheese pie. I fell in love with it and, the next day, ordered stilton cheese by itself. I received a hunk of raw pale yellow cheese with green mold threaded throughout it. I looked at it in horror as I realized I'd eaten moldy cheese. I bravely bit into it anyway. Confronted by its rancid taste, I spat the cheese back out into my napkin. But I congratulated myself for trying it.
A year later and several countries away, I looked at my little fish and, with the history of my war on food in mind, thought: "When in Germany, do as the Germans do."
But a *whale fish?* I looked up at my family. My brother was snickering behind his hand. My mother, usually stoic, was trying to contain a fit of the giggles. They didn't believe I would eat it.
Shoving my dish to the side, I told my father to take off the fish's head.
I would not, could not eat that fish while its eyes stared back at me in condemnation.
As I kept my eyes averted, my father lopped off the head and pushed the plate back over to me. He patiently explained how to remove the bones and chew the meat carefully.
No longer hesitant, I poured the melted herb butter over the fish and dug in. It took me almost an hour to painstakingly strip the meat away from the bones and eat bite after small bite, paranoid about impaling the roof of my mouth with a fish bone.
As I looked at the heap of bare bones with satisfaction, my parents were busily persuading me that, as delicious as the fish may have been, we really did not have time for me to eat another one.
03. 30.2006 JAYPLAY +19