Expanding My Food Choices

April 8, 2011: The first time I tried broccoli in oh, a decade, and the first time in my life that I thought it tasted good!  Photo credit to my sister who realized the shocking nature of the meal and photographed the whole thing.

I have always been a picky eater.  Ask my parents.   I was pretty bland and narrow.  I ate more with my mind and eyes than my mouth and taste-buds.  I wasn't keen on vegetables except raw carrots, green beans (only with cheese on top), or potatoes.  I didn't like salads of any sort be it lettuce salad, potato salad, or macaroni salad (they were cold).  I didn't like milk (it coated my mouth).  I didn't like eggs (bad texture and smell).  I didn't really like fruit except apples or oranges or canned fruit in syrup.  I didn't eat anything that came from water (that fishy taste and smell!).   I was huge on grains.  I still am.

If I look skeptical it is probably because I was.

Over the years I have trained myself to enjoy a variety of foods I would never have previously touched with a ten foot pole.  Like beans of any sort.  (As a child my mother would make me a special pot of chili with NO beans just hamburger, tomato sauce, and spices.)   Adopting a plant-based diet really helped.  It "forced" me to look at my food choices in a whole new way.  No longer could I call just chicken nuggets and tater-tots a meal.  I was "forced" to try things!  I now can't imagine my life without beans, fruits of all sorts, squash, peas, spinach, mushrooms, yams and so many other things that I used to turn my nose up at.  Still....it was sometimes slow going.  Case in point:  green salads and broccoli.

Roasted broccoli and garlic with white beans.

So, after reading In Defense of Food a few months ago I began a campaign of increasing the variety of the foods I ate, particularly leaves.   I felt all along that a diet composed from a wide variety of foods was the key to robust nutrition.  In Defense of Food just drove home that my diet still wasn't quite as varied as I'd like it to be. 

So, I tried a salad.  I tried different kinds of mushrooms.  I tried a radicchio, which was the one experimental food that I thought was horrible.  I tried quinoa, which I absolutely love.  I tried chard again.  I tried red cabbage.  I ate broccoli.  I tried a arugula.  I ate miso.  I bought kale for the first time.  I ate a whole fresh pear.  I made a green smoothie.  And so on.

I still don't love salad, but maybe someday I will.  Broccoli was pretty darn good roasted and even if I never learn to like it prepared a different way at least I have that.  I had roast broccoli for lunch in fact!  The pear was amazing.  Green smoothies are a subtle way to engest raw greens for breakfast.  Miso soup is incredible.  And there are still so many things I need to try.  Like collard greens, and bok choy, parsnips, turnips, and oh so many others.  All in due time....