A “Home” Cooked Meal
For this week on “picky eater tries unique foods”, we decided to make our attempt at home cooked meals. I am not the best chef by any means necessary. My idea of cooking is through food in the microwave and calling it good. Our original plan for the evening was to go out to Panera and find something gross to order. However, after having just gotten back from a weekend vacation at Disneyland where all I ate was processed food, I decided to let my friend give it a try and attempt to make me like her food. That and the Panera was closed by the time we got there.
It started by me making a very specific list of food items, textures, and flavors I didn’t like. I also showed her my food blog for an idea of what I had previously been doing. Then she said “I have the perfect idea but it’s going to have to be a surprise”. This made me slightly upset because she knows I don’t like surprises, especially when it comes to food but I really needed to step out of my comfort zone tonight. Upon the arrival at her house, I could smell what seemed like orange zest and garlic. This was already a major concern of mine because while I love garlic, orange flavored things make me feel sick and I don’t want to associate something nasty with something I love. After about an hour of cooking, my friend had finally completed her dish for me. What I saw before my eyes was both so aesthetic yet made my stomach want to run for the hills at the same time. Green beans, mashed yams, and tofu. While the Tofu looked amazing, all I could smell was the orange overpowering everything else on the plate.
“Don’t get offended if I don’t like it,” I reminded my friend because after all, it was her cooking but it was also an experiment. I decided to start with the tofu and save the worst for last. I like tofu, but only when it’s nearly burnt to a crisp. On its own or with very little cooking and marinating, tofu has one of the worst textures I’ve ever come across. Something about it is just so unsettling. “Look I made it look just like meat!” my friend exclaimed. She was very proud of the dish. I was able to slide my fork right through the slab of tofu and that’s how you know it’s undercooked. After giving it a thorough taste, let’s just say my reaction was nowhere near what I was really feeling inside. I acted like it wasn’t that bad but in reality all I wanted to do was spit it out and run 10,000 miles away. Maybe that’s a little dramatic but the texture was very slimy, the mandarin sauce was far over powering, and the giant slabs of butter on top did not help whatsoever. To cleanse my palate, I decided to move on to the yams which I was only scared about because of the seasoning my friend said she had put in them. Her family only liked spicy stuff so when she said it had a bit of a kick to it, I was very nervous. However; after trying it, I was pleasantly surprised. The sweet flavor of the yams went really well with the spices that I hadn’t even heard of before but weren’t too spicy for my weak palette. Last was the green beans, which after the tofu didn’t seem so bad. I’ve tried to like green beans for so many years but it’s never quite worked out. Something about the celery like texture and crunchiness just leaves me on a bad note. After trying my friend’s version, I wasn’t ready to say I had changed my mind about green beans but I also wasn’t opposed to eating all the ones that were on my plate. While the texture still wasn’t great, it was overall a lot softer than any other green beans I’ve had in the past. When the rare occasion occurs that I do eat vegetables, I like them almost overcooked and very soft and these green beans almost mimic that. Plus overall the garlic flavor of the beans was a home run in my book.
Now for the ratings…this is the part that gets complicated for me because each component of the dish almost deserves its own rating but I’m going to grade the dish as a whole. As far as the flavor goes, I’d give it a 6/10. If it were just the tofu alone it’d be a zero but the mashed yams and green beans really saved this dish. For how full it makes me, I’d say that if I had actually liked the tofu, I definitely would have been stuffed afterwards but even just with the yams and green beans I wasn’t full but I was satisfied. Texture gets a whopping 2/10 because of the tofu and green beans. In the previous editions of this blog, it has really been focused on gross tastes and I think my friend used that against me to make the perfect disaster that she did. Would I “order” it again? Probably not. Next time I’ll leave the cooking up to me. For an overall rating out of 10 I’m giving the dish a 5 because the presentation was very beautiful and I can’t completely knock it down just because I’m the super picky one. Any normal person would have probably loved this dish. Thank you Natalie for being my Mom away from home and making me a home cooked meal.
A “Home” Cooked Meal
For this week on “picky eater tries unique foods”, we decided to make our attempt at home cooked meals. I am not the best chef by any means necessary. My idea of cooking is through food in the microwave and calling it good. Our original plan for the evening was to go out to Panera and find something gross to order. However, after having just gotten back from a weekend vacation at Disneyland where all I ate was processed food, I decided to let my friend give it a try and attempt to make me like her food. That and the Panera was closed by the time we got there.
It started by me making a very specific list of food items, textures, and flavors I didn’t like. I also showed her my food blog for an idea of what I had previously been doing. Then she said “I have the perfect idea but it’s going to have to be a surprise”. This made me slightly upset because she knows I don’t like surprises, especially when it comes to food but I really needed to step out of my comfort zone tonight. Upon the arrival at her house, I could smell what seemed like orange zest and garlic. This was already a major concern of mine because while I love garlic, orange flavored things make me feel sick and I don’t want to associate something nasty with something I love. After about an hour of cooking, my friend had finally completed her dish for me. What I saw before my eyes was both so aesthetic yet made my stomach want to run for the hills at the same time. Green beans, mashed yams, and tofu. While the Tofu looked amazing, all I could smell was the orange overpowering everything else on the plate.
“Don’t get offended if I don’t like it,” I reminded my friend because after all, it was her cooking but it was also an experiment. I decided to start with the tofu and save the worst for last. I like tofu, but only when it’s nearly burnt to a crisp. On its own or with very little cooking and marinating, tofu has one of the worst textures I’ve ever come across. Something about it is just so unsettling. “Look I made it look just like meat!” my friend exclaimed. She was very proud of the dish. I was able to slide my fork right through the slab of tofu and that’s how you know it’s undercooked. After giving it a thorough taste, let’s just say my reaction was nowhere near what I was really feeling inside. I acted like it wasn’t that bad but in reality all I wanted to do was spit it out and run 10,000 miles away. Maybe that’s a little dramatic but the texture was very slimy, the mandarin sauce was far over powering, and the giant slabs of butter on top did not help whatsoever. To cleanse my palate, I decided to move on to the yams which I was only scared about because of the seasoning my friend said she had put in them. Her family only liked spicy stuff so when she said it had a bit of a kick to it, I was very nervous. However; after trying it, I was pleasantly surprised. The sweet flavor of the yams went really well with the spices that I hadn’t even heard of before but weren’t too spicy for my weak palette. Last was the green beans, which after the tofu didn’t seem so bad. I’ve tried to like green beans for so many years but it’s never quite worked out. Something about the celery like texture and crunchiness just leaves me on a bad note. After trying my friend’s version, I wasn’t ready to say I had changed my mind about green beans but I also wasn’t opposed to eating all the ones that were on my plate. While the texture still wasn’t great, it was overall a lot softer than any other green beans I’ve had in the past. When the rare occasion occurs that I do eat vegetables, I like them almost overcooked and very soft and these green beans almost mimic that. Plus overall the garlic flavor of the beans was a home run in my book.
Now for the ratings…this is the part that gets complicated for me because each component of the dish almost deserves its own rating but I’m going to grade the dish as a whole. As far as the flavor goes, I’d give it a 6/10. If it were just the tofu alone it’d be a zero but the mashed yams and green beans really saved this dish. For how full it makes me, I’d say that if I had actually liked the tofu, I definitely would have been stuffed afterwards but even just with the yams and green beans I wasn’t full but I was satisfied. Texture gets a whopping 2/10 because of the tofu and green beans. In the previous editions of this blog, it has really been focused on gross tastes and I think my friend used that against me to make the perfect disaster that she did. Would I “order” it again? Probably not. Next time I’ll leave the cooking up to me. For an overall rating out of 10 I’m giving the dish a 5 because the presentation was very beautiful and I can’t completely knock it down just because I’m the super picky one. Any normal person would have probably loved this dish. Thank you Natalie for being my Mom away from home and making me a home cooked meal.
Picky Eater Tries "Unique" Foods 