Food & Me Part II

As stated, before I grew up open to many different foods.  I was very lucky that my parents were adventurous with food.  My mom learned how to make her own flour tortillas.  She did this because with us on a wheat free diet she could not use the tortillas from the store.  She baked homemade bread too.  She had found a four that had additives, the natural kind not chemical, that made us able to tolerate wheat.  This was only with that particular flour mixture.  In a way I was spoiled.  I saw my mom experiment to find ways around our dietary restrictions. I was also discovered to have a sensitivity to cane sugar, so honey and real pure maple syrup were used as replacements.  At this time my mom was the den mother for my Cub Scout pack.  She tried to introduce what we ate to the neighborhood. It did not go over well.  I was teased by some of the kids for her food.  Thanks to mom I do not care for most cake frosting or cheap ice creams.  I find them to sickeningly sweet. 

Another uncommon thing we had in my family was our Christmas tradition for stocking stuffers.  Mom would not buy store bought candy and if she did it was a very limited amount.  Our stocking had some interesting stuffers in them: canned sardines, canned mussels, canned clams, canned oysters, canned baby octopus, dried fruit, pomegranates, cuttlefish or squid jerky, nuts of all kinds (pistachios were only bought during the holiday), and oranges.  Today I prefer those, cheese, chips, jerky and hummus as snacks.  I also prefer unsweetened peanut butter, especially with apples.

Over the years I learned a few tricks.  A Mexican restaurant in Woodland, WA had an interesting version of hot wings.  They glazed them in jalapeno jelly.  It took that idea and baked boneless pork in jalapeno jelly as a dish I worked with.  When I worked in pizza place for 4 or 5 years I had discover linguica.  Linguica is a Portuguese sausage that is used as a pizza topping in some places.  I used to order a pizza with linguica, bay shrimp (the little canned ones), and cheddar cheese.  A favorite restaurant of mine in my twenties was a place that fused Latin American food, Caribbean food and East Asian food.  One of these days, I should try to re-create their Mexican Chocolate cheesecake.  That place introduced me to many Caribbean and South American dishes.  Previously in university I found a place that served dishes fro various Latin American cuisines.   That place was where I was introduced to Tortilla Espanola, which is an egg and potato dish.

Due to the circumstances of my life with Barbara a lot of these things went away.  Part of my healing has been reconnecting to old traditions, like sushi and anime night or the pizza I mentioned earlier.  To some folks a great deal of what I ate could be considered weird or unusual.  My response to that is yes, I am those things too.  Also you can see my atypical food habits made me open to so many possibilities.  I will try most things once.  I hate to waste food.  Right now due to living arrangements cooking is difficult.  I cannot wait until that changes and the possibilities are endless culinarily as well.  That Is My Not So Humble Opinion.