An Acquired Taste

Occasionally I'll send Ivan off to pre-school with home goodies like duck/goose breast prosciutto, home cheese, bread, and sauerkraut. The teacher told me later on that she thought that he was just going to throw it away, but when he scarffed down the saurkraut and the rest she was surprised. I was amused because that is what we eat at home and to assume that children only consume things that come in the kids menu at restaurants says a lot about the food choices they have at home and when they eat out. I also found it amusing because what we eat at home is "normal" for him and odd for others. The fact that he has constant exposure to foods from around the world and home cooked foods makes me happy. I was amused that Ivan had not eaten at a McDonald's until this summer when his grandmother took him. I think the part that amused me the most was the fact that he would only eat the fries because he found the other food too odd.

Normal food is relative. Headcheese made at home adds to the diversity of foods that we eat.

I decided to write about home food today because during my lunch I drank the rest of my adult coconut, finshing it off by taking the straw out and just pressing the coco to my lips and drinking like out of a cup. There was a gentleman in his vehicle in front of my car who was watching this in odd fascination. I was wondering how odd it was that he was just staring until I came in and realized that most of my coworkers don't drink from coconuts (in spanish we call them coco) except for some of my hispanic coworkers. I think they thought it was even weirder that I just threw the coconut down outside in the sidewalk to break it open so that I could the meat. Most had never had fresh adult coconut. I had to assure them that fresh baby coconut was better beyond compare but the fact that I had to talk to someone about coconuts. I seriously thought people ate coconuts, mangos, guayabas, hicama, and others on a fairly regular basis just like apples and bananas, but apparantly I was not anywhere close to the mark on that one.. In fact they don't eat fresh coconut (or any of the above mentioned fruit) at all.

Conversations with my coworkers always makes me aware of how different foods are in other countries/cultures compared to American culture. I grew up eating sun dried shrimp and fish along with fruit at pretty much every meal. I find that this has been brought into our home food and I'm very thankful that I have a husband that is very adventurous with food, (Even when I have to explain myself when I'm feeding him dried, salted worms.) my husband being very American and growing up thinking that TacoBell was Mexican food. It's nice that he'll gladly experiment and that we both enjoy food from all over the world. It's also interesting to meet with people who say they hate certain types of food only to have them eat an entire meal with gusto only to be told that what they just ate was the type of food they dislike. So I guess my advise would be, sometimes foods are disgusting, but try to bring in a little bit of the exotic into your home, especially if you have kids, so that they grow up thinking that fruits and veg are a normal thing. It might actually help them live longer and live healthier.