It’s been a bit of a long time since checking in here, so I figured it would be a great week to look at John, from the Sound of One Hand Typing‘s weekly writing prompts. One interesting one he had this week was to list foods you like but everyone else seems to hate. It didn’t take me long to think of one… or several actually. I guess my tastes are quite different than most people’s.
By and large I think two things stand out with me and my food/beverage tastes. One, compared to the Average Joe or Joanne, I’m not much into “sweets”. And two, I do quite like many things people find too bitter or spicy hot to be “palatable”.
The former isn’t an absolute. I do like most fruits for example – berries, pineapple, apples and so on – but that’s about as far that direction as I can happily veer. Once in awhile I might get a minor craving for vanilla ice cream or chocolate bars, but typically when I do, I have those with a cup of strong coffee to nullify some of that sweetness. Candy is just something I buy to make my wife smile. Similarly, I don’t much like pop, or as most call it down here “soda”. It’s odd maybe, because when I was a small kid, I loved Pepsi, Dr. Pepper (which is I think the “state drink” here), even sickly orange pop. Mind you, my mom watched my diet very closely as a small child so it was a rare treat for me to be allowed it back then. Nowadays I maybe will have one can or glass of pop every couple of months. The only exceptions are things like occasional European sodas that have about half the sugar and much less carbonization than the American ones, or real ginger ale (usually Jamaican) with the real, very spicy ginger dominating the taste palette. On the other hand, I do like beer. It’s not a drink I choose just to drink, or to be “manly”, I like the taste… particularly the more robust ones – IPAs, Porters and the like.
That ties into the second point. I seem to like very strong flavors. I’ve come to realize that’s because my actual sense of taste isn’t all that acute. My sweetie suggests I can’t smell a thing, and since smell is tied into taste, I can probably taste far less than most. Hence, something needs to be strong for me to really taste it. It got worse with the first bout of Covid I suffered through; for a few days I couldn’t even taste coffee. It was just hot water, no matter how strong it was brewed. In some weeks time, that sense came back, but it seems not to where it was before. Hence my tendency to pour hot sauce on, well some would say as in that Frank’s ad, pretty much everything.
I don’t worry excessively about it. It is what it is and I would be infinitely more concerned if my eyesight or hearing was as deficient as my sense of smell/taste. As it is, there are some advantages – if I open the garbage can the day before pickup day in the summer, I can smell it and don’t love it… but I don’t literally gag like some others. I can drive by a poor dead skunk and not be the wiser unless I see it’s body on the roadside. On the other hand, if someone says “does it smell like something’s burning”, I worry because unless it’s the Towering Inferno and I’m in it, I probably couldn’t tell if it did or not.
So with all that considered, which foods do I like that most don’t. I think it comes down to three, all green and weirdly, all quite healthy – peas, asparagus and most of all, Brussel Sprouts. I was the odd duck child who actually liked the Brussel Sprouts we’d have with Thanksgiving or Christmas dinners while others discretely avoided them, or if they had to face them, smothered them in gravy and butter; I devoured them. I still do when I get the chance. I like that flavor, I like their size and that they’re easy to cut, I even like that there’s something inherently organic and healthy looking about them. I’d probably buy and eat them a lot more if others around me shared my love of them… my sweetie thinks they’re OK, basically, most of the rest around here seem to hear “Brussel Sprouts” and think “I think we have to go out and get some fast food!”
Brussel Sprouts… if you had no sense of taste, you’d love ’em too!
Everydave Life 