Food

There aren't a lot of foods I dislike, the but the ones that I do dislike, I really, really hate. I'm weird about meats, but if it grows out of the ground (naturally, and not on top of something unsavory and/or radioactive), I will probably give it a fair chance.

I want to find a food blog someday titled, "Cooking Good Food on a Budget without Anything from the Squash Family." Squash is horrible. Squash is the worst. Squash is in every healthy budget recipe collection ever. I find a recipe site or blog that looks like it might be fun, and then as I read, every other recipe contains squash. What's wrong with diversity? Come on. Branch out. You're a food blog. Not a squash blog.

Spaghetti squash. I am looking at you. If I crushed up a pane of glass really fine and sprinkled it on my scones (if I made scones), would you look at me like I was a genius, or like I was trying to murder you? Slapping marinara sauce on something that is birthed from its rind looking vaguely pasta-ish does not give you the right to call that "spaghetti squash." I tried spaghetti squash once. I made a good-faith effort. I took a lot of time and care finding out how to prepare it so it doesn't taste like feet and my armpit. What did it taste like? Raw onions, feet, and my armpit.

Zucchini. You are almost as bad. I can tolerate you in very thin slices, or shredded up and baked into a delicious bread. But you are not a substitute for lasagna noodles. You taste like raw onions, feet, and what I think wet octopuses probably feel like when you try to chew them.

All other squashes. If you put brown sugar and butter all over a high school boy's gym sock, and then presented it fresh from the oven, do you think anyone would eat it? No. So do not tell me I have just not had it properly prepared. That is true of a lot of things, but it is not true of squash. Maybe I have a genetic defect which makes me incapable of tasting what squash really tastes like. Or maybe I have a genetic superpower which makes me the only person in the world who can see it for what it really is. But stop slathering random ingredients on it and telling me I will like it this way, for real this time.

I have changed my mind about some foods. Mushrooms. I couldn't even look at them four years ago, but then I got pregnant with Emmy, and I began to constantly crave the Papa Murphy's Veggie DeLite pizza (it's covered in mushrooms) that my brother and sister-and-law had brought us nine months earlier when Grace was born. One of those intense, weirdly specific cravings. If Jeremy had brought it home for me with tomato sauce instead of cream sauce, he would have been sent back to Papa Murphy's without his face. Ever since, I have loved mushrooms.

Cauliflower. It freaks me out because it looks like brains when it's whole, but I am now able to eat it if it's not recognizable as a brain or a mini-brain. I still have to try not to think about it. All I can see is Krang if I let myself go there. I know he's pink, but it doesn't matter.

Asparagus. No. I still hate this.