Cooking & Eating

[beth_leonard]

I think one of my problems in life is that I don't enjoy eating. I eat because it keeps me living. I try to eat healthy foods, because while they taste terrible, they're only marginally worse than unhealthy foods. Chocolate, milk, over-boiled Kraft Mac & Cheese, and moose tracks ice cream are examples of the few foods I truly enjoy eating.

A lack of desire to eat "delicious" foods (as defined by some external scale, not my palate) makes cooking my least favorite chore. I fall back on completely healthy from time to time, and on days like today it totally backfires. I had it in my head that if I bought the gourmet dry bean mix from Costco and prepared it according to the directions, it would taste like something my family would eat.

I was sortof hoping it would taste like some of those Annie's soups, but with less than 90% of my RDA of salt per serving. It didn't. It was a total flop. I opened up a can of Annie's soup and poured some into each person's bowl to add some flavor to dinner tonight. Maybe I'll use the rest of the container to make bean-bags out of.

--Beth

Comments

[jon-leonard.livejournal.com]

It wasn't all that bad; I think all it really needed was some spices.

[altamira16.livejournal.com]

Beans are good only when they are naughty. Salt and salty animals make them taste better.

[feuervogel]

Are you interested in learning how to make more foods that you enjoy? Or learning how to utilize herbs, spices, and other condiments to give flavors you enjoy to foods? (A little garlic or lemon juice or soy sauce can really add a little zing, for example. Or Mrs. Dash.) I can point you to resources, if you'd like.

Also, don't let some external source tell you what you should find delicious. You know what you like. You can find ways to make them, for example, less salty.

If you want to try a recipe with the remaining beans, I really liked these. (Though I did mine in the crock pot and used canned pinto beans.) The flavor is reminiscent of Bush's, and I ate them with cornbread.

[feuervogel]

Ooh, seeing your chocolate tag while paging down made me think of molé sauce. It's a Mexican thing made with chocolate, but savory. (You can adjust the level of spiciness to your taste. Start low with the chili powder.) This is one recipe, and there are tons more on the internet. You serve it over chicken, for example.

Food

[singerji.livejournal.com]

Many possible reasons. Is it texture? Color? Smell?
I know you don't enjoy pepper, or "hot" spicy foods, but there are plenty of spices aside from that that give flavor to food.
Maybe you could invest in a basic cooking class and explore, bit by bit.

[zathrus.livejournal.com]

You know, any major transition takes time. You can't expect to go from salt-heavy canned soups to low-salt mixes in one leap and not have your taste buds rebel a bit at first. But if you were able to eat it mixed half-and-half with the canned soup, that's a step in the right direction. We went through a similar process several years ago in transitioning to brown rice, and it took several steps (and several meals at each step along the way) for us to get all the way to using 100% brown rice, but now we're there and usually don't miss white rice at all (although there are still one or two things that I pull it out for because of nostalgia/flavor reasons; black eyed peas and rice depends so much on the flavor of the rice that it really isn't the same dish with brown rice). You probably need to approach any major dietary change in a similar way, taking small steps in the direction you want to go and giving yourself time to get used to each step before taking another one.

Also, I would totally have added a ham bone to any bean soup mix. And if it doesn't taste good to you before serving, add things until it does; you can always pull out a small amount to experiment on and google what you're cooking for recipes to get ideas of things to try. (Or call me; I love cooking challenges.) Recipes and cooking instructions are, in the final analysis, only suggestions.

Newt

[patrissimo.livejournal.com]

if you go out to a fancy restaurant, do you like the food?

If not, this seems like something to discuss with your doctor. Especially if it developed over time.

[beth_leonard]

In general I like the food at fancy restaurants as well as I like the stuff at McDonalds. At extremely fancy restaurants, it's hard to separate the atomosphere from the food iteself, so I'd say I like the food better, but in the grand scheme of things, a hamburger plain with lettuce and onions only is just as good to me as a steak medium-rare. Desserts are a different matter of course. I have a strong preference for mac & cheese over salmon.

I eat the side of veggies because it's good for me, not because I enjoy it, fancy restaurant or no. I've never enjoyed vegetables, and I really have to set the mood to get myself to enjoy fruit. (i.e. I'm not too hot or too cold, and neither is the fruit.)

I would say that it has always been this way. As I aged, there were more foods I enjoy (guacamole) and I'm always willing to try anything once, which I wasn't as a kid, but I generally eat because it keeps me living and I don't like feeling hungry, not because I enjoy food for food's sake.

--Beth