I hate food. I really do. So many different smells, tastes, and textures. Plus all the preparation involved. I’m not lazy, just sick of the whole food business. Wouldn’t it be so much easier if we could all just take a few vitamins and eight glasses of water a day?
I guess you could say I was born with an aversion to food. At the tender age of 10 months, I smeared enough pureed carrots on the wall to change the white paint orange. When I started walking, my parents would leave TV tables around the apartment with plates of food with hopes I might actually eat something. As I got older, I had many an evening staring at dried up food on my plate. Who in their right mind would eat dried up pork chops? Don’t get me wrong, I did eat, just not a lot or often. My family ate American style. We had a meat, starch, bread, salad and dessert every evening. It all tasted the same to me, just different colors, textures and temperatures.
When I started dating my future husband, it seemed his whole world revolved around food. His first thought in the morning was what he could have for dinner. That concept was so foreign to me. He loved to talk about food, go to the grocery store, cook and eat! Maybe that is what drew me to him, he was someone polar opposite.
Living with him opened up all sorts of new smells, tastes and textures to avoid. I made my husband sleep on the sofa for three nights once for eating too much garlic. Oh the smell! One morning I woke up and thought, gee, what can I have for dinner tonight? What? What was I thinking? Maybe the longer you are married the more alike you become! Food started talking to me, eat me, taste me, you will love me! And I did. Come to find out I was pregnant with my last child, who oddly enough loves to eat. That little baby inside me spoke loud and clear that he was hungry.
Just because I didn’t like food, I wasn’t going to impart that onto my children. I always made sure that they had a variety of foods to choose from with the exception of liver. That’s just wrong; no one should have to eat that. We have had many a laugh over the years remembering all my dinner disasters. The Rosemary Chicken dinner was particularly funny. I seasoned the entire dinner with Rosemary, the chicken, potatoes, green beans.….it was like eating a Christmas tree! That was followed up with the Orange Chicken fiasco. While my children would all agree I am not the best cook in the world, I did try. And for all of my efforts, they are very good eaters. They only have one food issue a piece. My daughter gags on “adult” spinach as opposed to the baby variety, my middle son is a vegan, and my youngest does not care for peanut butter and jelly. The jelly scares him. How can you be afraid of jelly?
Now that I have sent my children off into the world as awesome eaters, I can rest easy. Or can I? All this wonderful food I have grown to enjoy is now coming back to haunt me. I began to get hives after every meal, rashes and constant indigestion. Prilosec became my middle name. After a trip to my allergist and extensive testing, come to find out I have many, MANY food sensitivities and allergies. Maybe that would explain why I didn’t like food when I was younger. All the foods I have issue with, turns out, I am allergic to.
With all these allergies, my food regime has gone back to boring and bland. Gone are the days of ooey gooey pizza, fresh baked bread with crisp crust, fluffy insides smeared with butter, and decadent chocolate cake. Onto lettuce with chicken and wow, that is about it. Not much else I can eat without consequences. Dinner time has become a dance of two meals, one for my husband and one for me. Throw the vegetarian in the mix and we have a sock hop!
All the food I came to enjoy is no longer enjoyable. Recently, I snuck a beautiful freshly baked bread slice and had to spit it out into the garbage. To me, the texture was like eating a sponge. Pizza no longer appeals to me, as well as a plate of my daughters masterfully prepared chocolate chip cookies. In the long run, it’s probably not good to eat those things anyway. This morning I asked my husband what was on the menu this evening. His answer was one of disbelief, “What? I have no idea what is for dinner. You think I wake up and know what I want for dinner?” Sigh……………..I hate food.
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