I love my husband. I’ve been in love with him from the moment I saw him from across the campus commons in 1995. Each day my love for him grows in new ways. But I must confess, I have another love as well. I love food. I am, without excuse or denial, a dedicated foodie. I don’t know just when this love affair began, for I was the pickiest of eaters as a child. I ate with wrinkled nose, snubbing most meat, potatoes and vegetables. I even looked at McDonald’s french fries with disdain. I pushed food around my plate in hopes of miraculous Divine intervention and ate so slowly that I was dubbed “Pickle-bump counter”. Once my father, frustrated with my snail’s pace, counted how many times I chewed a single bite of hamburger. The total has been elaborated by repeated tellings at family gatherings through the years, but I remember it being fifty-nine. I was happy with cheese, bologna, tomatoes and any junk food I could scrounge (difficult in our no-nonsense pantry supply where the snack offering ranged from a green apple to a red apple and the occasional excitement of a saltine cracker with peanut butter).
Somewhere between my picky childhood and today my palette changed. I believe my eyes were opened to the wonders of food during my six years in Chicago, where culinary experiences of all shapes, colors, smells and tastes collide in a fabulous array of restaurants, festivals and eclectic cafés. Food progressed from being an exercise in survival to being a hobby and an entertainment experience. Unfortunately, the carefree days (and budget) of college are long gone now. I am firmly rooted in a tight budget and the feeding of preschoolers. Thankfully, Spokane offers a fair amount of varied eateries and even sports a smattering of ethnic choices and one or two food “boutiques”, none of which my four year old appreciates. She’d rather have PBJ or a hot dog – plain, no bun, no ketchup, please.
Despite protests, I am determined to teach my children to appreciate foods of all sorts. I want to introduce them to the joys of curries, imported cheeses, and European pastries that dance on the tongue and delight the eyes. I want them to have the ability to eat intelligently, with an open mind, finding joy in the food from other cultures. I want to open their eyes to the world around them that is full of uniqueness and differences ordained by a creative God who took joy in making an abundance of foods available to His creation. There is life beyond pizza and breakfast cereal, and each time I make one more hot dog octopus or PBJ butterfly, I will remind myself that I, a fully committed Foodie, was once the pickiest of eaters.
