THINKING OUT LOUD
Home Is Where The Stomach Is
The foods we love don’t just anchor us. They find us again and again.
As far as my memory can stretch before rebounding and bouncing around like a cat on a trampoline, I’ve had a strange relationship with food. Or maybe not so strange. You be the judge.
Although you wouldn’t know it by looking at me, I was, and still am, a finicky eater. I like the foods I like and hate the ones I hate. It’s just the foods I’m finicky about have evolved over six decades of life.
My earliest memories of mealtimes are of turning up my nose and turning down my lips at everything — yes, everything — my mom tried to feed me.
Vegetables? Ew.
Scrambled eggs? Ugh. And don’t get me started on over easy.
Pears? I like them green. Bananas? Maybe, but they’d better not have freckles. They have to be bright yellow, not green or brown.
Jam? Only if you pick out the lumpy bits, what most people would call fruit.
Speaking of lumpy bits, I was well into my 20s before I’d eat raisin bread with the raisins still in it. On this, my brother and I were on the same page. Raisins, especially yellow Santanas, were too gross to contemplate; we picked them out…
