I will admit it. I am quirky about food texture. I know, this is weird. Most people have food preferences based on
taste. Not this country girl. My dislikes are
mostly in regards to texture.
My father always liked to tell me, it wasn't the vegetables I disliked, it was the
texture. Perhpas he was right. At any rate, I don't like raw crunchy vegetables. I like cooked vegetables. If you haven't read it, I blogged about my Summer of Raw Vegetables
here.
I also don't like citrus seeds. Or citrus pith. I remember this one time in gradeschool, I had an orange in my lunch bag that day. Yes, I was one of those sad children with a brown paper lunch sack. No new metal Peanuts lunch boxes for me. I was so jealous of the kids who had real lunch boxes that my mother took pity on me one day, and took my brother's metal lunch box that he had outgrown (being 10 whole years older than me) and "fixed it up" for me.
I don't remember what it had on it, Batman or Spiderman or GI Joe, all I remember is, it wasn't something I wanted to be caught dead with, as a gradeschool-age-girl. A wall-flower-chameleon-don't-stick-out-and-get-noticed-for-anything-uncool sort of a girl.
So my mother took some construction paper and masking tape, and taped paper all over my brother's hand-me-down metal lunch box and gave it to me to decorate with something girl-ish.
Have you ever seen anything as pathetic as a hand-me-down lunch box covered in construction paper and masking tape? There ain't NO amount of gradeschool drawings that could succeed in making that into anything but a big sign that says, 'I AM A DORK FISH. PLEASE KICK ME."
Needless to say, I carried a brown paper lunch bag to school with me every day until I graduated.
But back to my orange. I peeled my orange and picked off as much pith as I could, but this orange had apparently been grown in the deserts of Arizona - it was pretty tough and dry inside. I chewed on a section until I couldn't chew it anymore. Then I gagged. Then I threw up my orange. And the rest of my lunch.
If you ever want to get the attention of the Lunch Ladies right quick, all you have to do is throw up your orange, and whatever else you ate that day. That gets you a speedy delivery right to the nurse's office.
Once at the nurse's office, I did what I thought I was supposed to do - called my mom for a ride home from school, since I was obviously "sick." She must've been confused about what exactly had transpired, because she actually showed up and got me. Once I was in the car explaining what happened, she was not confused, or amused, anymore. She was downright perturbed that I had interrupted her day of homemaking to pick me up from school early. For gagging on an orange.
Well ever since that day, I have been very careful about eating oranges. My preferred method is to cut them in half, like a grapefruit, carefuly cut around each section, scoop them all out and eat them from a bowl.
No lie. I cut my oranges and eat them like grapefruits. But grapefruits cause me a different problem. They have seeds. Lots of seeds. Big seeds, little seeds, in-betweeny-seeds. Nearly as annoying as orange pith. (And don't even remind me that many folks eat grapefruit sections, whole! Gag me with a grapefruit!)
Seedy Eeedy Beedy Seeds?!
Those all came out of my ONE grapefruit at lunch today. Geesh. It takes me over ten minutes to prep a grapefruit.
Here is my grapefruit, all prepped and ready to be eaten, in all of its luscious-juicy-ness.
Egads, can you seed it? Let's get a little closer...
I know it's tiny. Nearly microscopic, as my sweetie would point out. Then again, my sweetie eats all kinds of crunchy raw veggies, so what does he know about undesireable textures?
I do know this - as long as I can see(d) it in my bowl, I simply must remove it before I can truly enjoy indulging. No pips or pith for me, thank you very much!
Have any food quirks? I would love to know I am not the only one who has to prep my citrus this way. Leave me a comment and let me know what your funny food quirks are!
Seed you later!
-Victoria
