Time for installment two of the Question of the Week: What is one food item you dislike but keep trying anyway?
I've always been pretty adventurous about food, open to trying anything new at least once. A lot of it boils down to my fear of missing out; my thought has always been, "What if it is my favorite thing and I never knew it because I never tried?" This logic applied to numerous things: books, songs, activities, and, most certainly, food. I tried sushi and fried shrimp heads and baby octopus, ate haggis in Scotland, enjoyed escargot in plenty of fancy restaurants, and while I haven't always liked the foods I've tried (haggis is horrible!) it's always been fun to try.
Because I'm adventurous to begin with, there are very few foods I dislike, especially as I've gotten older. And given my relatively exotic taste in foods (I love obscure vegetables and foreign foods, as long as they aren't super spicy), the answer to this question might surprise you. The one food I keep trying, hoping that THIS time I'll like it, but always finding I can only tolerate it, is oatmeal. I've tried it with maple syrup, brown sugar, cinnamon, apples, bananas, strawberries, butter (separately, and all together) and I just don't love oatmeal.
Much to my disappointment, none of the other members of my family are adventurous eaters. It is like asking them to chomp cockroaches just to get them to try a new food. For Josiah, he has always been a picky eater because of his sensory processing challenges. And my money is on the idea that the apple doesn't fall far from the tree, and Josiah's sensory issues came from his daddy! Malachi was my last hope for having an adventurous eater in the family, and maybe when he graduates from the toddler stages of just wanting to be in control (including by deciding to never try anything that wasn't his idea to try), maybe then he will join in my finding tasty new things to eat. Until then, he spends a ton of time eating his favorite food: oatmeal!
