Monthly Experiment Recap: February

My first ever bite of summer squash was a revelation.

Not because it was supremely delicious or shockingly revolting but because it crystallized something that had been floating around amorphously in my brain for a while. Between mouthfuls of alien tastes and textures, I realized that while there are many parts of my identity that are unchanging, there are even more that I’ve assumed are fixed even though I could decide to drop them at any moment.

Wait, what?

Quick backstory: For my entire life up until February 2019, I was an exquisitely picky eater. When I shared my list of 2019 monthly experiments with my family and friends, without fail they were most surprised to see my plan for February. Several demanded photo or video evidence of my first bites of the countless foods that have never passed my lips.

I tackled this month’s experiment by making an exhaustive list of all the foods I had never tasted (within reason – e.g. no organ meat) as well as several crowd-pleasing dishes that I’ve steered clear of. By month-end, I had tried 38 foods or dishes for the first time.

**Inaugural shrimp with pieces of wood instead of utensils.**

Flashback to the squash: Half-way through the bite, a simple thought passed through my head: “How silly to have lived 34 years on this planet as a picky eater”. This was immediately followed by “Why the hell did it take me so long to decide that I was done?”

When I took a good, hard look at the reasons why I’ve stubbornly maintained this part of my identity, I found a surprising root cause: fear.

Not fear of vegetables or fear of trying new things but rather fear of being boring. Fear that if I gave up this unusual, unique trait I would be losing one of the few qualities that makes me interesting to other people. Tell someone with a straight face that you’ve never had a tomato or a hotdog or ranch and you are guaranteed a reaction between mild curiosity and stunned disbelief.

Well as it turns out, the trade-off is terribly one-sided: For a slightly amusing anecdote to share at dinner parties, I ended up limiting my diet to the detriment of my physical health, making family meal prep nearly twice as time consuming, and becoming the type of a guy who is a total pain in the ass to have at a dinner party because he doesn’t eat anything you’re serving!

Assuming you eat a normal variety of foods, you can’t directly relate to my situation but I’d be willing to bet that you are holding onto some part of your identity that no longer benefits you for a reason that no longer makes any sense (if it ever did in the first place).

Human beings can be pretty good bullshitters and the person you have by far the most experience pulling the wool over on is yourself.

Maybe you’re used to telling yourself a minimally disruptive mantra like, “I’m not going to try that because I’m a picky eater.”

Or maybe it’s something more damaging like “I’m just not good with money.”

Or maybe it’s even something that puts a permanent cap on your potential like “I’m not smart enough to learn how to do an entirely new job.”

Whatever it is, you need to identify it and recognize that it’s your choice whether you want it to remain part of your identity.

Alright, enough with feelings and fears. Let’s talk about good foods and gross foods.

Here are my top five and bottom five new foods along my virgin palate’s initial reaction:

Top 5 new foods (#1 is best)

#5. Salmon – 6.5/10. Quite tasty and not overly fishy. For a bland white guy who likes bland white fish, salmon wasn’t too much of shock and given the myriad health benefits associated with eating it regularly, we are going to plan to have it for dinner ~twice/month. Loses points for picking up some fishy funk when reheated the next day.

#4. Sweet Potato – 7/10. Neon orange squishy candy. My wife baked it and slathered it in olive oil and parmesan cheese so I wasn’t gob-smacked that it turned out to be delicious. However, baking a sweet potato essentially turns it into a pixy stick as far as your blood sugar is concerned so I will only enjoy the Trump-shaded spuds sparingly.

#3. Crab Cakes – 7/10. Shout out to my cousin Camran for having crab cakes at his wedding so I didn’t have to decide between rolling the dice on questionable seafood from Kroger and buying a fancy appetizer that my mouth might have rejected like a virus. After eating one, I imagine they are what rich people have for comfort food. Nice mix of textures and flavors. But I’ll be honest and share that I preferred the bites with less crab to the more Sebastian-centric bites.

#2. Butternut Squash – 7.5/10. Where have you been all my life, friend?!? I remember giving my sister incessant shit as a kid because she would order Butternut Squash Ravioli when we went out to restaurants (otherwise I was a perfect sibling so you’ll have to excuse that minor fault). I enjoyed this so much that I was seconds away from ordering the same ravioli dish at a mid-month business dinner but then I came to my senses and got the Kobe Burger with a surprise visit from the delicacy at the top of the chart.

#1. Avocado – 8/10. Cards on the table, I had high hopes for avocado. After two decades of witnessing people swarm guacamole at parties like piranha at a feeding frenzy, I was hoping that me and the ‘cado could come to an agreement. Although the taste is uninspiring by itself, adding salt, lime, and cayenne pepper turns it into an absolute delight. And the texture is its crowning achievement. It’s now a staple with my scrambled eggs, a tasty addition to a hamburger, and I invented an entirely original dish in which I toast bread and then smear the emerald goodness across the top. I call it “Avocadoed Toast” ©.

Bottom 5 new foods (#1 is worst)

#5. Cherry Tomato – 3/10. This was a surprisingly sour, thoroughly gross experience. I was fully confident that this little bugger was well past its prime until my wife tried one and enthusiastically assured me this batch was “particularly good, almost farm fresh”. The little guy’s fully grown, sliced variety that people slavishly layer on their hamburgers wasn’t good but was a far cry better than this slimy juice bomb.

#4. Pickled Beet – 3/10. Obviously, the taste was bad but the texture really torpedoed this foulness. Truly unlike anything that my tongue has had to contend with before. It was a bit of a struggle to get it down and the aftertaste was somehow worse than the actual taste.

#3. Black Olive – 3/10. You remember that guy in the middle school or high school locker room whose feet were impressively rank? Like it almost made no sense how bad his feet smelled after doing the exact same amount of exercise as everyone else? Well it turns out that kid grew up on a black olive farm and walked barefoot through his family’s plentiful orchards every morning. Black olives taste exactly like terrible feet smell.

#2. Cucumber – 2/10. Precisely like how I imagine cyanide would taste. Pure chemicals. Synthetic. I’ve never been more disappointed in my kids than after I suffered through cucumber and remembered that it is both of their vegetable of choice.

#1. Potato Salad – 2/10. Why? Why choose to do this to potatoes instead of deep-frying them or mashing them or just leaving them in the ground for god’s sake? Mustardy mush with harsh notes of remorse. Gritty, mealy mouthfeel with gelatinous, semi-congealed binder coating. I had money on tuna salad being the pits but it paled in comparison to this culinary dumpster fire.

Dishonorable mentions: Deviled egg, hot dog, radish, cauliflower, celery.

Next up is No Complaint March. While it’s the first month for which I’m 100% sure I will fail (over and over again) to abide by the rules, I’m excited for the challenge.