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Is food social for you?
By Robert Sloan
I've got several food allergies and sensitivities, the most common allergy reaction being pepper. Acid foods like vinegar in salad dressings or mayonnaise turn my stomach. On top of those, I've also got very strong food tastes. I tend to like some bland foods that most people find boring. I don't like trying new food because in my experience, other people raving about how good it is has little or no connection with whether I'll like it. With a few exceptions for people who both know food and know me, my daughter and son in law can predict what I'll enjoy with ever-increasing accuracy. Those sensitivities and allergies combined with my other disabilities shaped my habits. I didn't and couldn't trust other people's opinions on foods because some very good, well prepared foods tasted horrible or made me sick or both. Plus with a bad back and mobility problems, the physical process of eating in restaurants is very painful. Usually the chairs are exactly the sort that ruin my back. So pretty much as soon as I got to be adult, I stopped going out to eat or going out with other people unless under a lot of pressure. If I really loved that person or wanted to stick with the group, I'd put up with it and try to order something safe, like a dessert... except the milk sensitivity got me half the time with the desserts. At least I could count on those to taste good before making me sick though. Other people respond very differently. I've noticed that a lot of times when people are making small talk, they'll talk about food for hours. It's a safe topic with strangers and distant acquaintances, usually. This tended to irritate me because like most people, unconsciously I assume that what I'm feeling is normal. Food and what's good or not is anything but a safe topic with me. I've begun to see that other people's opinions of food affect how it tastes to the people with them. Happy associations can make something a lot more special and tasty. Warm connections around the dinner table and happy memories improve anything. It's just a personal thing that food is less social for me because of the number of restrictions on what I eat -- restrictions that aren't a set of rules so much as body reactions to foods that probably taste great to anyone else. The rules are just a way of avoiding what's going to taste bad and leave me feeling sick. Emotions affect how good food tastes. I wound up at one point in my life literally starving for about three months, eating maybe once a week or less. Fortunately I had plenty of water and made it through okay. At one point in that horrible time, a friend gave me an apple. I didn't eat it at first. It was beautiful and I knew once it was gone, it'd be gone and I wouldn't see another for a long time. I studied it and drew it in Prismacolors, paying attention to every detail of its shading and colors, got it photorealistic in the extreme. Then I finally ate it... the best apple of my life. Now anytime I have fresh fruit for a snack, any fruit, I really savor its flavor and pay attention to it. Whenever I paint any fruit still life, that memory comes back to glow in the colors and shape and details of the fruit. It's been years since I was that hungry, but I enjoy fruit so much more now that in the long run, I gained something wonderful for the experience. So maybe the thing to remember is to be good to the people around you when you share meals with them. Try to be extra considerate while sharing mealtimes, be pleasant to be around, don't start arguments at the table. That may do a lot to give your family and especially your kids a more positive experience with your cooking -- and may get them hooked for life on something you do that's unique or personal. |
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Thanks Robert. It makes perfect sense. Everybody is different.
We don't seem to take the same direction at meal time, that I remember as a child. People don't interact as much or appreciate the work of the cook. Just looking around the resaurant and it looks like most people are in a rush.
Thanks for sharing, Robert.
Best wishes.
Frederick
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February, 2012
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