Gastronmic Cowards

My husband has very peculiar rules about eating: nothing that looks like itself. So a steak is fine, but cornish hen is definitely out. He won't eat most fruit and certain vegetables and he hates lamb. He'll eat shrimp, but only if it has been beheaded and shelled. I can feed him pieces of lobster, but he won't go digging for it himself. Turkey is fine if it has been carved. He doesn't do wings at all (food like that is "scary.")

My son, who went to his first sushi restaurant when he was three weeks old, shouldn't have these qualms but he can also be a finicky eather.

Last night, I put together a lovely vegetarian chili, built on a recipe from the Silver Palate authors, but which I enhanced with eggplant, mushrooms, corn and extra tomatoes. The spousal unit wouldn't try it because of the eggplant and neither would the kid. More for me, I guess, so I'll be packing it for lunch the rest of the week.

It could be worse. A friend of mine has a husband who will eat nothing but chopped meat or canned tuna in various forms. She long ago said his mother should have drowned him at birth, but apparently condoned it.

I consider myself an adventurous eater. I'll try almost anything once. I recognize that lobsters and prawns come from the same part of the evolutionary scale as spiders and ants, but I won't eat either of those or worms, but I'd be willing to try snake or alligator under the right circumstances. I've stopped eating octopus because I am now convinced they have a level of sentience that should not be ignored--I spent a long time looking at one at the Monterey Bay Aquarium this summer and I read about how they were caught sneaking out of their tanks and opening containers to eat the fish within at another facility. I still eat pork on occassion, but I can't bring myself to eat beef or lamb anymore because I looked too deeply into the eyes of some of the baby farm animals last year at my college. Temple Grandin is working hard to make slaughter humane, but the more I think about it the queasier I get.

I'm eating a lot of fish these days, but my husband will only eat a few kinds. Those pins are scary.