My Square Meal

I’ve just come across NaBloPoMo (National Blog Posting Month) the general premise being that every day you get a prompt for a post, and… well, you blog about it. I’m not going to use it every day but I figured its OK to dive in and out once in a while to grab some ideas.

Which is exactly what I did, today’s prompt is…

“Which food do you eat but only endure and not enjoy?”

I like food. In fact it’s fair to say that I love food. I always have done, from my younger days as a small, skinny little-tyke that could eat anything and always look malnourished, through my young adulthood when I ate anything and waved goodbye to my waistline, to today being thankfully smaller, but having the same appetite.

My increase in size was due to two things. Firstly the naivety of thinking that just because I had eaten a lot my entire life without gaining weight I could continue to do so without consequence, and I had things going on, and food quickly became the answer, the wrong answer of course, but I didn’t realise that then.

Thankfully, all that’s under control (mostly) but I remain emotionally connected to food. A bad day is turned around by a nice meal, it’s difficult for me to watch a movie without some sort of snack, and most of my social life about food in one way or another. If I’m not enjoying a food then it is because it doesn’t evoke a positive emotion for me, or worse still it actually provokes a negative one.

I’m also not counting the element of politeness. If I am at someones house for instance and they cook something that does not quite appeal to me, I do what any other red-blooded Englishman would do. I would eat it all, say nothing and then moan about it to my wife when we return home. As much as sometimes I may want to, I am an adult so can’t just make a ‘Yeurgh!!!’ noise and stick out my tongue if there’s something I don’t like.

There are only two foods for me that fit the criteria of necessary evil, food that I have to eat. These two foods are mashed potato and steamed vegetables. Even just typing the words fills me with boredom. I’ll clarify a little, these two foods are the staple part of our ‘being good’ meals, as well as something like a pie or piece of chicken. For me these ‘being-good’ meals are eaten because I have eaten rather unhealthily over the previous days. A way for me to catch up on some much-needed goodness I’ve been missing out on. Ultimately, I am not excited by this meal, and for me every meal should be a thing to look forward to. Steamed vegetables and mashed potato does not do that.

It’s also worth saying that my wife really enjoys this type of meal, so she often wants to head in this direction, and if I had my way we’d both be 500 pounds.

I have found ways to inject a bit of excitement into the meal by adding things to the mash, such as cheese, black-pepper, roasted onion etc. but my heart doesn’t exactly leap at the prospect.
Let’s make a list of all the positives and negatives…

Positives…

It’s the healthy option
It’s cheaper than more ‘exciting’ meals.
My wife enjoys it

Negatives…

I don’t find it particularly interesting.

Maybe the fact that I am hopelessly out-numbered by positive reasoning helps to add to my negativity. I am more of a teenager than most actual teenagers, and have at times known to get just that bit stroppy because of people trying to tell me what to do.
So, there you have it steamed vegetables and mashed potato are the two foods I am destined, by way of health, finance, logic and love to endure.

Which foods do you have to put up with, and why? Is it down to a general teenager-like stroppiness like me, or do you have a better reason?