6 Weird Food Facts About Me!

Ever since I started trolling food blogs I would notice writers responding to ‘being tagged’ and ‘tagging others’. It seemed so fun and cute, grade school and cliquey. As someone who was always picked last in P.E. (gym class) and was never much of a social butterfly, I would often sigh and think, “gee it sure must be fun to be ‘tagged'”. So you can imagine the size of the grin that I flashed when I was tagged last night by Rachel of Rachel’s Bite for the ‘6 Weird Things About Me’ meme 😀 *cue Sally Field ‘You like me, you really like me!* 🙂

Like her, I am answering this question from the food angle, so here goes…

1. The quickest way to make me gag is to prepare any egg dish where the white is clearly visible. The only way I can tolerate egg white is hardboiled or as a meringue. I consider any other method vile and unpalatable. When making omelettes I beat and beat and beat to destroy all those yucky streaks. If i discern them in the final product I will not eat it.

2. As a child I could not stand any semblance of meat fat, skin, cartilage, or gristle. They made me retch and I called them ‘googoo’. I am now 30 and I still think of them as ‘googoo’ and am not a huge meat eater as a result unless it is filleted, minced, or boneless.

3. Tabasco sauce is the Koolaid of pepper sauces. I could drink it straight from the bottle and sometimes did in college. (They used to put these mini bottles of it on the tables sometimes).

4. Cheese and sweet pickle sandwiches were the best school lunches my mom would pack for me. Love is a cheese and sweet pickle sandwich.

5. The sweet pickles seem to have vanished from the supermarket shelves so we have transferred our love of the green and yellow (subliminal Jamaican propaganda? :P) to cheese and bhagi sandwiches. Love is a Cheese and Bhagi sandwich.

Bhagi (also spelled bhaji) for those not in the know is what we in Trinidad call the amaranth plant. It is used extensively in cooking here, usually as an accompaniment to curried dishes or in callaloo.

From Wikipedia:
Amaranth greens, also called Chinese spinach, hinn choy or yin tsoi (Simplified Chinese: ??????????????; pinyin: xi???nc???i), callaloo, tampala, or quelite, are a common leaf vegetable throughout the tropics and in many warm temperate regions. They are a very good source of vitamins including vitamin A, vitamin B6, vitamin C, riboflavin, and folate, and dietary minerals including calcium, iron, magnesium, phosphorus, potassium, zinc, copper, and manganese. Because of its valuable nutrition, some farmers grow amaranth today. However their moderately high content of oxalic acid inhibits the absorption of calcium, and also means that they should be avoided or eaten in moderation by people with kidney disorders, gout, or rheumatoid arthritis.[citation needed] Reheating cooked amaranth greens is often discouraged, particularly for consumption by small children, as the nitrates in the leaves can be converted to nitrites, similarly to spinach.

Bhagi

[Pic of mom and me picking bhagi brought home from the market. Picking is essential cos of bugs, worms, and leaves that have clearly gone to meet their maker 😆 ]

On a totally random note at the end of the school year here in Trinidad the last week of school was usually a free for all. Teachers are busy grading end-of-term exams and students are allowed to read magazines and play games ‘quietly’ in the classroom to facilitate grading. One of my happier memories was the end-of-term informal UNO ‘tournaments’. I heart UNO! 🙂 Anyway, whenever a player only had green and yellow cards it was referred to as ‘curry and bodi’ as in

Person 1: “Ay yuh have any red?”
Person 2: “Nah dread, is only curry and bodi”

*** Bodi is what we call Yard Long Beans by the way 🙂

6. I am scared of compote. I think it is th3 evil. My best friend Lynn of RedSheepCrafts.com believes that she convince me otherwise, I shall wait and see.

So there you have it. Six odd food facts about moi 🙂 I hope you are not too alarmed 😆

Now it is my turn to tag 6 people in term 🙂 Well it only makes sense that the first 5 ‘tagees’ would be my top 5 commenters

1. Lilandra of Where’s my DSLR? (‘d’ title always changin’ :P)
2. Marsha of So Epicurious it Hurts
3. Chennette of Lifespan of a Chennette
4. Burekaboy of Is that my Bur???ka?
5. Boo (feel free to reply here or in your blog)

For my 6th tag I have decided on a very intriguing and ???ber-serious young man. I am really curious to see if he has an ‘oddball’ side at all 🙂 I always thought ‘oddball’ was a key component of chefology! I hope I am not wrong… 😆

So Aidan of Aidan Brooks: Trainee Chef … TAG! You’re it 😉