An Introduction and An Explanation

Now that the first post is out of the way, how about a quick introduction.  As you may have guessed, I am a picky eater.  I have tons and tons of food rules that I have spent my life following.
I don't generally eat chicken because I don't like dry meat and chicken is easily overcooked.
I hate mushy foods.  And unless you too are a mushy food hater, you have no idea how many foods fall into that category.  It also means that I hate eating most fruits.  Ever since I was a kid, I would make my mom by super under-ripe fruits because they were the only kind I would eat.  Unless that peach/pear/plum/nectarine crunched when I bit into it, I wanted nothing to do with it.  Same with veggies.  I have gotten better recently, but I used to refuse to eat any veggies that had been cooked.
I hate jiggly foods.  This is a much smaller food category, but I have an intense level of hatred for it.  Seriously, I can get nauseous even watching someone eat Jello.
I tend to go through weird food phases.  I had a period of time when I was about 10 where I dyed all of my food green and had an intense love of making lemonade from scratch (and then dying it green...).
As a child I hated having foods touch.  When my mom made BLTs, I would get a piece of toast, a few pieces of bacon, a slice of tomato and a piece of lettuce all laid out separately on my plate.  I hated peanut butter and jelly sandwiches because I couldn't separate them.  This has now turned into a general hatred of peanut butter.  I hated pizza for the same reason.
I hate fish.  I hate mushrooms.  I hate citrus.  I hate oatmeal.  I hate yogurt.  I hate cottage cheese.  I hate swiss cheese.  I hate wheat bread.  I hate mayo.  I hate bananas.  I hate olives......I could go on, but I think you get the picture.

There are two important pieces to being a picky eater.  The first and most obvious is that it is incredibly limiting!  Which is irritating because I love food!!  I love cooking food and watching programs about food and talking about food and looking at food and reading about food.  I want to be able to branch out and truly enjoy food and to open myself up to new food possibilities.  That is what spawned this desire to start a food blog to help encourage me to push my own boundaries.

The second piece is that I don't think I actually am a picky eater!  I know that sounds weird, but I think I just got all of these rules and assumptions stuck in my head from when I was very young and have never bothered to question them or to test them.  I simply accepted them as true and lived my life while following them.  I firmly believe in questioning assumptions about ourselves and in finding those places in ourselves where we have been limiting our own development and our own opportunities.

So this blog is my journey to explore food and to decide consciously, what food I like and what I don't like.  It is also a place to celebrate food and to celebrate the rituals around food which are a critical piece of our culture.  And!  I get to combine cooking, eating, writing and photographing food!  All things that I love!  So welcome to my food blog!!!  I hope you enjoy your visit!  Please feel free to leave comments!  And any suggestions for food explorations are appreciated!