Food Has Taste

When I was younger, I just wasn't interested in food. I had severe allergies that seriously impaired my sense of smell. Did you know that your sense of taste is tied to your sense of smell? Well, it is. And if you don't smell, you don't taste much. I didn't even know that milk actually had a taste until I was 16. Up until that point it seemed no different to me than water, other than the color, of course.

As a consequence, I never really liked to cook. But after my mother went back to work, and I got old enough, I was enlisted to help make meals for the family once in a while. I had exactly two meals in my repertoire: chicken and rice or goulash. If I was on deck to cook, you could be certain it was one of those two meals. What can I say? Those two meals were good enough for me, so they were good enough for my family. I couldn't be bothered to learn how to cook anything else.

But as I got older, and allergy medication got better, my nose started to clear up. I discovered a whole new world. Food had taste! And lo, it was good! I still wasn't interested in cooking, though. David, who was the poster child for the picky eater, suffered a lot during our first few years of marriage. I didn't care. If he wanted something different than what I was making (I still only had two dishes, see above), he could damn well make it himself.

But then we moved to Japan. This changed things in a couple of ways. First, David slowly lost his picky eating habits. After you've had to eat live sea creatures or raw horse, all of a sudden pasta doesn't look so bad.

Second, we were sent on a work exchange program, not the usual luxurious package. This meant that we had to live among the natives, and not in the ultra-expensive expatriate communities. There were no American restaurants or fast food places anywhere near our apartment. There was a McDonalds a 20-minute walk from our place, but you have to really want McDonalds to walk that far. And I didn't. Besides, you can't eat McDonalds every day.

I wasn't allowed a work visa, and I had nothing but time on my hands, so I subscribed to Bon Appetit and started learning how to cook. I loved thumbing through cookbooks and looking at recipes (still do, in fact), and I turned myself into a respectable chef. But if the truth were told, I still don't really enjoy cooking all that much. I just like to salivate over all the delicious recipes and wish that I had my own private chef.

Nevertheless, when I cook nowadays -- which happens far more often than I would like it to; what are these people thinking, expecting a meal every evening? -- at least my family doesn't have to eat goulash every night.