randomness

So much of food is about texture. What I call 'plastic cheese' (both because it is wrapped in plastic and is essentially plastic) is pretty much disgusting. I would never use it on anything or in anything, but... there is something delightful about folding it in on itself to make a pile of squares, and then eating it square by plasticky square. Love it.

I do seem to be a bit of a 'food dissector'. I have never understood people who put steak, mashed potato and peas all on the one fork and eat it. I have certainly relaxed a lot, but for most of my life I have insisted on eating one food at once, and generally in a certain order, mostly determined by eating what I like best last.

To demonstrate, up until a few years ago I would have insisted upon following this order for these fairly standard family dinners:  

• Steak, baked potato and peas: peas go first, then steak, and then potato.
• Lasagna: mince, then pasta layers, then top layer of pasta and cheese.
• Cannelloni: filing (pushed out of tubes), then scraped tomato sauce off top of tube, then pasta tube.
• Stir fry: capsicum, carrot, any green vegies, meat (if any), mushroom, finally noodles.

It seems completely ridiculous now that I write it down; I guess because it kinda is. One of the hazards of my system was that by leaving the best until last, you often end up eating more than you should. I was one of those children who for some unknown reason approached every meal like it was my last, and God forbid the last thing I should eat was peas instead of baked potato!

Last night while eating dinner, I realised that there is now much less order to my eating. I mixed it up, one might say. I mean, not to the extent of putting several different articles on the one fork (eww), but I no longer feel the need to dissect lasagna for chrissakes.

That said, I did still make sure that the last mouthful was baked potato. As the lolcats would say, nom nom nom nom...