Don't Look Back in Hunger

I think one of the perils of having an open mind is that you make more mistakes. I mean the more things you are willing to try the more can go wrong? Of course this is a shitty way to think about it but it makes a nice set up for this blog entry so go with it.

I have an open mind about most things, among them - food+drink. I've mentioned before I will eat/drink anything once and if something is offered to me I won't at least try a little of it. I mean why not? Life is too short not to give yourself as many options as possible.

But with taking all these options come the inevitable mistakes.

For instance take last night. I stopped at the local liquor mart on my way home for some kind of white wine to go with the goat cheese + asparagus orzo I was making for dinner. For some reason as soon as I set foot in the store I lost my mind, stopped at a display for Vanilla Wine and decided this was the best choice. I had neved seen or heard of it before! And when I am not on my game it is VERY easy for me to mistake NEW for something GOOD (this was a problem that plagued me a lot when I was single as well but that is neither here nor there).

Well guess what? It WASN'T the best choice. It turns out that vanilla wine is pretty damn disgusting - like white zinfandel mixed with vanilla extract with an aftertaste of that bubblegum flavor of flouride treatment you got at the dentist 's office as a child. . Oh and vanilla, it turns out, is not a nice compliment to GOAT CHEESE and ASPARAGUS. I still managed to have a glass with dinner more for spite than anything else but felt pretty disgusting for the rest of the night.

Ah bad food+drink decisions, I know thee well.

I had it easy this time though. My first bad food decision, came when I was 18 years old on a week long vacation in Paris with my mom. Now, Paris is pretty much the haute cuisine capital of the world - so what do we get to eat as our First Meal In Paris?

Tex-Mex.

I guess the people we were staying with were like "Aw Americans LOVE Tex Mex, let's take them there as a special treat". Well two cheese quesadillas and a few hours later I was stricken with a bout of food poisoning like you would not believe. And I found out the HARD way that in Paris, in an apartment that has two bathrooms, usually only one of them has a toilet. '

Charming I know.

And then there was another bad choice made maybe a few years later relating to the demon tequila. I was enjoying my first margarita at a party and decided it was to just keep topping off my marg with straight tequila. Obviously because someone who has never really drank tequila should definitely introduce it to herself by drinking glasses of it at a time. That night also led to bad times. But at least I learned that for me, tequila = dangerous. Life lessons, oui?

And the list goes on

* Eating a Greek wrap while watching the movie Deliverance - I used to LOVE Greek wraps and got them all the time but after watching that movie while eating one I have not even able to touch one since with out thinking about that Ned Beatty squealing like a pig scene. Good god.

* A few years back I had the opportunity to try grain alcohol made from pears. Now, I love pears and thought "This will be peary-y and delicious". I did not listen when the man who was serving it was like "Dip a sugar cube in it and then suck the liquor from the cube, do NOT drink it straight. " This, in the end, had the same effect I think drinking gasoline would have. (Although gas prices being what they are now I wonder if I should get back in touch with this guy).

* And then there was trying uni (sea urchin) at a sushi restaurant in recent years I think can be called a bad decision as the texture (raw liver) and the taste (dirty ocean) STILL lingers in the back of my throat sometimes.


In any case life is rife with bad decisions, right? But at the very least you learn a lesson. And if not well ,hell at least you have a story to tell.