If you don’t like it, don’t eat it.
If you don’t like it, don’t do it.
Those are sentiments we voice a lot around here. But we don’t always live what we preach.
Tracy might be better at this than me. She even penned a break up letter to chocolate. See Dear Chocolate, I Don’t Love You Anymore. And you know her views about road cycling. (Not me. Not ever. Chocolate and I are besties, right after coffee. And I love riding my bike.) We’ve also worried about foods that are running out. See Saying goodbye to some of my favorite foods.
Today’s post though is about me giving up on trying to like quinoa and kale. As a friend joked, they’ll throw me out of the vegan club now for sure. (Tracy’s membership is pretty secure. First, she’s a good vegan, Me, I’m just aspiring in that direction and minimizing dairy. Tracy also loves kale. See her post about loving kale, Falling in Love with Kale, One Recipe at a Time.)
I sometimes persevere with foods, trying to like them, because I ought to. And sometimes it’s even worked. Olives and avocado, for instance, are foods I didn’t like growing up but that I love now.
But kale still tastes and feels to me like something that ought not to be eaten. Lately it’s been showing up everywhere. A perfectly innocent salad I ordered recently came with added kale. Blech. Quinoa, I kept wondering if I was cooking it right.
Now I get that some people love these foods. I don’t want to rain on your kale and quinoa parade. You do you! Enjoy!
But for me these foods have become ubiquitous. Especially as a travelling vegetarian. At the conferences I attended recently there were often special meals for the vegetarians. And it’s as if they all phoned one another, or did the same Google search. “I know. Let’s serve quinoa. It’s a complete protein. And add a side of kale. It’s trendy. Vegans love that.”
I was happy to find out that I’m not alone in my dislike of quinoa. (See Confessions of a Quinoa Hater and I hate Quinoa.) A friend is made sick by it and so lists it as a food allergy. She’s not sure that disliking something so much it makes you sick counts as an allergy but for hosting purposes, she won’t eat it so the answer is “yes.” That was another odd thing about my European conference travels, people kept asking if I was allergic to meat. Not really, I’d say, but I won’t eat it.
Oh, and I apologize if I ate kale or quinoa under your watch and claimed to enjoy it. I didn’t really. But I was trying to and engaging in the “fake it till you make it” strategy. No more.
Do you have any foods you think you ought to like, either because they’re extra healthy, extra trendy, and everyone else seems to love them? What’s your story?
