Jeremy is a foodie. He does the cooking and the grocery shopping, which is natural, since he also does the meal planning. He'll try anything once, and so he has a wide and varied palate. Now many folks would find a reason to envy me. A husband who cooks! You're so lucky! Sure, if you want to eat the same dish over and over and over until he perfects it? Yes. I'm supremely blessed.
We ate beans and rice for nearly three years straight during Hannah's formative years while he perfected the Puerto Ricanian dish. Our pantry was stocked with Adobo. Sofrito could be found nestled in the shelves of our fridge among the other condiments. Don't get me wrong. He makes some mean beans and rice. And taco meat, for that matter. But it is the downside to his 'hobby.'
I've also lived through the "Sushi" phase, which wasn't as long lived, thank goodness. However, it did result in his infamous "Mrs. Paul's Sushi" in which he combined fish sticks, rice, and nori wrappers. Surprisingly, it's not bad, even if the Japanese would cry at the sight.
Recently, we discovered a Viet Namese restaurant that apparently, the rest of our area has known about for years. Because Jeremy is the food-adventurous type, I knew I'd win brownie points when I suggested eating there for our weekly lunch date a few weeks ago. What I did not anticipate was the extreme interest in the special vinegary sauce from my husband. I should have, but I didn't. He tasted it, and savored it, and tried to dissect the various flavors. "There's uh, pepper flakes, and something like a sushi vinegar, and huh! Shredded carrot!"
Last night, he showed me his latest conquests from the grocery store. Included among them was a bottle of fish sauce, some mei fun, and some bean sprouts. "I'm going to try my hand at that dish we had at the Viet Namese restaurant."
"Uh, do you have a recipe?" I asked.
"Yeah, and the sauce calls for fish sauce."
"Fish sauce? I don't recall it tasting fishy at all."
"We'll give it a try."
His first attempt was pretty bad. I tasted fish for at least an hour, and all I did was dip my pinky in and touch it to the tip of my tongue. He altered the ingredients and made me try again. "Still too fishy," I said.
"Well, I like it," He said, and made a salad with the beansprouts instead of the mei fun. Whatever floated his boat. I wasn't having any.
On the other side of the spectrum, we have our son. Joshua eats spaghetti without sauce. Ice berg lettuce without dressing (or any other vegetable for that matter). He will eat a peanut butter sandwich, but not with jelly, unless, of course, it's grape, and only grape. Mashed potatoes are out of the question, but he will inhale piles of plain, unsalted, white rice. Joshua orders hamburgers with just cheese and just ketchup at the Mexican restaurant. And while he will eat sweet and sour chicken from the Chinese take-out, he gets it without the sauce. And because of this, Jeremy gets a small thrill out of antagonizing The Boy with strange foods and culinary concoctions. I don't know why Joshua doesn't just go running and screaming in the opposite direction, but he always sticks around for the torture. Maybe because he knows there's no escape, and it's just easier to get it over with. After all, I have seen Jeremy chase Joshua through the house with something nasty on the end of a dinner spoon chanting "Com'mon Josh. Just tryyyyyy it!" I usually just roll my eyes.
As if he couldn't wait to harass the kid, tonight, Jeremy pulled out his prized fish sauce and showed it to Josh.
"EWW. That's NASTY!" Joshua said.
"Just smell it," Jeremy tried to entice him towards the open bottle.
"NO way. That smells like throw-up. Seriously. That's bad."
"No, come here and just smell it."
Joshua took a few tentative steps towards his father, sniffing the air as he drew closer to the bottle. "It's still nasty."
"It's fish sauce. It's good."
"No. It smells like vomit. Seriously. If I just made a pile of throw-up and I poured this all over the floor next to it, you couldn't tell the difference. Nasty."
Frankly, I'm with Joshua on this one.
No comments:
Post a Comment