A few weeks ago, a friend commented that most of the ingredients in my recipes were unfamiliar to her. She had never heard of Adzuki beans, for example, and found it weird that I was choosing to focus on such “obscure” foods.
A few days later, I was having lunch with another friend who asserted that she loved how much she was learning from my newsletters. She gave me the example of adzuki beans. She told me they had been a revelation – a formerly unknown ingredient she was happy to have been introduced to.
One bean, two opinions…
As a result I found myself wondering: should I focus more on known staples or should I keep bringing in lesser known foods in the hopes that people will enjoy experimenting? Should I keep coming up with different ways to bake apples and prepare brown rice, or would it make more sense to tell people about goji berries and krill oil?
I have often mentioned how closely I believe our relationship to food mirrors how we deal with life. And so while we might start out wondering how we should tackle the strange, unfamiliar organism on our plate, what it’s really about is how we deal with things we don’t know – at dinner and in the world.
Are new things interesting to you? Or are they scary? Are you someone who orders the same thing over and over? Or do you like to pick the most bizarre thing on every menu just for the heck of it?
Do you enjoy taking a running plunge into the deep end? Or do you prefer to test the waters with your toes first?
There is no right or wrong.
It’s part of what makes each one who we are.
And how we feel the first time we read about adzuki beans.
So you tell me – what new foods have you found yourself faced with recently? And what did you do with them?
With love,
Gabriela
Comments
Post has no comments.