Recipes 7-8: Picky Eater?

I never thought of myself as a picky eater. I like most things. I especially like cheese, chocolate and almost anything covered in cheese or chocolate. Recently, though, I've come to realize that there's quite a long list of things I don't enjoy very much.

Not all of it comes down to taste. A lot of it has to do with what I consider textural abnormalities. For example, I can't eat an entire banana because the texture starts to gross me out about half way through. Unless, that is, as mentioned above, it's covered in chocolate!! Also, as mentioned in a previous post, I don't like raisins, sun-dried tomatoes or any other dried fruit (and if those are covered in chocolate, I still don't like them, but I will eat the chocolate off of it)! Another thing I will almost always tell you with disgust that I don't like...salmon.

I like fish. I don't have a problem with it at all...but there's something about salmon that bothers me. I've often wondered if it was the pinkish color that made my mind somehow think it wasn't cooked. So, imagine my dread, when I let Mike pick this weekend's recipes and he chose Salmon with Puff Pastry and Pesto (oh, I don't like pesto either)!

I decided to go ahead and make it, giving salmon another chance (but having a backup plan of some other fish for me to eat, just in case). The recipe was a layered dish, puff pastry topped with pesto and tomatoes with the fish on top. I bought swordfish as my back-up plan. I think I got a bad piece, because it was so tough - it was awful! It was either try the salmon, or eat a piece of puff pastry for dinner.

So, I dug in (cautiously). Hmmm....not too bad. The flavor was fine, but after a couple of bites, I realized why I don't like salmon. Texture. It's a little too smushy and fatty. So, I could eat about 1 1/2 ounces of it before it got to be too much for me. Then I loaded up on the side dish of Spicy Parmesan Green Beans and Kale. This was delicious (a tiny bit too salty, but otherwise delicious). It had onions, cremini mushrooms, green beans, kale and other seasoning items...all sauteed together. Very good.

So, another semi-successful evening. Salmon and I might not be completely over, but it'll probably be a little while before we see each other again.