Things that are creamy (cheesy, for example) but also have some more savory elements (meat, vegetables) with some golden brown crust. Two of my all-time favorite dishes are scalloped potatoes and my dad's Thanksgiving stuffing. So yeah, things that contain a mixture of ingredients, but not a super complex flavor profile, and a base of delicious familiarity.


I really love a good hickory smoked cheddar, as well as various kinds of English and Irish cheddars.


Not really. I eat falafel a bit more often than is standard, maybe.


Absolutely. I used to be a picky eater, but I got into this situation where I had to try (and swallow!) absolutely every dish put in front of me for a month straight. It was not super exotic fare, but a bit different from what I'm used to nonetheless. The true departure was the one I made from my mom's dinner policy, which had always been, "If you don't like it, don't eat it. Oh, and you can make a sandwich if you want."

Because of this experience I realized that eating something I don't love won't kill me, and that many things I wouldn't have normally tried will in fact make my tastebuds happy. Since then, I will give anything a shot.

I may have to modify this policy though, since last time it resulted in a really, really painful night...


God, that's hard!
My answer is going to be unique here, I bet. Smoked turkey. I. love. it.

I will eat it a million different ways: Renaissance Faire style; simmered whole in a delicious bean stew until it falls off the bone; chopped up and incorporated into a yummy noodle/vegetable/poultry dish; on a sandwich. It shines in all of these roles.


Probably baby carrots for the first. The only thing I can think of that I'll happily eat raw and as a snack food. Fruit - depends on what's in season, but if you took the ripest and best and laid them all beside each other, it'd be the strawberry, followed very closely by the peach.


Uh. Yeah. There are non-chocolate people? Living outside mental institutions?


I've always been a wine drinker (and when I say always, I mean since I was about 7). Lately I'm starting to warm up to beer as well though. I think the flavor differences are actually easier to detect in beer. Hard stuff is only for special occasions for me, and usually in very small quantities. I can taste and enjoy a few mouthfuls of Laphroaig, marveling at all the many layers within those mouthfuls... but I could never drink a whole pint.


Mexican. Is that cheating?


I'm pretty elitist about cheese. I do not understand the people who will buy those yucky cubes of American separate by plastic. The cheese itself is indistinguishable from the plastic. Gross!


Thanks to my incredibly disfunctional relationship with food, I don't really have anything like that. I have okay-healthy-reasonable foods, and I have things I eat when I'm crazy, depressed, and binging. Sara Lee snack cakes belong to the latter category. I do not like them at other times. They make me feel sick to think about. It's complicated.


My subject gives this away a bit, doesn't it? I so, so need a therapist who can teach me how to eat and enjoy food the way normal people do, instead of alternating between binging and starving. I love to cook - I'm a good cook! - but I won't do it for myself, for the same reason that I'll go months without listening to music or reading fiction books. It's really, really dumb.
Tonight, however, I did make brownies. It's a start?


My answers are practically epic.