Outside the Box Challenge

I confess, this wasn’t much of a challenge for me. Sweetness is not my weakness, and for those of you that know me this is at least partially reflected in my personality. I grew up in a hippie household where sugars were limited. I strayed away from that when I first moved out on my own. I lived on cigarettes, beer and all forms of processed junk that first year. I’ve definitely gone back to my roots, though.

The first thing I noticed when I quit smoking was the fact that all of my foods tasted like salt. No surprise there, as I was dumping it on my plate like I was waging a genocidal war against the invisible plate-slugs. I’m sure my liver was starting to pickle. I put that sucker down cold turkey and started tasting my food. After my taste buds unpuckered, food regained flavor. Drastically reducing my sodium had another effect- I lost my taste for sweets. Don’t get me wrong. I still love the occasional dessert (I’m looking at drooling at the thought of you, Lemon Tart). And I’m certainly not above the rare binge (2 lbs of jelly beans in 3 days the week after Easter o.O ). I just don’t like how it instantly becomes a craving. I haven’t put sugar in my coffee since the day many years ago that I noticed a mound of undissolved sugar at the bottom of my cup, turning the second half of the cup into something more of a syrup than coffee. I’ve never sugared my cereal, and I didn’t even know that people put sugar on fresh fruit until watching some commercial for an artificial sweetener. The things you never knew you never knew.

Limiting sugar (and salt) allows me to honestly know if I like a food or not. I can only think of one food that I actively avoid (not including the two foods to which I am allergic). Yeah, I’m talking shit about you again, Celery. Stop tasting like bitter soil and maybe we can work things out. The ball’s in your court.

In the end, I strive for balance. I would much prefer, and am much more satisfied by 1/5th of an Endangered Species bar than by a whole Milky Way bar. I would rather experience the complexities and intricacies of food as it is, than to assume I know better than nature or that I won’t be able to palate it without help from one white crystalline substance or another.