Leftover lessons

It's the morning after the night before. I'm laughing at myself.

After yesterday's epiphany via Jeffrey Steingarten that I have been letting my food phobias run (ruin?) my life, Byron and I went out for dinner. I discovered two things:

1) Some food just isn't worth eating
I remember my cousin Brenda, a lifelong healthy eater, once telling me that if she were to leave her regimen for a piece of cheesecake, it had better be a pretty darn good piece of cheesecake. I thought of her last night. Fresh from my commitment to become a perfect omnivore, I dutifully ate from the plate of breads placed on our table. The foccacia, normally soft, was dry, and the lone dinner roll was uninspired. As I chewed on pieces of stale foccacia I first soaked in olive oil (to no avail), I was reminded of Brenda's adage and subsequently reinterpreted Steingarten's message. The point of becoming the perfect omnivore is to free yourself of restrictions so you can choose from everything being offered with neither fear nor remorse. Instead, I had interpreted his direction as go forth and consume the foods you are afraid of eating whenever they are put infront of you. I am pleased with my amendment: Eat it if it's worth eating.

2) Eating food you find repulsive takes extraordinary feats of strength
Byron, as usual, ordered the cheese plate for dessert. One of his selections was taleggio, a supremely stinky cheese with the odor of, for lack of a more polite analogy, butt crack. He gladly consumed this cheese among the others (marscapone and an aged pecorino) and then enjoyed sneaking his unwashed fingers under my nose for the rest of the evening. Even now I feel a tad queasy. I understand what Steingarten meant when he said he had to sit down alone and eat a plate of chickpeas, one by one. I will need to buy my own wobbling slab of taleggio and eat it piece by smelly piece, recommitting myself to the cause after every bite. As such, I am going to amend my list of feared foods, removing the items I clearly enjoy when they're worth eating and leaving the ones I cannot approach without the automatic dry heave. I will tackle this list in a schedule to be determined.

For dessert, I happily ordered tiramisu: not the best I'd ever had, but certainly delicious. Even though I was already full, I ate a few bites, then brought the rest home for breakfast.

Oh the hardship.