I brought home the fish I bought yesterday, sauteed some garlic and onion in butter, rubbed on some spice mix, and threw in some heirloom cherry tomatoes with the fish. When it was done, crisp and brown, I tossed some penne with it. It was quite good, I thought. But neither R nor J would eat it at all. Most of it still sits uneaten in the fridge in a glass bowl.
That was very discouraging. I wonder what I did wrong, since they happily ate the John Dory I fixed in a similar sort of way, sans pasta and tomato. I won't gussy it up next time, or maybe I'll go back to John Dory and quit while I'm ahead.
My family doesn't want to eat what I cook, so I'd like to change my direction in the sorts of meals I choose to make. I love ethnic foods, particularly Asian. Lately I have been fixing Vietnamese with fresh vegetables, small amounts of meat, and fresh rice noodles. I think they are very fresh and tasty, but I seem to be alone in this. J says he is totally sick of Asian foods. He wants American food, whatever that is.
I don't eat hotdogs or hamburgers, though I'll gladly buy and fix them for him and for R if he wants them. I prefer Indian, Middle eastern, Vietnamese, and Chinese.
They don't like my native Jewish foods, and truthfully, for the most part I don't blame them. Jewish food is heavy. It is full of fat and the meat is cooked to the point of hardness. But I don't cook beef since R's and my cholesterol is so high. I make only chicken and turkey in all of its many and various forms, and occasionally lamb (very occasionally). Some fish of some kind every week, maybe twice a week. And vegetarian whenever I can. I don't eat cheese, but I'm glad to make it for R and J. They don't like my chicken soup, which is peasant style, with lots of stuff in it, like legs, gizzards, necks, and an occasional matzo ball. In the winter I make leek and potato soup and sometimes even bake a foccacio to go along with it, topped with rosemary, garlic, and wrinkled green or black pitted olives.
Let's face it: I don't have a lot of time to cook these days. Perhaps my cooking reflects this. I need to relax in the kitchen the way I do in yoga class.
I try hard to think up and cook tasty and healthy food. Seems as if most of the time, except for a couple favorites, like burritos and green beans with ground meat, I don't hit the jackpot.
With the holidays coming up, I am looking around for likely new favorites.
2 comments:
It is frustrating to have the people you cook for reject your food. Perhaps the thing to ask is, "And what did YOU make?" Sounds to me like you put time and thought into the food you prepare!
R. says that because I do the cooking, I should be allowed to cook whatever I want, but if no one eats it and it goes to waste, that's not good either. At the cost of food now, particularly that fresh fish, I can't afford that, especially when they go out to eat or eat junk and ruin their health.
So I'm going to try to curb my desire for the exotic, but I don't really know how. I cook by instinct, and my mother never taught me anything. She was a good cook, but she cooked the same five things all the time, and every holiday, her idea of a treat was prepared foods (especially those disgusting slimy canned asparagus). I thought I didn't like asparagus till I tasted the real thing. She never taught me domestic tasks of any kind, such as cleaning. I have had to re-invent the wheel. With cooking, I was motivated to do that early on. I tried different things, and usually people liked what I made. I bake sometimes and collect recipes. I also subscribe to Cooks Illustrated, watch the food channel, and read the food pages in the paper.
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