Pilot Post

    Upon hearing that the text message alert sound I had chosen for my new iPhone was the same sound she had chosen, a year earlier, for her iPhone, my sister demanded that I change my sound at once. After all, she had it first; and heaven forbid we not know which one of is getting a text. So imagine my trepidation when it was time to tell her that I wanted to start a cooking blog; something else she did first. Fortunately, she handled this news better than the text message situation, and I was given her blessing to embark on my own food blog journey. I do not claim to be in any way gifted in the kitchen. I don’t even claim to be marginally good at cooking. What I do claim, and you’ll have to forgive me for borrowing this mantra from the lovely movie Ratatouille, is that anyone can cook.

    I was a very picky eater when I was young. (Ok, some would definitely say I’m still a picky eater, but we’ll get to that). The most famous “Erin Meal” that has chased me through the years via the memories of family and friends, is the Erin Hot Dog. This meal consists of a hot dog bun with ketchup in the middle of it—no actual hot dog. To get this meal, I, or whoever was ordering for me, had to explicitly order “a hot dog, without the dog please,” a request that was usually met with blank stares. I obstinately refused to ever actually try a hot dog, so I remained convinced for several years that I did not like them, leaving me only with the ketchup-in-the-bun option. Interestingly enough, when I finally did try a hot dog, with the actual dog, I immediately liked it.

    Not every story like this ends with success. There are plenty of things I have tried multiple times and still loathe (*cough*bananas). The point is, now I try. In the past few years I have realized that one cannot sustain a healthy lifestyle subsisting only on goldfish crackers, pasta, and cereal. This presents a mildly concerning problem for one such as myself, as there are a very finite number of foods that I actually like. The solution, I found, is to try anything and everything, because you never know when you’re going to find something that you really like! Case in point: Mom made me try roasted broccoli, (urgh, right?) and I now find myself craving it almost every day. I never thought I would convert to the dark side with broccoli, but there you are. Obviously this isn’t going to happen to you every time you try a new food, but it’s happened to me enough times to give me hope that I might one day completely overcome my pickiness.

    Two years ago, I moved into an apartment and had to cook for myself for the first time in my life. I found that I truly enjoyed cooking, but my repertoire of dinner recipes was deplorably small. (I can only eat salmon and cous cous so many times in one week). Over the past two years I have observed my sister, my mom, my friends, and sometimes even cooking shows, to try to find new and exciting recipes, ones that I—miss hot-dog-without-the-dog—will actually like. Finding that balance between a healthy diet and a pleasurable diet has been, and continues to be, quite challenging. But I do feel as though I’m making progress. So I thought I’d start this blog in the hopes that I will be able to reach out to other picky eaters and give them some hope and, more importantly, some yummy (and healthy) recipe ideas.


Roasted Broccoli (don’t knock it ‘til you try it):

Ingredients:

1 head of broccoli

4 Tbsp olive oil (or more to taste)

3 Tbsp salt (or more to taste)

Directions:
Preheat oven to 425°. Cut broccoli into bite-size pieces, trimming stems as short or long as you like, and place pieces onto a baking sheet. Drizzle olive oil over the broccoli, covering all pieces equally. Sprinkle salt over broccoli pieces (go easy on the salt your first time, you don’t want to get too much. And you can always add more once you’ve cooked it). Roast in oven for 20 minutes or until broccoli pieces begin to turn brown. Remove from oven and serve hot.