picky eater..need some help.

[Guest guest]

First off, rather than saying picky eater, how about " person with discriminating

tastes. " Do you plan on going totally vegan and not eating dairy and eggs? If

you're keeping dairy and eggs, there are so many things you can do and it makes

keeping your protein levels where they should be. My mother always considered me

a picky eater but it was just that I liked food cooked properly! Er....you might

want to keep that kind of comment from your mother's ears, if you know what I

mean? She might be a wee insulted.

 

What kinds of foods do you like? What kinds of vegetables? If you're OK with

beans and Mexican food, your Mom will discover that you are a lot cheaper to

keep around the house. Offhand, I can think of tacos, burritos, taco salad,

quesadillas, red beans and rice, refried beans with Spanish rice and much more.

If all my husband person and I do for a week's dinners is beans with extras to

fix the meals (masa to make tortillas, tomatoes, cheese, peppers, things like

that), I can get away with $5 to make a week's worth of dinners.It would run a

bit higher if I had to buy the tortillas and all the fresh vegetables, but I

don't know how wild the cook in your family would be about having to make fresh

tortillas every day.

 

If you don't much like Tex-Mex fusion cooking, you'll still be able to adapt

pretty much every one of the world's cuisine, just minus the flesh. The first

vegetarian dishes my husband and I started with were the typical beans,

tortillas and rice, and even after all this time, that is still our favorite.

 

Spaghetti with marinara sauce is great and you don't need meat in it. If you

like, wash and dice a zucchini squash and add it to the sauce, letting it simmer

till the squash is cooked. You really won't taste it as much as you would have

if someone boiled it and put it in front of you. (Yuk, by the way; zucchini is

lovely but some people sin mightily against it by turning it into tasteless

mush.) There are a bunch of veggies that you can stick in a marinara (tomato)

sauce.

 

Stuff a half of a pita bread with your preference of salad stuff (lettuce,

tomatoes, cucumbers, whatever), a bit of sprouts (the things in the grocery

store are ancient and not any way near as good as home grown), some cooked

beans, drained, and your preferred dressing with cheese on top. (cheese is

optional)

 

Fast casserole - Spanish rice (you can make your own or buy a can of it),

drained black beans, drained corn, gently toss together and bake in oven till

warm. If you're still OK with cheese, top with a little grated Cheddar or

Monterrey Jack before baking. We love black olives, so I throw in a handful of

pitted, sliced black olives. We also use olives and mushrooms in our marinara

sauce. Yum. If you want, I can post a week or so menu ideas sometime this week.

There is a huge wealth of recipes in the files here, and something is bound to

sound good to you.

 

A lot of people cannot stand cabbage. I love cabbage, but not when someone has

boiled the he....... dickens out of it. Stir frying thinly sliced cabbage with

some thinly sliced onions is very good. I add some reconstituted TVP (vegetable

protein), cooked brown rice and a little tomato sauce for an unstuffed cabbage

casserole.

 

Here's some ammunition for your life choice. Go to the library and check out the

book Diet For A Small Planet by Francis Moore Lappe. I'm not sure if it is still

in print, but in addition to some vegetarian recipes for starting out, there is

a large amount of information on meat, meat production, chemicals and all that

other sludge.

 

Eating vegetarian doesn't have to be boring, and I am sure you'll encounter many

vegetables and dishes you never thought you'd eat. If you go out to a fast food

place and have a burger, don't beat yourself up about it! Despite 20 plus years

as a lacto-ovo (dairy and eggs, lots of veggies) vegetarian, I know if someone

put a boiled lobster in front of me, it would take a LOT of will power to not

eat it. Thankfully at 20 plus dollars a pound, there isn't a snowball's chance

in Miami that I'll be buying one, especially one of those pathetic creatures

swimming in the filthy water at the grocery store.

 

Here's what will happen (as it already has started with your mother not

understanding your commitment). Friends and family will have a LOT to say about

what you've chosen for yourself. Don't get into any hair-pulling, just calmly

respond that it is your choice. If you want to get into why, I suggest you bite

your tongue. It's your life but pretty much everyone you're going to encounter

for the rest of your life, will have an opinion of how you should live. Next,

there are going to be people who will " forget " and stick meat in everything

served to you, with the possible exception of ice cream.Trust me, if my late

mother in law could have put ham in the ice cream they made, she would have.

 

If you can eat peanut butter, keep it on hand. There will be times when there

just isn't anything served that you can/will eat or you need food, fast.

 

Once your body has flushed the meat stuff out of your body, don't be surprised

if you can smell a carnivore from several feet away. Also, you'll probably find

that food tastes a lot better, unless you smoke and have ruined your palate.

Hint hint.

 

So basically, work on what foods you already like, then branch out from there.

Learn how to cook for yourself, including cleaning up after yourself. That

should go a long way with convincing your maternal unit that you're serious

about this. Even if you don't convince her, it is still Your life and YOUR

choice - just put some honey on phrases like that. We maternal and

grand-maternal units can get rather tetchy when someone insults our cooking.

 

Finally, enjoy the journey. Jeanne in GA

[Guest guest]

Re: picky eater..need some help.

 

I agree with the person who said that you don't need to call yourself " picky " ,

but realize that you probably have particular likes and dislikes regarding

foods.

 

As a young child, I was called a " picky eater " for several years...My parents

(my dad, especially, had the idea that ALL food prepared for meals had to be

consumed, and, unfortunately, at mealtimes during my childhood, my parents would

" serve up " the food by

putting it on our (the kids') plates--servings THEY thought were adequate, which

were usually much too large.  We were expected to " clean our plates " and not to

waste the

food.

 

Well, of course, that would strike a nerve--not too many people, kids included,

want to be forced to eat something, willy-nilly--so, I (being of a stubborn

temperament anyway) riled

up my parents on several occasions by protesting that I " didn't like " something

they'd put on my plate.  Had they simply given me a very small portion to

TRY--my " pickiness " might

have been short-lived.

 

That being said, I found that, over time, I LEARNED to like many, many kinds of

foods.

This became especially true when I was on my own as a young adult and was able

to

choose what to eat or what to make as I was learning to cook for myself...and

later, for

my husband and my own kids.  I have learned to TRY new foods and have been

pleasantly surprised--MANY times-- that there are things I had never thought of

eating that I LIKE!

There are foods my Mom made when I was young that I didn't like, nothing against

Mom, but I just didn't care for the way she fixed them--I make the same foods

now myself and love them. 

 

So, I hope to encourage you to go ahead and try new foods.  You don't HAVE to

love them, just try something " new " every once in a while.  It's not bad,

either, to stick with things you really like as good, familiar stand-bys,

either--you might be surprised at finding something new that you really love!

 

One other thing that helped when I was first starting out on my own was to get a

few easy and interesting cookbooks.  It's great to have simple recipes that you

can be confident in trying--and it helps if you don't have to get too many

exotic ingredients to make a recipe.  I used the recipes that came with my Crock

Pot at first and those got me along quite well.

 

There are MANY recipes in the files of this group's site.  Look for ones that

sound good...look for ones that make sense to you...try a few of them....try

some new vegetarian foods, maybe a vegetable or a dish made with something

familiar to you but prepared in a new way.

 

There's probably an infinite variety of ways fix all the good foods that are out

there and you never have to eat the same thing day after day--you may find that

" picky " doesn't really describe you at all--your range of tastes may expand

before you know it!

 

I wish you good eating, fun cooking and great health!

 

--Laura B., in Illinois