Age 8: My family and two others rent a house on a Caribbean island for spring break. The house has a hosekeeper, who mostly cleans, but one day she makes a pan of shortbread and tells us kids that we can eat it. It is mildly sweet and crumbly and amazing, nothing like the chocolate chip cookies and oatmeal scotchies my mom makes. For the rest of the day I keep making excuses to sneak back into the kitchen for another piece.
Age 11: At a sleepover at a friend’s house, her mom serves us stuffed peppers for dinner. “They’re my favorite!” she gushes. As I cut into mine, one side of the pepper splits open and watery tomato sauce and gray ground beef squirt out. I take one bite and spit it into my napkin. I tell my friend’s mom I don’t eat meat, and for a month afterwards I don’t, trying to make my lie true by sticking to it. I don’t eat another stuffed pepper for nineteen years.
Age 16: My boyfriend’s mother is a fabulous cook. She makes an Italian feast- Bolognese and lasagna and eggplant parmigiana. At this point I don’t eat meat for real, so I take a heaping portion of eggplant. It tastes like heaven with the fried and the sauce and the cheese, but an hour later my mouth and throat itch and my tongue feels heavy. It takes me years of suffering through earnest eggplant-heavy vegetarian entrees for me to realize I have a nightshade sensitivity.
Age 17: The letter arrives in a small envelope, so I’m sure I’ve been rejected. But when I open it, it says “congratulations on your admission!” My dad, ecstatic that I’ve chosen his alma mater, breaks open a dusty bottle of champagne, pours a glass for all of us, even my 15 year old sister. A picture from that night still sits on his desk, me holding a crystal champagne glass from my parents’ wedding, hair in a sloppy ponytail, wearing jeans and a college tshirt from a different college.
Age 18: After a scholastic bowl meet (shut up), my friends go to Panda Express to pick up dinner. The restaurant’s about to close, so they give my friends whole trays of food they were going to throw out, charging $10 for enough to feed dozens. My mom’s allergic to MSG so I’ve never had Chinese food, and I mow through half a pan of lo mein noodles, unable to get enough of the new flavor.
Age 20: Once a term, our house hosts “special dinner,” where the house chef cooks nicer food, with a theme. There is also booze. After a contentious vote, the house has decided on sushi, so the chef makes dozens of rolls, including many for the house’s few vegetarians, carrot and cucumber and avocado and sweet potato. I eat a few bites, but the vinegar-y rice tastes odd to me, and I don’t like the warm sake, and I complain bitterly about what a waste of a special dinner it was. A year later, when I try sushi again and fall in love with it, I kick myself for not gorging that night.
Age 25: Twice a week, after teaching all day, I go to a science classroom in a nearby middle school and suffer through teaching certification classes from 6-10 pm with 20 other new teachers. We get a 30 minute break for dinner, too short to go anywhere far, but someone discovers Lee’s sandwiches in the adjacent Vietnamese mini mall. The sandwich with tofu is entirely foreign and entirely delicious, salty and sweet and hot, and for the rest of the year every Monday and Wednesday for dinner I have a $2 sandwich and a strawberry smoothie made with sweetened condensed milk and boba. I feel profound loss when I move away two years later and for months am unable to find decent banh mi or bubble tea in Chicago.
This weekend: For a friend’s birthday, we go to dim sum. Her husband has researched online all the crazy dishes he wants, and orders for the table. Dishes start arriving quickly, one after another, and no longer vegetarian, I take some of everything. Including the pig’s ear. It was chewy.
