Carrot Ginger Soup AND Baked Potato

MAY 23

          I ate some carrot and ginger soup at dinner while I was waiting for my sweet potato bowl to come out of the freezer (don’t ask). The difference between eating with oblivious friends and eating with your parents is that your parents stare at you.

         I should stare right back though. It’s easy – and fun – to blame them for my picky eating. When I was much younger (like two), I was not a particularly picky eater. I started having allergic reactions though so my parents were told to start me from scratch: reintroduce me to a couple of foods at a time, allowing them to identify the allergen. (It turned out to be – mamma mia! – cranberries.) Unfortunately, my parents failed to reintroduce me to all the foods I had eaten before and starting over as a new eater from scratch proved a fatal blow.         

         It was also a big help that they never cooked me dinner, allowing me to have a jelly sandwich (not a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, just a jelly sandwich), instead of demanding that I eat the pork loins they had prepared. (I’ve never had pork loins. They never prepared pork loins. At least I can claim I’m kosher. I’m not.) When my mom was in the cooking mood, she would make me French toast. For dinner. It was damn good French toast too.

         All of which is why I resent being stared at while I attempt to right the wrongs that were committed unto me in my childhood. Also it’s harder to surreptitiously spit something out while you’re being watched by two pairs of eyes.

         To be honest, the carrot ginger soup wasn’t so bad. It’s all one texture, all one color, a really gorgeous orange-brown. But, appearances aside, what could be wrong with it? Carrot ginger soup is like a hot carrot ginger yogurt. I like yogurt. I like carrot. I like ginger. (In, like, gingerbread at least.) I like hot things. (For argument’s sake, forget the sweet potato in the freezer.) So I had some spoons of it. It was fine. It wasn’t incredible. It was not the messiah of foods. I would taste it again. Maybe.

         Once it started cooling off, it tasted pretty disgusting. But the hot parts were good, I guess. A better start than the godforsaken chunky chicken wings. I didn’t exactly finish my soup portion. But I had a number of spoons. Small spoons. Like five of them. Maybe even six. It’s a process.

         Then I tried a bite of baked potato (not frozen). It was stringy and weird. It had no taste. Sorta cardboardy. My dad said it was not a great potato and I should not judge baked potatoes baked on that one potato. Nice try, dad. I won’t judge Lizzie Borden for that one off day either.    

So there, best friend’s family, I don’t like only white foods. I ate the orange-brown carrot-ginger soup and abhorred the super-white baked potato.

I got my yams out of the freezer and let them thaw. Now that’s good stuff.