I’m Bored. Let’s Eat.

Eating tasty food is one of the most satisfying parts of any day. Some days I can’t wait to eat and I eagerly await my stomach to growl at me so I can fill it with delicious food. However when I’m busy working on something, sometimes it’s easy to forget to eat. If I’m in the middle of a project and really focused on it, then somehow eating becomes an afterthought—almost an annoyance. I don’t want to eat because then I have to stop what I’m doing and take a ten minute break to wolf down sustenance so I can continue on (and it seems like such a hassle). [Sigh.]

On the flip side, I may want to eat if I’m bored. I want to nibble, nosh, munch and taste something tasty. I know I’m not actually hungry, but I feel like eating something. I think this wanting to eat for the sake of eating is most apparent when watching TV (because who doesn’t want a little snack while watching TV?). Somehow popcorn seems to make just about any TV show a bit more palatable to watch.

Sometimes I’ll catch myself and realize that my hands just want to be busy, so instead of eating I ought to do something with my hands (e.g. knitting, drawing, crafting, etc.), which is infinitely better for my already full stomach. It’s excessively easy to mindlessly snack, so I just need to distract my hands so I don’t end up eating something I don’t really need.  

From Eww to Ooh

When I was a kid, there were certain foods I hated to eat. I don’t think I was a particularly picky eater, but there were definitely some foods that made me scrunch my face in distaste. Lima beans and peas spring to mind, as I would often do my best to avoid tasting these vegetables by swallowing them like pills. Green onions were another vegetable that I had little appreciation for; when they appeared in my miso soup, I would try to get them to cling to the inside rim of the bowl so I could avoid consuming them. Yet, as time passed, my tastes changed (at least some of if). While I still dislike lima beans, I love green onions and eat them all the time.

Supposedly the lifespan of a tastebud is about ten days, so it seems inevitable that eventually our taste preferences shift. I’ve grown to love many foods that I previously loathed. I’m not sure if it was because I was forced to consume them so many times that they naturally grew on me or if my tastebuds just magically decided one day to love them. I can’t really pinpoint the exact turning point from hate to love, I’ll just realize one day that I’m eating (and enjoying) something that I used to avoid like the plague.

However, I’m still waiting to love some foods. I’d really like to love green peppers. I made some headway when I eventually grew to love roasted red peppers, but green peppers are another story; I’m not a fan of them raw or cooked. It’s really too bad because it would be so convenient to love them as they seem to be everywhere, in stir-fries, salads, sandwiches, pasta and pizza, and they’re used in a ton of different cuisines, like Chinese, Mexican, Italian and Thai. Not loving (or even liking) green peppers really limits what I want to eat (and eliminating them completely from a dish can change the overall flavor profile—which I’d rather not do). [Sigh.] I keep hoping that I’ll wake up one day and love green peppers…only it hasn’t happened yet.