THURSDAY THE LONG WAY: OUT OF FAVOR

Thursday highlights food from out of the way places, food memories that have formed the way I view food, both cooking it and eating it. These memories may be inspired by recent meals, the food-media, or anything at all.

Last Thursday I documented my ice cream history, ending with my newfound reintroduction to a fascination with chocolate and peanutbutter. What I forgot, the subject of this Thursday's The Long Way is what happened to interrupt that fascination.

You ever find a food or a flavor that you just have to eat over and over again? Ever get obsessed to the point that you feel like a little kid? I remember loving oranges. As a kid I could drink a full container of OJ without batting an eye. But one day at lunch in Hong Kong at the French International School cafeteria that all changed. Having already finished one orange, I reached for another. I peeled it and then pulled it apart into two sections. To my horror it was black in the middle-- completely rotten with black and white mold, the center core an inch thick of rot. Almost immediately I was completely turned off oranges. What if I had just bitten into the orange? I would have had that rot in my mouth!

My recent love for peanutbutter cups seems almost like a kid's obsession with his favorite candy. It's almost as if something was blocking that childlike love that was held back, retarded but stayed there until the wall was removed. Well, I just remembered the wall. One night I went into the kitchen to make myself an ice cream sundae. I remembered we had some Reeses' peanut butter cups in the cupboard and had the idea to crush them up and sprinkle them on top of some vanilla ice cream to dress it up. Well, when I crushed those candies I found a nasty surprise, little squirming white worms. It was the fact that I crushed them that turned me off the candies for years. I never crushed candy, it was only luck that I'd done it this time. What if I'd just put it in my mouth? I'd have eaten worms. That experience was so horrible that I'd blocked it out over 17 years later. It makes you think. It also makes you wonder how many nasty things have you've eaten without knowing it.

To a lesser extent I fall in love with foods now too. The love affair can be as strong though now it's more like appreciating aesthetics in variety and the abstract as opposed to falling for the conventional beauty.

I read a great article I can't find by a guy who brilliantly expressed what it was like to go to lunch at work at a company for several years in one place. He would find a place that made something he liked and go there every day. Maybe it was the egg salad sandwich they made that hooked him, maybe it was a burrito, but he couldn't get enough of it whether it was the routine or the taste of the food and he returned every day. Soon the guys behind the counter knew him as the burrito or egg salad man and then soon after that they knew him by name and then before you know it you're moving beyond the weather and talking with the guy behind the counter about vacation plans and your girlfriend or his money problems and that's not necessarily what makes you move on but one day for some reason you make a right instead of a left and all of a sudden you're eating a bowl of soup or a panini, or a slice of pizza or a salad and poof, everyone likes to fall in love so what do you do but start all over again.

For instance, I don't eat candy bars anymore but for a year and a half my love for spicy tuna rolled around shrimp tempura with a spicy dressing was passionate enough that I was a regular at the restaurant down the street from The New York Times, Haru, the Phoenix Maki Roll. Falling out of love with these favorites isn't anywhere near as dramatic as it was when I was a kid, but in a way they're more sad. I moved on from the Phoenix Maki because I stopped eating heavy lunches and switched to smoothies to lose weight.

Hmm, no, strike that, I'm still in love with Phoenix Maki, in fact, it might be time to stop by Haru.