What We Love Wednesdays!! - The Laura Edition - Being A 'Foodie'

Hi everyone, we hope you are having a fantastic week!

Today's WWLW is really more of a 'What Laura Loves Wednesday'. Because I'm not sure Sarah necessarily loves today's topic. I love introducing new things, especially new foods, to Sarah. In order for this to make any sense at all, let me give you a bit of background on Sarah and food.

Looking so innocent with her carbonara...

My girlfriend, in life, is very cautious when faced with new things. This is something I love about her and need in my life, but also that frustrates me to no end. I, on the other hand, have great big ideas and plans and run towards new things at one hundred miles per hour, with a 'it'll be great until I'm proven otherwise' mentality - which I am sure (well, I hope) Sarah loves, but also makes for some serious disappointment when my plans don't work out or when it turns out I don't like something. So when Sarah approaches my new things/experiences/plans with great caution and thinking she probably won't like it, we have arguments. Big, dramatic, theatrical (me) and annoyingly logical, level-headed (Sarah) arguments. 

Our arguments look like this.

Nowhere is this extreme clashing of attitudes more prevalent than when it comes to food. Whereas I have grown up with a passion for food (can't you tell? haha), trying everything, loving lots of different types, and having a probably unhealthy habit of remembering experiences by the food I ate that day, in Sarah's house it was a very different story. She only really ate because she had to - didn't take great pleasure in it, besides potatoes and Cadbury's Creme Eggs. Her parents feel the same - they actually eat dinner every other day, and on the off days, have Bran Flakes for dinner! 

This is how happy I am about food. All the time.

This resulted in Sarah not having ever eaten a lot of classic, delicious foods - because she had convinced herself she wouldn't like them. Imagine my horror to learn that she hadn't tried a strawberry until she was 21 years old?? Her college housemates conducted a blind taste test with her for different fruits and veggies - and every time she ate some healthy food, she was allowed to have some chocolate. My Sarah, at 8 years old, actually convinced her parents to agree that she wouldn't have to eat any vegetables, as long as she had baked beans with every meal! She should have been a lawyer! 

**Here's a picture of me using Sarah's lack of food experience as pub quiz questions at our local in Sydney for Sarah's birthday 2010 - we'd play a game where they'd name off clues about someone, and each team had to write the answer on a piece of paper when they knew who it was and run up. Little did Sarah know, she was the answer that time! Her reaction is nothing short of adorable.** 

One thing I always knew was that the person I ended up with had to love cheese. Yes, I understand how weird that sounds. I'm not talking putting up with a bit of cheddar here, I wanted my partner to appreciate the beauty that is Camembert, love them some Gorgonzola and live by the motto that my Dad taught me when I was little - the smellier the cheese, the better it is! I remember he used to open the cheese drawer in our fridge and take a deep dramatic breath with a big grin on his face - THAT'S THE STUFF!! Then next thing you know the whole kitchen would smell like French cheese. It was awesome. So when Sarah confided in me that she 'only liked cheese on pizza', I was beside myself and immediately launched into a speech about how incredible cheese is and how she needs to appreciate it if she wants to marry me (hey, I never said I was easy to live with!). I'm relatively sure she thought I was bat crazy. She now knows that she was right. Nevertheless, a (very) reluctant Sarah sat through my cheese appreciation lectures, my stories about how I picture my future with her as a 'foodie', my ordering of cheese platters wherever we went - I hoped she'd learn to like it just from exposure to it! 

Sarah protested so much - so I was very excited when she discovered she liked Brie. Out of seemingly nowhere, my 'melted cheese is the only good kind of cheese' girlfriend was eating real cheese - sure, it's a mild one, but it's FRENCH! From there, she has moved onto small amounts of Gorgonzola (I make an awesome chicken stuffed with Gorgonzola wrapped in bacon), and has actually requested Camembert occasionally. I will never forget the day she made me the happiest girl in the world. In Australia, we were driving the back streets of the countryside, when we happened upon a goats' cheese factory. We went in to check it out, and Sarah, completely on her own, went to the samples area, asked to try each one, and ended up buying goats' cheese with sweet chili in it!! *Sniff* I am so lucky. 

Some of my fav foods - in Sydney for my 22nd birthday with Mum & Sarah!

My other favourite Sarah food moment so far was also in Australia - this time at my grandparents' house on the Central Coast. My grandparents are amazing, so funny and love Sarah. My Nan actually got us to write a list of food Sarah DOES like - because 'the list of what she doesn't like would be much longer'. Hahaha amazing!! That list was taped to the kitchen counter the entire 8 months we were there. It may still even be there. So yeah, Sarah gets a bit of a reputation for being a picky eater everywhere she goes. Not many of you will have eaten proper Aussie prawns with the shells on (vegetarians, I suggest you skip to the paragraph after next ;D ) - but it's commonly done, in my Aussie family at least, that someone goes to get freshly caught and cooked prawns wrapped up in newspaper - you then need to wrench off the head and rip off the legs and shell, then squeeze off the tail to be able to eat said prawn. Apologies about the very graphic description you got there, but it most accurately describes what happens. It's kind of a right of passage with my Aussie family - I remember when I was 13, I used a knife to cut off the heads instead of doing it with my fingers (heaven forbid!) - and I still haven't lived it down, 10 years later. Sarah had only ever eaten battered prawns. Needless to say, she was seriously dreading P-day (prawns, get it?) at my g-parents' casa.  

Dun, dun, DUNNNNNN

One fateful Saturday, I was sitting in the garden, when Sarah rushed outside looking like she'd seen a ghost. 'IT'S HERE!!' she said - P-Day was upon us. I tried to comfort her, but she had opened the fridge to get a soda, just to find a bowl of them staring back at her. 'SO MANY EYES!!' she gasped, almost hyperventilating! I laughed - it's really no big deal. But I could see how nervous she was, so I decided to take an emergency measure - I took her to the shops to get some sweet chili sauce - I know my girlfriend will eat anything covered in sweet chili!! She was temporarily consoled - I was a hero. But even I couldn't save her at lunch. We all sat down to the table (me, her, Nan, Pop, my aunt and uncle) and nobody said a word. I started lunch - peeling prawns and making a little sandwich, and Sarah took a prawn, and put it under her napkin (so it wouldn't stare at her) and started eating a roll. My Pop was full-on watching her to see what she'd do with it!! Eventually we got everyone to start eating, and with the pressure off, Sarah successfully de-shelled her first few prawns and ate them in a sweet chili sandwich. So proud, she was successfully initiated!! After all the pre-prawn drama, she quite liked them, and we had them a few more times while visiting Nan & Pop.

In Buff Point, Australia with my g-parents - check those Aussie tans! We barely recognize our non-pasty selves!!

And then there's the banana story - if you ever meet Sarah, you'll see she is proud that she grew up on her 'unhealthy' diet and didn't put on weight - born lucky for sure! The story starts back in her childhood. Until the age of 4, Sarah was told that bananas were candy! It was one summer afternoon that Sarah's Dad took her to the shops, and as they didn't see any fruit, Sarah got to pick a lollipop - and that was the end of bananas, and in fact fruit as a whole! She had tasted real candy, and from then on the only fruit Sarah had came from fruit-flavoured sweets. In fact, on her 21st birthday her Uni friends gave her a huge container of skittles with a warning that 'This jar DOES NOT contain real fruit' and a jar containing 'real fruit' - guess which one got eaten! 

I very much enjoyed introducing my girlfriend to these new foods, and so many others. I am responsible for Sarah loving kiwi fruit (she was convinced she had previously tried it and hated it - but now she loves it!), banana bread (she 'doesn't like' bananas or cinnamon, but somehow she ended up loving my banana bread, despite refusing to try it originally), sweet potato, pumpkin, pate (she resisted on that one for a long time, but now orders it on her own in restaurants, and has twice brought some especially delicious pate home so I can try it too!), cheese stuffed peppers, regular peppers, most types of mexican food, and countless other things. And I will definitely continue - my girl is turning into a foodie! And they say dreams don't come true... 

What have you introduced your partner to? 

Love always, 

Laura xo