Food tastes

Over the weekend, I went to my Father-in-law(FIL) and Step-mother-in-law's(SMIL)house to celebrate the third birthday of their adoptive daughter, my mini-sister-in-law (MSIL). The child being three and therefore not in pre-school yet doesn't have a lot of other friends who are children just yet. So her party was what I came to know later in life as "The Family Party" as opposed to "the kid party".

Upon arrival we meander around and engage in the obligatory small talk. Thankfully, they were mostly interested in my wife's new role as a student teacher then anything about me. On this particular day I was feeling very anti-social, and really just didn't want to be around people. It had nothing to do with which people I was hanging around, it was just the the weekend was jam packed with stuff to do, so much so that I didn't get my time to just relax and recover from the week. Since this was Sunday night, I was just cranky. I wish that I was more pleasant, but I admit, I spent most of the night sitting in my FIL's arm chair playing with my IPhone editing my gaming blog. Luckily I wasn't the only anti-social one there, so i didn't look like a complete rogue.

Also, upon arriving I heard a phrase that perked my interest. My SMIL was discussing the dinner, and she said "We're experimenting tonight". This immediately translated to me as "Riley, you'll be eating at Wendy's after the party". please don't take this as an insult to my SMIL's cooking skills. From what I heard of the food was excellent. It was homemade chinese cuisine in honor of her daughter's heritage, which I thought was a very sweet gesture.

However, in the world of Riley's stomach, Chinese food comes from a take-out Chinese food place, no where else. I have never really had good homemade Chinese food, but then again, I am a very picky eater. Now I did try some of my SMIL's food, but it didn't sit well. The sweetbun with black beans inside just was off to me, but my wife loved them. The noodles went over with everyone, but they had sesame. Since sesame does something weird to my throat, I don't like to eat it. The shrimp dumplings were good, but after like 5 of them, my stomach started to get upset for some unknown reason. There was shrimp, but it was the whole shrimp kind that you have to peel. I am a firm believer in the belief that food should be ready to eat. Should I have to work for my food, then it falls under the Effort to get food/taste of food scale. To help demonstrate my point, I present guest commentator Barney Stinson:

In this video, Barney will describe the Hot/Crazy scale. So for our purposes, replace hot with taste of food, and crazy with effort to get food.





In my experience, shellfish rarely stay above this line, therefore I did not partake. I guess it's the kind of guy I am. I'm a meat and potatoes, the more the merrier type of guy. I like simple things like pasta-roni, baked ziti, Lasagna (which my SMIL makes a great version of),turkey burgers, steak with A1, buffalo wings, barbecue chicken, dominoes pizza, and fast food. It's the way i grew up. I just don't like fancy foods. It actually makes me feel bad sometimes when I can't taste the hint of basil, or that vinaigrette dressing ruins a salad for me, when it seems to enhance everyone else's. Wine tastes like bad grape juice to me. Desserts are a mine field to me. I don't like fruit pies, or baked fruit of any kind, so pies are out. Unless your cake is made from Dunkin Heinz, Betty Crocker, Little Debbie, or coldstone creamery...I probably won't like it.

So for those of you who now visit and view my blog I ask. Is it just me? Is there anyone else out there who is a picky eater like this?

And also, my SMIL's experimenting with food she's never cooked before on party day. I know that I wouldn't be brave enough to try this. Would you?