emmadilemma's Profile

This is such an interesting topic. My husband told me about an article he read a while back, where a professional food critic set out to learn to love something like eight foods he couldn't stand - as others have mentioned, he thought as a food lover and professional, he shouldn't let his personal dislikes get in the way of proper judgment. So he just tried these various foods over and over until he liked them. One of them is now a favourite food. Of the eight, there was only one he never came around to enjoying. So fascinating!

I have to say I'm pretty proud that I have overcome a lot of sort of irrational food dislikes over the years. I used to hate tomato sauce, avocados, mayo, soy sauce, lots of other stuff. Usually what happened was that one I became an adult, I tried them after years of just assuming I didn't like them, and thus avoiding them, and surprise surprise - they're delicious or at least tolerable.

I think to a certain extent just being open to new foods is sort of just an aspect of maturity. I know it sounds judge-y, but it always strikes me as a bit pathetic when another adult "won't eat" onions or some other super-common food. I think there must be a psychological element to it!

That said, it's up to each individual whether they WANT to learn to like certain foods. I personally don't eat any red meat or shellfish, so for me, it's important that I work at not having a billion other food hangups.

Ever since you guys posted a link to spicy chickpea sandwiches ( http://www.thekitchn.com/spicy-chickpeas-and-triple-cho-80167), they have been a HUGE favourite of mine. Love, love, love it.

@lacyD... Apparently, expeller pressed coconut oil has a much more bland, uncoconutty taste than virgin coconut oil. I've only ever tried virgin oil (several brands over the years), and it definitely has a mild coconut flavour, which is fine in baking and certain savoury dishes, but not to my personal liking in other dishes. If you can find expeller pressed, you'd probably prefer it.

I completely agree with @lintuski. I read this review when it was published, and remember being really put off by the comments about the focus on artificial sweetener.

Then I happened to see the book at the library and brought it home, where I've been poring over it for the last couple of days. To my surprise I found none of that emphasis in the book. In fact, I think every recipe that calls for a sweetener gives specific measurements for both Splenda and stevia, which is a rare thing to come across, and very much appreciated (along with weight measurements for key ingredients - another very helpful bonus).

As someone who consciously tries to eat little in the way of grain but doesn't fully embrace the paleo diet, I really love this book - so many of the gluten-free cookbooks on the market today are full of recipes that are based on rice- and other gluten-free, grain-based flours, most of which have little in the way of real nutritional value. With so many people embracing so many different styles of eating these days, this is a rare book that is easily adaptable to many different diets...kudos to the authors for that!

I just recently bought an ebook called Awaken: 30+ Egg-Free and Grain-Free Breakfasts by Karen Sorenson. This particular combination of diet preferences/requirements can be tough to work with, but Karen provides lots of great ideas!

Genius!! Love it, love it, love it.

My bets are also on wonky oven temps. Getting a cheap oven thermometer was a huge help for me - my oven is 25 degrees hotter than the dial reads!

Another tip I learned from a Wilton cake decorating class was to use Bake Even Strips - they're insulated strips you wrap around the top of your metal cake pan, that keep the outer edges of the cake from baking before the middle has had a chance to heat up. In my experience they're really effective at producing evenly-baked and non-domed cakes. They're not expensive and come in several sizes.

Good luck!

My favourite thing to do is to make beetniks - a Canadian prairie specialty! Essentially you take little chunks of bread dough and wrap beet leaves around them (the beetniks); bake; then saute up some dill and onions, add heavy cream, toss the baked beetniks in and try not to devour the whole batch. Here's a recipe: http://homefordinner.blogspot.ca/2009/09/to-beet-or-not-to-beet-beetniks.html

My favourite memory is a new one. For the last 5 or 6 years, my sister and I have decorated sugar cookies with our young nieces and nephew, who live in another province. This year I wondered if the eldest might be getting too old for it, but she assured us that she'll NEVER be too old to decorate cookies. This year, this activity will be our gift to them, instead of some tangible, wrapped present. I love this tradition and hope we can keep it up!

I made these the other day - SOOOO good. They taste like a Ferrero Rocher! Yum.

Anyway, once I stirred the oats in, I thought it looked a bit runny still and threw another 1/2 cup of oats in - that was a mistake - while delicious, the cookies are pretty hard, and not chewy like they should be. Will definitely stick to the recipe next time... and there will be a next time.