queerbychoice (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
queerbychoice) wrote2009-07-02 10:37 pm
queerbychoice) wrote2009-07-02 10:37 pm
Susan's Birthday
Today is Susan's birthday. She is now an old lady of 43! I gave her some books (by Jung Chang, M. F. K. Fisher, Nega Mezlekia, and Aung San Suu Kyi), a DVD of the complete Fawlty Towers TV series, a sun-tea container, some socks, and a new pair of tennis shoes. She decided to have birthday cake before dinner rather than after dinner, so I pushed 43 candles into the cake I had bought her and attempted to light them all. Susan helped me light them, but some of them still burned almost down to cake level by the time we finished lighting them.
We went out to an Indian restaurant for dinner, because Susan had been craving spicy-hot chicken vindaloo. I have zero tolerance for any degree whatsoever of spicy-hotness, so I generally avoid Indian restaurants, but Susan said she would be able to recommend foods there that I could eat. The restaurant was a tiny little place in which the woman serving us seemed to also be the chef. We had four shared appetizers - papadom, veggie samosas, aloo paratha, and garlic naan. The papadom came first, with two different sauces to put on it. Susan tried them both and told me the red sauce was sweet and the green sauce was minty. I tried them both and concluded that the red sauce was spicy-hot and yucky and the green sauce was spicy-hot and yucky with vegetable-flavored yuckiness mixed in. I declined to eat any more, so Susan ate mine. Then the veggie samosas arrived. Susan said they were good and that I could pick out the peas (because I hate to eat anything green). I said they were spicy-hot and inedible, so Susan ate mine. When the aloo paratha arrived, I found it to be spicy-hot and inedible also, but the garlic naan was all right. So I ate garlic naan and drank mango lassi. The mango lassi was absolutely delicious, so much so that I thought I would look for it at the local Indian grocery stores in the future - except that it turns out to contain yogurt rather than a rice drink as Susan had claimed, and it did somewhat bother my lactose intolerance, so I guess I shouldn't look for it after all. Susan tried my mango lassi and hated it, because she hates mango flavoring.
My chicken biriyani contained an awful lot of vegetables for me to pick out, but I was relieved to find that it was not spicy-hot; it was flavored only with tomato sauce. It was edible, though not delicious. Susan's chicken vindaloo, however, was apparently not spicy-hot at all either. She even gave me a bit of the potato from it, and I confirmed that it was in fact not spicy-hot at all. She was disappointed by this, and attempted to express her disappointment to the server/chef by saying that it didn't have the spicy kick she had been expecting. The server/chef misinterpreted this as a compliment and exclaimed that she had tasted it and made sure it wasn't spicy - she was apparently convinced that because Susan is white, Susan couldn't possibly actually want her food flavored the way she had ordered it. Susan was too cowed after this response to try again to request spiciness. I was extremely amused by this, not least because the restaurant's racial stereotyping would have been entirely accurate if they had only applied it to me - in fact, they apparently didn't racially stereotype me enough, since so many of the appetizers were too spicy-hot for me to be able to eat them. We agreed that it is practically impossible for anyone to be any more white than I am, at least food-wise. Well, and skin color-wise, too. Poor Susan, stereotyped as having the same food preferences as me, just because her ancestors are from the same continent as mine.
Now Susan is feeling a bit ill from eating too much, no doubt because she had to eat my share of all but one of our appetizers. I probably should not be so amused by the fact that her birthday dinner went awry.
And now, on a completely unrelated note: Look at Stardust and Ganymede sleeping next to each other! We have such adorable pets.
We went out to an Indian restaurant for dinner, because Susan had been craving spicy-hot chicken vindaloo. I have zero tolerance for any degree whatsoever of spicy-hotness, so I generally avoid Indian restaurants, but Susan said she would be able to recommend foods there that I could eat. The restaurant was a tiny little place in which the woman serving us seemed to also be the chef. We had four shared appetizers - papadom, veggie samosas, aloo paratha, and garlic naan. The papadom came first, with two different sauces to put on it. Susan tried them both and told me the red sauce was sweet and the green sauce was minty. I tried them both and concluded that the red sauce was spicy-hot and yucky and the green sauce was spicy-hot and yucky with vegetable-flavored yuckiness mixed in. I declined to eat any more, so Susan ate mine. Then the veggie samosas arrived. Susan said they were good and that I could pick out the peas (because I hate to eat anything green). I said they were spicy-hot and inedible, so Susan ate mine. When the aloo paratha arrived, I found it to be spicy-hot and inedible also, but the garlic naan was all right. So I ate garlic naan and drank mango lassi. The mango lassi was absolutely delicious, so much so that I thought I would look for it at the local Indian grocery stores in the future - except that it turns out to contain yogurt rather than a rice drink as Susan had claimed, and it did somewhat bother my lactose intolerance, so I guess I shouldn't look for it after all. Susan tried my mango lassi and hated it, because she hates mango flavoring.
My chicken biriyani contained an awful lot of vegetables for me to pick out, but I was relieved to find that it was not spicy-hot; it was flavored only with tomato sauce. It was edible, though not delicious. Susan's chicken vindaloo, however, was apparently not spicy-hot at all either. She even gave me a bit of the potato from it, and I confirmed that it was in fact not spicy-hot at all. She was disappointed by this, and attempted to express her disappointment to the server/chef by saying that it didn't have the spicy kick she had been expecting. The server/chef misinterpreted this as a compliment and exclaimed that she had tasted it and made sure it wasn't spicy - she was apparently convinced that because Susan is white, Susan couldn't possibly actually want her food flavored the way she had ordered it. Susan was too cowed after this response to try again to request spiciness. I was extremely amused by this, not least because the restaurant's racial stereotyping would have been entirely accurate if they had only applied it to me - in fact, they apparently didn't racially stereotype me enough, since so many of the appetizers were too spicy-hot for me to be able to eat them. We agreed that it is practically impossible for anyone to be any more white than I am, at least food-wise. Well, and skin color-wise, too. Poor Susan, stereotyped as having the same food preferences as me, just because her ancestors are from the same continent as mine.
Now Susan is feeling a bit ill from eating too much, no doubt because she had to eat my share of all but one of our appetizers. I probably should not be so amused by the fact that her birthday dinner went awry.
And now, on a completely unrelated note: Look at Stardust and Ganymede sleeping next to each other! We have such adorable pets.
no subject
What kind of food did your parents feed you as a kid? Was it hard for them to feed you, or were they not into "adventurous" eating?
no subject
My parents are not very adventurous eaters in terms of eating foods from other cultures. They never tried to take me to any ethnic restaurants. They did try to feed me vegetables - my mother loves all sorts of vegetables - but they didn't succeed.
My parents both dislike basically all fruit in almost the same way that I dislike basically all vegetables, so they actually prevented me from ever eating much of anything in the entire fruit and vegetable food group, because the only fruit they ever bought was a couple of apples and one bunch of bananas approximately once a year. At one point my father planted strawberries, which was great for a while, but then the strawberry plant spread all over and started producing something like 50 strawberries a day, and no one would eat any of them except me, and my father kept bringing in 50 strawberries from the yard every day and expecting me to eat them all. Even though I like strawberries, 50 strawberries a day every single day was a bit much. I tried to explain this, but my refusal to eat every single strawberry just caused him to conclude, "You said you liked strawberries so I planted them for you, but you don't really like strawberries at all, because you're not eating them! Look at all these strawberries going to waste because you're not eating them!" and then he dug up the strawberry plant because I supposedly "didn't like strawberries."
My mother also cooked fish maybe twice per month - badly; she cooked it so it was dry and hard and even she always said she was terrible at cooking fish - and she cooked tacos maybe three times per month, which were not at all spicy-hot the way she made them. This was about as adventurous as our menu ever got, and I pretty much went hungry every time she made either of those, because I hated her fish (I've still never tried fish cooked by anyone who knows how to cook it, so I have no idea whether it could be edible then) and I'm not very fond of tacos, even when there isn't anything spicy-hot or green in them.
no subject
That is sad about the strawberries. I wish we had a yard full of strawberries. I think that will be something to plant next year. Fruit is the easiest way to feed kids! Attitudes were so different then, though. Nowadays I think some people have gone to the totally opposite extreme and make their kids "kid friendly" foods and completely separate meals of macaroni and chicken nuggets, which blows my mind.
I also have nasty fish memories which I will probably never know whether or not it was prepared poorly or the wrong kind of fish or if I just truly hate eating fish.
no subject
Lactose and spiciness intolerance is a bad combination, I've got the same thing. I often like the flavor behind the spiciness, but dairy is generally the best thing for putting out the burn, so I wind up not bothering.
no subject
no subject
no subject
Huh. I am having a hard time accepting your equating of whiteness with bland food. I actually find it pretty offensive. Is this what you actually meant to say here?
no subject