As many of you know, I have a little less than 12 months until I must complete the remainder of my Day Zero project. If you are too lazy to click on that link, what I mean is…on January 1st, 2008 I created a list of 101 goals that I gave myself 1,001 days to complete. I’ve posted a few updates about my progress since then. I’ll probably share the next update around January 1st of the upcoming new year. As Nicci pointed out today, my list appears to be way more difficult than some others, because there are several items that require multiple goals to be reached. For example, visiting five museums is actually more like 5 goals than one goal.
One of the most difficult goals I set for myself was to try 100 new foods. It wasn’t difficult in the sense that I had to find one hundred things I hadn’t tasted before — trust me, that was way too easy — it was difficult because I lived the first 24 years of my life being insanely picky about what foods I ate. I can’t possibly render in words the utter retardation of my old eating habits. I can think of maybe 5 dishes that made up my entire diet. I would eat pizza, cheeseburgers, eggs, bagels and pasta. There was never any adventure. I didn’t eat pepperoni on pizza until I was in high school. The first sausage I had on a pizza was here in Los Angeles. I never ate any “fixings” on a hamburger before I moved to Los Angeles. I didn’t eat cheeseburgers until middle school. I’d only ever toasted a bagel with butter, or put an egg and a slice of American cheese on it. I’d never had a cheese other than American, cheddar, or mozzerella before I moved to Los Angeles. I could go one for paragraphs, and paragraphs, and paragraphs, all about the complexities of my lack-of-a-diet. But then I started dating Nicci (who is an adventurous eater), and I realized that I needed to expand my horizons quickly. Otherwise she’d dump me. So…I started eating new things.
Here’s a list of the 100 new foods I have consumed in order to complete this goal of mine. I hope you have a good laugh at some of the entries, there are some really embarrassing items on this list.
01. Rum Cake
02. Crab Rangoon – Right after I bought myself a deep fryer, Nicci had the idea to cook “crab wontons,” which some of her New England native roommates defined as Crab Rangoon. Same thing, different name. It was pretty good. I’m glad the deep fryer got to experience something other than Oreos and Reese’s.
03. Lentils
04. Lebneh
05. Kalamata Olive
06. Black Olive
07. Quail – One of the first dates I went on with Nicci was to a restaurant in Echo Park called 15. It’s closed now. She ordered quail and I ordered rabbit. I could have just settled for macaroni and cheese (I read online somewhere that at 15 it was really good!) but I wanted to impress her, so I got rabbit. It was delicious. Her quail was surprisingly good too.
08. Rabbit
09. Radish
10. Okra – Fried, at a jazz bar where I took Nicci to see David “Honeyboy” Edwards.
11. Navy bean soup
12. Jackfruit
13. Plum
14. Vegetable wonton
15. Crepe
16. Banana pepper
17. Plantain
18. Goat cheese – Which, by the way, has become my favorite cheese. I can’t believe I didn’t know this existed before. My mom is amazed that I like it, because apparently she does not. I love it.
19. Guava
20. Mole
21. French Onion Soup – My sister used to order it at the Ritz Diner all the time, and I would be grossed out by the onions. It’s actually pretty good!
22. Brussels sprout
23. White Raisin
24. Sun Dried Tomato
25. Squash
26. Snap Peas
27. Swiss chard
28. Coxinha
29. Yucca flour
30. Potato leek soup
31. Shish kabob
32. Tuna fish – What can I say about tuna fish. It is the most foul-smelling, unappetizing thing I have ever encountered. I would literally leave the room if my mother or sister prepared tuna fish when I was growing up. I will probably never ever eat it again, but I had to try it for the purposes of completing this goal. Gross.
33. Artichoke quiche
34. Hot clam dip – I don’t know exactly what goes into it. I think my mom made it for a social function when I was home visiting. It was pretty good, whatever it was.
35. Cherimoya
36. Gorgonzola
37. Mexican tortilla soup
38. Canteloupe
39. Cassava
40. Cornmeal
41. Eel Roll – Phoebe’s sister’s fiance’s birthday, we went to a Japanese restaurant in little Tokyo or Chinatown or somewhere. Eating the eel roll was like having an out-of-body experience. I saw myself eating it and I said to me, “What the fuck is wrong with you?”
42. Lobster bisque
43. Monte cristo – At the House Of Pies in Los Feliz. It’s not that adventurous I suppose, but it was something I’d never tasted before.
44. Pear
45. Tamarind juice
46. Injera
47. Cream Cheese
48. Fitfit
49. Seafood-stuffed mushroom
50. Butternut squash soup
51. Crab – Does it count if I had crab rangoon, but never had crab by itself? I tried it for the first time at Hungry Cat. It was good. I’d eaten lobster before — I’ve never ordered it at a restaurant, but have tried other people’s plates — but never crab.
52. Camembert
53. Gouda
54. Manchego
55. Garbanzo beans
56. Pepperoncini – At Subway getting a sandwich one day Nicci suggested I get some of these on my sandwich to give it a little kick. I put them on almost all the Subway subs I buy now.
57. Gumbo
58. Rattlesnake – In the rabbit-and-rattlesnake sausage at Wurstkuche.
59. Pho – I can’t believe I didn’t know this existed until I saw an episode of No Reservations with Anthony Bourdain. The next day I realized there was a Vietnamese Place footsteps away from work, so I ordered it for lunch. I love this shit now.
60. Avocado – I guess I shouldn’t have expected to move to California and completely avoid eating avocado. I kind of like it now. I like guacamole, and I had a vegetarian hamburger from Bob’s Big Boy on Sunday and reveled in the avocado on it.
61. Shepherd’s pie
62. Soprosatta
63. Crawfish
64. Jambalaya
65. Alligator
66. Peach – Some of you are probably reading this and wondering why my mother couldn’t force me to eat a peach as a child. I don’t know, I guess she just let me go my own way knowing that I’d grow up to eat regular foods like regular people. I admire her hands-off approach to my diet. I didn’t like the peach, but I’m happy I tried it.
67. Felafel
68. Loquat
69. Torta
70. Mulligatawny
71. Pupusa
72. Dolma
73. Kangaroo
74. Wild boar – I like the boar more than the kangaroo at the Gliroy Garlic festival. There was something texturally better, and the flavor was more like normal beef than the marsupial meat.
75. Tuna sushi roll
76. Seaweed salad
77. Ceviche
78. Sea bass
79. Hominy
80. Poke
81. Stroganoff
82. Kimchi
83. Hearts of palm
84. Corndog – Fucked up, right? I’ve had two corndogs in my life now. I don’t remember where Nicci fed me my first one, but I imagine it was at the stand near the Santa Monica pier. The second one, the kobe one at 8oz. Burger Bar, was much better.
85. Rainbow roll sushi
86. Opah
87. Fig
88. Sour cream
89. Beets
90. Thousand Island – I’ve had this like three times this month. Who knew it made burgers taste better. I’ve never even had an In-N-Out burger “animal style.” I should probably try that one of these days, right?
91. Manhattan clam chowder
92. Cambazola
93. Short rib
94. Gyro
95. Spanakopita
96. Tahini
97. Cabeza – Taco Zone taco truck made us a quesadilla last week with lots of cheese and some cabeza (cheek meat). It wasn’t nearly as foul as I would have expected, but it did smell a little funny.
98. Persimmon
99. Corned Beef
100. Sauerkraut
I hope to try a lot more new foods even though I still have almost a year until my deadline to complete this project arrives. I still want to try shit like liver and tripe, but maybe now that I’m not consciously thinking about completing a goal I can relax and try new foods without doing so just to put it on a list.
And to all the picky eaters out there, you can overcome it. Honestly, it’s not that hard. Like I said earlier, I ate simple variations of maybe five different foods for the first 24 years of my life, and now I feel like I can find something on a menu anywhere in the world. You can do it, too. Trust me. You just have to start getting laid. It really, really helps.
Nurse With Wound – Space Music (edit)
