Finally, the end of June

Well, my friends, June is over and it's time to move on from this month's challenge. I have to say, I'm thrilled. Finding something scary to eat every day became more a chore than a challenge and most of the time it meant subjecting myself to disgusting flavors and textures. I did find a few good things that I can eat again that I would not have, so I guess it's a win.

Because I am so tired of the "every day" challenge, July's challenge will be different. I will only read classics during July. No Twilight, Harry Potter, or Amelia Atwater-Rhodes (side note- AAR is getting married in 4 days and I'm super excited for her!). I'm hoping to try to get through Jane Eyre and Great Expectations. We'll see how it goes. July is a busy month, what with my birthday and taking the CAM test and all.

I hope you enjoyed my food blogs and I hope you like July's challenge too!

Steamfresh

I know it's been a few days since my last entry. Having a challenge every day is a lot more difficult than I really thought it would be. Next month's challenge is going to be something I don't have to do every day. Today I had a bag of Steamfresh chicken flavored rice with vegetables. I don't normally eat stuff that's different from what I normally go for, so I decided to pick up this weird concoction. I microwaved it for the specified amount of time. I think it needed a little longer, the rice was chewier than I really like. It smelled absolutely awful, but I dutifully took that bite. It wasn't very good. I didn't eat more than that. The veggies were so tiny it seemed like there were barely any there. Definately not worth purchasing, let alone trying again. I'll just stick to RiceaRoni when I want chicken flavored rice.

Ben and Jerry's

Ben and Jerry's makes my favorite ice cream. Yes, most women can say the same thing. My favorite is Half Baked, a combination of Chocolate Fudge Brownie and Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough. I would never pay the high price for a pint of Ben and Jerry's that I didn't already know I loved, so I never considered their ice cream an option for my June challenge. Until I remembered their mini cups. Mini cups cost a dollar (still an insane price for the amount of ice cream inside) so they are easier to try and discard. Of course, Ben and Jerry's only makes 3 varieties of mini cups: Cherry Garcia, Chocolate Fudge Brownie, and Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough. I'm guessing you can figure out which one I purchased for today's challenge. The first thing about Cherry Garcia that surprised me was the color. I was expecting cherry ice cream to be pink. It was not. It was white. Makes sense, I suppose. No artificial colors. The combination of cherry and chocolate threw me off. Who wants cherry and chocolate in the same bite? Very strange. I did not care for the ice cream, though I did find that I appreciated the high quality of the ingredients. There are actual pieces of cherry in Cherry Garcia! Cherries are one of my favorite fruits, though I can't eat them often. It's a shame I didn't like this ice cream.

Panera Bread

Today, while waiting for my father, I spent an hour and a half at Panera Bread. Dad bought me lunch, but I got my favorites (chicken noodle soup and mac and cheese). I also bought myself the delicious black cherry smoothie. Amazing! As my scary food, I opted for the brownie. Okay, no, a brownie is not that scary. I am running out of courage for this challenge though. The brownie was not ideal, so I got it. Afterwards, I drifted past the free samples table. "This is perfect!" I thought. "Bite size pieces of something I don't want to eat!" Sure enough, there it was. Cinnamon chip scone. I have been wanting to try the cinnamon chip scone, but I was afraid to spend money on it and hate it. I'm not really a scone person. I like cinnamon and sugar though, so now's the perfect time to try the scary scone. It was really good. The scone texture was a bit irritating around the edges, but not enough to keep me from eating it again. I loved the flavor and I really liked that there was nothing chewy in it, like raisins or currants. A definate win for Panera Bread!

4Rivers and then some

If you read this blog, you know that a few days ago I enjoyed some barbeque from 4Rivers. Well, we have continued to enjoy it for dinner ever since. My mother, trying to spice things up a bit, took the barbeque and turned it into the fixings for taco night. Mexican food is on my permanent list of "Food I Will Not Consume". Since I'm trying scary things though, I figured I had to try some. My mother added some kind of mild taco sauce to the chicken, so I put some on my plate. I was expecting it to be spicy and it wasn't really. She was right, it was very mild. Spicier than I prefer, but then ketchup is spicier than I prefer most of the time. The taste of it, however, was disgusting. I don't know why anyone would want to consume that flavor combination on a regular basis. Ew.

Pretzel M&Ms

Do you like chocolate covered pretzels? As a woman, I have been told many times that they are the PMS food of the Gods and that I'm crazy for disliking them. Salt and sweet together = YUCK. Nevertheless, I shelved my prejudice and picked them off the shelf of candy at Publix today. I brought them home, unpacked my groceries, and told my mom she'd have to wait until I had one before she could eat them. I opened the bag, popped one in my mouth, chewed... and promptly gagged and spit it out. That's right, the first food in this month's challenge that I have actually refused to swallow. Had it been an unsalted pretzel, I would have liked it. The texture of crunchy pretzel with crunchy candy coating was pleasant. The combined taste of pretzel and chocolate was pleasant. The salt tang with the sweet ahhh was incredibly unpleasant. Ew.

4Rivers

4Rivers is a barbeque joint in Orlando. My sister works there. In order to make today a little easier on my mom and to let my family try some of their food, my sister brought food from work today for Father's Day. (Happy Father's Day!) My mom, knowing my weird food aversion, offered to make me something different, but I chose to eat what everyone else was eating. Well, except for the shrimp with crab stuffing. I don't like shrimp. Melissa brought three different kinds of meat, cole slaw, and cheese grits. I didn't eat the cole slaw, but I did try everything else she brought. If you are anywhere near the Orlando area, you should check out 4Rivers. The meat is SOOO tender. I wasn't terribly fond of the beef brisket or the chicken (it was fine, just not slendiforous). I really liked the pulled pork though. I even had seconds! I put it on a roll, but I probably would have eaten by itself.

The cheese grits were another story. Mel was so excited about them that I knew I had to try them. The texture was AMAZING. Smooth, but not creamy. The cheese flavor was too intense for me though. I like mild cheese (American, Muenster, provolone) and this was CHEDDAR. Like wham! kind of cheddar. If you're into that, eat these. Probably not too much of it though because I'm guessing it has a lot of calories.

I hope you had a great Father's Day if you're a father and, if you're not, I hope you told your dad that you love him. Most of all, I hope you do love your dad. It's a sad life without a dad you can love and respect.

Ice cream

One of my goals for this month was to try low fat or fat free foods that I wouldn't normally try due to wussiness. I accomplished that goal today. I tried Skinny Cow Chocolate Truffle ice cream bars. I was expecting hard, gross ice cream, kind of like a fudgesicle. It was actually soft and tasty. I mean, it's no Ben and Jerry's Half Baked ice cream, but it's definately something that I would eat on a regular basis. I'd even recommend it, so there :)

John's Steak and Seafood

I've been craving steak for a few days, so we finally went to a place that sells steak. The soup and salad bar was included in the meal, so I decided to finally try a food I have avoided for years: clam chowder. I'm a chicken noodle soup girl, so something with clams and milk and whatever else is in chowder is a bit disgusting to me. The first bite wasn't so bad because I simply gulped it down. It wasn't until I actually let myself taste the clams in the soup that I got grossed out. Clams are slimy and gross. Having little bits of it in the soup ruined it. Maybe if it had been pureed or something... I don't know, but I won't be in a hurry to try it again.

Barbeque

I'm not a big fan of barbeque. It tends to be on the "too spicy for me" side. Now that we're eating at home more, I am running out of options of food that scares me that I haven't tried. We have some disgusting food in the house, but that's mostly all stuff I've tried at some point or another. Dad picked up some kind of barbeque pulled pork and had that for dinner, so I tried some of his sandwich. It was pretty good, too. I didn't want it for my dinner, though. I'm hoping that I'll be okay with barbeque this weekend too. My sister works at a barbeque place and is bringing food from work for our Father's Day dinner. I want to try it, you know, be supportive of her job, but I'm kind of nervous about it. Hopefully it'll be as good or better than the barbeque today!

Subway

As you might imagine, Subway is not my favorite restaurant. I believe I've already gone into details about Subway in this blog, so I'll leave it at that in this entry. My father went to Subway last night and brought home part of a chicken salad sandwich. He had that for lunch today and allowed me a bite. He thought it was amazing, I thought it was okay. Until the chicken flavor kicked in and then I was grossed out. I like chicken, I really do, but for some reason combining chicken with whatever they use in chicken salad just makes it yuck.

Twix

Today, I broke out of my peaceful dessert world and tried my first scary candy. Twix is scary for a couple of reasons. The first is the cookie mixed with chocolate and caramel part. Two soft foods mixed with one crunchy one? Unappealing. The second reason is the caramel. (Car-mel? Car-a-mel?) I don't like it. It tastes yicky to me. However, I opened that wrapper and took a bite. The caramel taste wasn't noticable. I actually liked the flavor of the chocolate and caramel mixed together, but the chewiness of the caramel weirded me out. I had the texture of caramel and the taste of chocolate in my mouth and my brain didn't know what to do with it. The cookie part was the real kicker. Chewy chocolate and hard, crunchy cookie was too much for my poor mouth and that one bite was the only one I had. I was seriously tempted to spit out the little bit of the Twix in my mouth. In the future, I will stick to Three Musketeers bars and plain M&Ms.

Sandwich

What's your favorite sandwich? As you may have guessed, I like my sandwiches plain. White bread, one kind of meat or pb&j, and nothing else. I like turkey and ham. That's about it. It's a waste of money for me to go to sub shops since all the condiments are included and I don't use any. When I do go to Subway, I get weird looks from the employees because they don't understand how someone could want a foot long ham on white with American cheese on the side and nothing else. You would think they'd be like, "Sweet! Less work for me!" but they usually are too busy thinking I'm lying to them to rejoice in my simple order. So, all that being said, today's scary food was a scary sandwich. My dad came home with honey wheat bread and ham and chicken lunchmeat. I already had white bread, so ham on white became my dinner. I also concocted a half a sandwich out of said honey wheat bread and chicken. I tried very hard to get past the strangeness of chicken sliced thin and placed on a sandwich. I almost did. Almost, but not quite. The part I couldn't get past was the bread. Bread is a beautiful, delicious food that comes in many wonderful varieties. I enjoy trying new kinds of bread. Oatmeal, rosemary, challah, fried bread. I love all of those strange kinds of bread. Honey wheat bread is disgusting. It is an insult to bread to call that crap bread. Calling Wonderbread bread is a bigger insult to the bread world, but that honey wheat stuff was definately a close second on my "Worst bread ever" list.

Home (Again)

I didn't feel like going out or spending money today, so it was back to the pantry to find scary food. I considered the chex mix, but I think that's less scary and more plain disgusting. I looked at the cereal, but I did that yesterday. Finally, I settled on the mystery cookies. They're my father's. How do I know? My father is one of those people who takes the package of cookies, opens it, and puts single servings in little ziploc bags. Intelligent for portion control, irritating for the people who have to live with said OCD. I have OCD too, though, so I can't complain too much. Hmmm, maybe it's hereditary... Wait, what was I talking about? Right! Mystery cookies! They say Lotus on them (I think) and I ate one. It had a great texture, tasted like cinnamon and vanilla. Not a bad cookie, really. It did have a slightly unpleasant aftertaste though. All in all, not disgusting, but not my cup of tea.

Home

Today's scary food hails from the land of, "Healthy foods are scary!" No offense Kashi people, but all natural, organic food is like commitment to me. Seductive as hell, but just as frightening when it comes time to actually do it. So, as I was perusing my favorite aisle at the Publix (that would be the cereal aisle) I stumbled across BOGO bags of granola. They were beautiful. So many varieties, all lined up in the "All Natural" section. I, being the well read person I am, know that "all natural" means "clever marketing term that means NOTHING", but I am seduced anyway. Seeing that these bags are buy one, get one free, I carefully choose my two bags of overpriced grain. One is some variety of chocolate and the other is sunflower and pumpkin seed. I actually love sunflower and pumpkin seeds, so I'm thinking, "Sweet, something that isn't chocolate for when my conscience says, 'You never eat healthy stuff unless it's chocolate!'"

Tonight, it was time to test my sunflower and pumpkin seed granola. I have yet to decide if the chocolate counts for this challenge or not since I was tempted to get it before the challenge, I just never did. The scary seed filled granola definately counts though. I was silly and forgot that I only needed to take a bite of the stuff, so I got out my pretty Ariel bowl (Yes, I have Ariel dishes. I love them.) and measured a half cup of granola with a splash of milk into it. It took a couple of bites to get used to the cereal, but I actually really liked it. I like cereal, I just rarely eat it since my breakfast consists of coffee. Usually when I go eat cereal, it's an unhealthy amount of Kix. This cereal is healthy AND tasty. A total positive considering the vauge "lose weight" goal I have.

Lay's

What is your favorite potato chip? In Maryland, where I hail from, Utz chips are a way of life. Specifically, crab Utz chips. It may sound like a stereotype, but we Baltimorians looooove our crabs. So much so that we insist on these gross crab flavored chips. I, of course, am one of the few people who dislike them. They're very popular. Truthfully, I don't really care for Utz chips at all. They're okay and I'll grab a handful at the picnic or potluck, but if I'm going to spend money and calories on greasy, potato-y goodness, I buy Ruffles. I don't know why Ruffles are my favorite chips. Maybe it's the ridges or perhaps they have a salt content higher than the average chip. I actually think I like them the best because they're the first chip I remember eating. Yeah, go analyze THAT, psychology majors. Okay, don't really, because analyzing my food preferences seems like a waste of your time.

Nevertheless, despite all brand preferences, I stick to one rule about chips. This rule is the same rule I adhere to in all areas of my diet: Keep it plain. No salt and vinegar, crab, barbeque, Cajun, honey cinnamon cayene, whatever. So today, as the witching hour drew nearer and I hadn't fulfilled my task, I reached for the first scary food I could find. A bag of Lay's Barbeque chips. I was at the Blue Lizard Hookah Lounge (it's awesome, by the way) and they are for sale there (but don't buy the crappy food, buy the hookah). I ate one. It was awful. My friend laughed at me as I tried valiantly to finish my bite and unscrew my water bottle at the same time. The lesson? Barbeque chips, very bad. Awesome hookah lounge, very good.

Home

Well, I'm still sick, but I can swallow without wincing, so I have returned to my challenge. My mother is home and cooking for us, so for dinner tonight she made salmon salads. Well, she and dad had salmon salads. I had salmon. And vegatables. Two very separate items. She also baked some zucchini with spices, tomato chunks, and shredded cheese. This zucchini pizza became my scary food of the day. Suprisingly, it actually tasted kind of like pizza. I kind of liked it. I'd eat it again.

Sick

Yesterday morning I woke up with 102.2 fever and a sore throat. It hurts to swallow. Yesterday I ate toast. Today I had half a grilled cheese sandwich. As you might imagine, eating scary foods is not high on my list right now. Hopefully I will be well soon and back to eating frightening stuff. For now, we're going to work on drinking water without wincing.

Fail day

Today, I did not eat anything scary. I planned to and tried to find something, but it was a failed operation. My father's cereal was an option, but by the time I remembered (again) that I hadn't met today's challenge, I had overeaten at dinner and I am also trying to lose some weight, so no go. My dinner was delicious though. Three cheese chicken Voila and No Pudge brownies. (By the way, if you're a chocoholic like me and trying to lose weight too, try these brownies. They're fat free and AMAZING.) I had plain white rice and a cheese stick for lunch, coffee for breakfast. Please, no comments from health gurus about the unhealthiness of my day's menu. I know. I care very little. I am, however, disappointed in my failure. I shall strive to do better, reader!

China Wok

As a child, I only ate two things from Chinese restaurants: white rice and wonton soup. Those are still my two favorite things, but I have added two items to the list: veggie lo mein and steamed or fried dumplings. Now, last night, we were going to go to the Chinese buffet and I was going to get something scary there. Since that didn't work out and my father was tired tonight, I suggested we skip the buffet and just get Chinese. So we did.

I got my fried dumplings ("No, dad, I don't want vegetables") and dad ordered pork egg fu young. So, pork egg fu young was my scary food of the day. By the way, have you ever seen egg fu young? It's frightening! Definately on my scary food list. I tried some and actually liked it. I was shocked. Why does my dad like it? It's not his usual taste at all. I just expanded my Chinese food options by 25%! (I think. Math isn't my thing.) So, reader, there you are. The very first scary food from the June challenge to get the picky eater stamp of approval.

Golden Corral

Buffets are a great place to go when you're trying new things. In fact, buffets are a scary place to go if you're not willing to try new things. A new Chinese buffet opened near our house not too long ago and my father has been wanting to try it, but I'm a food wuss and always say "no". Today, in honor of my June challenge, I put on my big girl panties and said, "Sure, let's do it." I was even kind of looking forward to some fried dumplings and veggie lo mein. My dad, grandfather, and myself loaded up in the Mariner and headed out to the only road that leads to the Chinese buffet. Guess what? We got off it about 5 minutes and a quarter of a mile later. Yep, some kind of accident was preventing us from eating questionable meat.

Plan B (no, not the contraceptive kind)
Golden Corral. After all, they'd already gotten me to agree to go to a buffet, so why mess with a good thing? I like Golden Corral. Decent mac and cheese, fabulous white rolls, yummy steak. Plenty of all-American goodness for this picky eater. Also, plenty of scary options, so today's challenge was on! The scary food I opted for was turnip greens. They are easily one of the most unappealing foods I have ever seen. I usually judge whether or not a food falls into the "scary food" category by how much I don't want to touch it. Turnip greens ranked pretty high up there.

Suprisingly, they taste better than they look. I would certainly hope this would be the case since they look like they got blown out of an elephant's trunk. I wouldn't eat them on a regular basis, but I would definately pick them over, say, live spiders. Or even dead spiders. (Now is not the time to remind me that the average human consumes something like 4 spiders a year in their sleep.)

So, my reader, there you have it. Turnip greens: looks nasty, tastes kind of nasty, but does not taste nearly as nasty as they look.

West Park Village Deli

Today's scary food is one you have probably eaten many times: potato salad.

I am not a fan of cold salads or really salad in general. I do not believe that food should be mixed together. Many tastes and textures in one bite? Ew, no, thank you! I have tried potato salad before. I hated it. I have since avoided it at all picnics and potlucks.

I have been told many times, "When you get older and your tastebuds mature, you like a lot of things that you didn't like as a kid." So, with that in mind today, I ordered potato salad with my plain ham on white from the West Park Village Deli. The sandwich was delicious. The potato salad was as bad as I remember it being. I tried very had to keep an open mind (mouth?), but it wasn't happening. Potato salad is still gross.

Panera Bread

Today's scary food came from Panera Bread. "What could possibly be scary at Panera Bread?" you might ask. Today's answer: Apple Pastry.

My idea of pastry involves chocolate croissant and nothing else. Seriously, between a cheese danish and plain white bread, I'm picking the bread. So, I bought my favorite smoothie and this very pretty pastry and took a seat. I postponed the actual eating by cutting it up first (yes, I'm that wussy) but I did eventually have to put some of it in my mouth.

Amazingly, it wasn't bad. I don't think I would order it again (apple should not be mixed with other flavors, in my humble opinion) but the crust was delightful, I enjoyed the texture of it, and I even managed to eat another bite. I finished half of the pastry and went, "Do I really need to finish this? Nope" and threw the rest out. The goal was to try and it was accomplished. I even managed to straighten up some of my tangled, twisted up feelings while out and about. All in all, a successful trip to Panera Bread.