PrintHave you influenced your friends and family?
Before I started dating my boyfriend, he had never eaten Indian or Thai food (horrible, I know). We’ve been together for over a year and a half, and now he is a really discriminating eater (I am going to have to take credit for this – I cook lots of great meals for him, and I am always on the search for the best food where ever I am). For example, he was recently in New Mexico and, before he left, he scouted out the best places for sopapillas, huevos rancheros, and carne adovada using Chowhound – something he had never heard of until we started dating. (And he made me really jealous when he came back and told me of his culinary exploits).
My mother, who lives 200 miles away from me (she's still in NY), has also turned into quite the foodie. Granted, we went to lots of great restaurants in NYC when I lived there, but now that I’m gone, she is still eating out at places that I miss terribly. She just went to DiFara’s this past Sunday! And she’s on a mission to eat at all the great pizzerias – she went to Luzzo’s a few weeks ago and is planning a trip to Zero Otto Nove in the near future (and yes she’s eaten at Grimaldi’s and John’s a million times). She has also taken it upon herself to eat at obscure places in Queens and Brooklyn – places to which even *I* haven’t been!
Has your passion for food affected your family and friends – both those who live near/with you and those who are further away?
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13 Comments:
Yes.
:-D
LunaPierCook at 5:00PM on 04/29/08
A recent conversation along these lines...
BF: "That is the second bottle of olive oil we've gone through since you started coming here!"
Me: "I'm sorry..."
BF: "No... I used to do everything in BUTTER before you got here."
So I considered that an up statistic.
I love when my friends try new stuff because they've had it at my house first. I love when I feed something so simple as roasted butternut squash to someone who has never had it and requests it over and over again. "You've never had butternut squash? You poor kid! Have some more..."
I like to think I'm a good culinary influence on my friends and family :D.
chiff0nade at 5:13PM on 04/29/08
Not really. My family thinks I am weird and calls me a picky eater. Where as I like to think of myself as a discriminating eater. I prefer fresh herbs to dried, I tend not to like frozen versions of things I could make (like sheppard's pie). I am known among my friends as someone who will eat "anything" anything being things like mushrooms, teriyaki, pork belly and Indian food.
Sweetie at 5:23PM on 04/29/08
My friends and family all roll their eyes every time I utter, "well, you haven't tried my version..." Of course, they don't roll them too much because I've proven that I know what I'm doing, and that my version is usually pretty tasty (although 19-year-olds who live on PB&J and cereal are still a little hard to turn).
Sadly, most of the turning is a result of improper selection and poor cooking. It's really easy to convince someone to love tomatoes when you've got one fresh off the vine, or to give pork chops a try when they don't resemble shoe leather. Still, though.
jenilowrance at 5:23PM on 04/29/08
I've influenced most of my family to try locally owned and/or "hole in the wall" restaurants instead of eating at generic chain restaurants like Fridays, Applebees, and Chilis that they think are "safer" for some reason. Now they think i'm really smart! :) hahaha!
aungeinphx at 6:26PM on 04/29/08
Yes. My sister in law has started cooking and my husband prefers to eat my food than eat at a restaurants (we save loads of money this way).
bitchincamero at 6:52PM on 04/29/08
Definitely -- and my family appreciates every forkful. Sharing meals also is the foundation for my social life -- such as it is.
hatlady at 6:53PM on 04/29/08
I thought I was turning my husband....he is appreciating my home cooking....until he came back from an Air Force trip to New Orleans. He complained that the restaurant they went to was expensive, and everything had sauce on it....he had trouble finding something on the menu he wanted to eat. He couldn't remember the name of the restaurant. A week or so later I found the receipt on his dresser....he was at NOLA. I gave him a good smack for that one!
On the other hand....my mom now calls me for both cooking advice & questions on ingredients she's never heard of....she used to tell me that she was a person who ate to live....I'm slowly turning her into a person who lives to eat. :-)
mepolo at 7:57PM on 04/29/08
Sweetie...mushrooms? You crack me up. :D
I'm a good influence on my friends. Nearly everything they've eaten that isn't Tex-Mex, Italian or burgers is because I've forced them to. In turn, however, my family is a good influence on me. I come from a huge family of devoted foodies, who are always looking for the next great thing.
My husband, however, bless his heart... You can take the man out of England, but you can't take the dull English tastebuds out of his tongue. ;)
sheeats at 9:54PM on 04/29/08
Yes! When I met my husband he ordered his steak medium, and would never consider eating calamari. He is a changed man! Calamari rules and he now eats his steak medium rare to rare (pittsburgh no less)!!!! Yea for me!
izatryt at 10:11PM on 04/29/08
when i was on one of those extended backpacking trips through europe about 20 years ago i hooked up with a man from texas who thought he didn't like chocolate, or cheese, or coffee, had never tasted any sort of alcohol, and who had rarely ever eaten out in restaurants. it turned out that the only chocolate he had ever tried was hershey's, the only cheese was velveeta or kraft american slices, and the only coffee was from a vending machine. i introduced him to chocolate in switzerland, wine and beer in spain, and cheese and coffee in france.
after we'd been traveling together for a couple of months, he started saying things like "this wine doesn't really stand up to the entrecote and is a bit thin" and i was sure that i'd created a monster.
cybercita at 10:24PM on 04/29/08
Most of 'em think I'm nuts to do the kind of cooking I do, and to cook so much from scratch. On the other hand, I don't get any complaints when they're eating my food.
I have managed to introduce my FIL to some new foods, which is quite an achievement.
I don't think my influence has motivated anyone to change the way they cook, though.
dbcurrie at 11:20PM on 04/29/08
I have swayed the husband from a life of turkey sandwiches - it all started when he dug into a bowl of mussels to impress me when we started dating, and he now gladly eats sushi, seafood, and all kinds of vegetables. (This amazes my mother in law.)
Oddly my parents psychically turned into food snobs at the same time I did - wasn't me who turned them, although it may have been my food snob brother. Every so often they extol the virtues of quinoa, or wasabi mustard, and I wonder who they are, and what they did with my parents.
QueenHerm at 5:42PM on 04/30/08