Souffle – not mine 🙂
It was inevitable. I grew up on dinners like this: boiled potatoes and carrots, meat, white bread, milk, and canned fruit for dessert. How could I not grow up to become a food snob – as an act of rebellion? It crept up on me slowly.
Step 1 – Living on My Own
- When I left home, I realized I could actually make rice in a pot on the stove, and didn’t need either a rice cooker or Minute Rice.
- I grimaced when I was invited to a friend’s place for dinner and was offered spaghetti from a can – I had never eaten it before.
- I lost my taste for iceberg lettuce and graduated to romaine, red leaf, and – inevitably – arugula.
- Although it took me a dozen tries, I finally learned to like fresh cilantro.
Step 2 – Upscale Substitutions
As my tastes became more adventurous and my salary increased, I swapped out ordinary ingredients for the snob foods of the day:
- My favourite cheese evolved from cheddar to brie to chevre (with mango white Stilton as a treat)
- I preferred feta and olives on pizza to pepperoni and mozzarella (and artichoke hearts would not go amiss)
- I switched from bottled tomato sauce to pesto on spaghetti – then back to fresh tomatoes and herbs
Destined to become marinated artichoke hearts
Step 3 – Got All Holier-Than-Thou
- I disdained hot dogs
- I gave up McDonalds and Burger King
- I developed taste for portabella burgers
En route to becoming a portabella burger
Step 4 – Benefits of Money and Travel
- I like squash ravioli
- I prefer gelato to ice cream
- I have successfully made a soufflé
In my latest incarnation, instead of being a gourmand, I make homemade/rustic everything, which is, of course, its own kind of (reverse) snobbery. I am a fresh/veggie/ locavore foodie-in-training. On the other hand, I still have gluten, dairy and non-organic foods!
I have at least 3 non-snob holdovers:
- Canned baked beans
- Peanut butter and sliced bananas on toast
- Kraft Dinner
Yum, nice orange KD!
Some habits never die!
If you are a hardcore connoisseur, you might relate to Esquire’s quiz, Are You a Food Snob?
Let me know!
An Exacting Life 
I couldn’t have written that better myself. With the exception of the mushrooms…right down to Kraft. 🙂
Yay for KD!
Hmm.. I’ve tried cilantro more than a dozen times and still don’t like it. Or the smell. But I will keep trying..
The hardest thing I ever learned to like!
I totally fell in love with cilantro – then discovered that I was deathly allergic to the stuff!
I am so lucky not to have allergies. Is there a substitute you can have?
I’m not a food snob, but neither am I a fast food junkie……..I didn’t complete the quiz are the answers were none I could use? So what does that make me……….I think normal!! I am actually a very plain traditional eater. As we rarely ever have Kraft dinner when I do have it, it’s classed as a “treat.” Mind you I prefer my own homemade mac and cheese if truth be told!!
Gill
I make mac & cheese too, and have KD about once a month….that probably makes us “not normal” because most of us in Canada eat KD a lot more!
When I was young and we went on holiday in the caravan mum always took packets of dried Smash potatoes and Surprise Peas (for those who have never had the delight – these are packets of tiny hard green lumps which are then plunged into boiling water for 3 minutes to reconstitute) both items very good if you were to be backpacking somewhere around the country and didn’t want the weight of carrying potatoes and tinned peas – but in a caravan?
I am totally a fresh food, only organic, veggie now – perhaps it was something in my past that prompted this decision!!
“Fresh food, only organic, veggie” is its own sort of food snobbery I suppose, but I’m guilty!
I can totally relate to this post. I was raised on TV dinners, fast food and yes, canned spaghetti (mostly because it was something I could prepare myself and mom sorta checked out of domestic duties when I was about 8.) Anyhow, learning to cook was an act of supreme rebellion for me. Of course having a number of severe food allergies also helped push me in that direction.
Having anything other than plain, unseasoned meat and potatoes was new to me. However, I am happy I grew up with Real Food, and had nutrition figured out. When I was a kid, we had home baking every day, so I craved things like store-bought choc chip cookies 🙂
This post really struck a chord with me. Until ten years ago a varied diet for me meant switching to a different brand of instant mashed potato and having brown bread for my cheese sandwiches, then I discovered the joys of cooking and I’ve never looked back and cringe when I think of how I used to eat. It has to be said though, tinned baked beans are simply the best and there will always be room for them in my life!
Until my child left home, we ate a lot of “kid food” like frozen french fries and breaded chicken strips. I am happy to have them gone from my life. But yes, the tinned baked beans have stayed!
Hahaha souffle has become my ‘scratch’ dinner, as I almost always have the ingredients,and like (what you call)KD dinner, it ticks my comfort food desires/tastes whilst still being homemade. Totally still not into cilantro ( coriander to me). Smells and taste like stink bugs
Glad I haven’t tasted a stink bug 🙂 Chocolate souffle is on my list of things to try soon!
I laughed when I read someone served you canned spaghetti for dinner in their home. That strikes me as so funny! I wouldn’t say that I’m a food snob. But I do like food to taste fresh and interesting. I grew up in the era of the only seasoning ever used in cooking was salt. And yes, we had white bread sandwiches, twinkies, applesauce in a tin (that didn’t really taste like apples at all) and mashed potatoes from a box.
The potatoes were my father’s favorite. When I had real mashed potatoes at a friend’s house, I came home so delighted that I’d been the one to learn “the secret” to making potatoes that tasted like something other than a box. I explained to my mom in great detail how my friend’s mom had made them. We still had potatoes from a box, to satisfy my father, but whenever I was making the potatoes I went to the store to buy some “real” potatoes to prepare for the family. This was seen as gourmet in our house! Okay, maybe I am a tad snobbish about food.
There seems to be a definite backlash against packaged food from people who grew up with it. One of the few things my mom made from a box was pizza, which came with a dough mix and a tin of sauce. So of course I had to get all snobby with pizza and make it very deluxe!