Picky Eaters

  Growing up a picky eater, with two sisters who were also picky eaters, my parents probably struggled with cooking crowd pleasing meals a lot more than they let on. Granted, I distinctly remember their general attitude being that if we didn’t like some part of the dish to just pick it out (as their parents had told them to do when they were kids), it wasn’t like they were figuring out something that completely satisfied everyone. Pretty much every night there would be part of dinner that I (and usually one of my sisters) would pick out, usually peas. I still don’t like peas, I think they’re pretty gross. There were foods that my parents liked that we would never have at home simply because nobody else would eat it, which I guess is one of the sacrifices of having children. Fish was one of those things; only 3/5 of us liked fish, so it was never the meat of choice for dinner, which meant we never bought it at all. At restaurants there would be one dish that I would always get (sometimes there were a couple I would alternate between) and I would never try anything else because it had things I didn’t like or I just thought I wouldn’t like it in general. I’m honestly still the same way now. So I thought it was super fun and relatable that the Orishas of the Lucumi religion have their own taste preferences. I can totally understand how they would only want certain foods to be offered to them; I wouldn’t want to be expected to eat something that I don’t like either. And I would be kind of offended if someone were trying to request something of me and they were giving me an offering and it was food that I didn’t like.