"Melba's Jammin'" > wrote in message
...
> In article >,
> "Giusi" > wrote:
>
>
>> Nope, they are both control freaks and need therapy.
>
> I think that's pretty strong. Too strong. While they might need
> therapy, I don't think being a general control freak enters in. My SIL
> is pretty easy about darned near everything. Kimberly seems to be so,
> also.

Both of my brother's sons were very picky eaters when they were little.
(Not so much now, but maybe enough to fit anyone's notion of "picky".)

They aren't control freaks, but my sister-in-law sure is. My DH and I
decided the reason the boys were so picky were because about the only
element in their lives they were allowed to choose was what they wouldn't
eat.

I'm not a picky eater at all. I'm not fond of cucumber and radishes, but
I'll eat them if they are served to me. I don't eat mollusks -- clams,
oysters, scallops, mussels -- because I developed an intolerance for them
when I was in my twenties. They taste fine going down, not so much coming
back up, if you catch my drift.

I try to feel sorry for people who are real picky eaters -- it must be a
miserable way to go through life. From time to time when someone tells me
they're a picky eater I reply, "How awful for you!" Based on the funny
looks I've gotten sometimes I have the impression that the picky eater
thinks being picky makes him superior in some way to those of us who are
cosmopolitan enough to eat a wide variety of foods.

I confess that I find being a picky eater a juvenile trait. This opinion is
bolstered by two incidents.

The first was a dinner party I once held, a kind of spur-of-the-moment thing
where I called people in the morning and said, "Come to dinner tonight."
This time (unusually for me) when guests asked if they could bring
something, I let them do so. A friend offered to bring a salad.

She brought a delicious spinach salad. I ended up serving the salad as a
first course, without thinking that my DH's brother and his wife did not eat
spinach.

Well, to be polite, they each took a small helping of salad. Then they each
took a large second helping. They were shocked to discover they actually
like raw spinach. Turns out they'd never had it before -- they could "tell
by looking at it they wouldn't like it."

Lawsamaisy -- you can tell by looking at something you wouldn't like it? Do
you never eat lobster because it looks like a large insect?

The other incident concerns the woman who brought the spinach salad. My
DH's company had some people from Australia visiting and I invited them and
a few friends to dinner. I planned a menu of American foods and included
pecan pie for dessert. I needed to make two pies to have enough and
although I would vastly have preferred to make two pecan pies, the spinach
salad friend had told me many times that she doesn't like nuts. I ended up
making an apple pie instead.

Imagine then my astonishment in seeing my friend larruping her way through
an extra large piece of pecan pie. "I made the apple pie specifically for
you," I sputtered, "since you don't eat nuts."

"Oh," she replied easily, "I eat pecan pie. I guess I'm not very
consistent."

One of our Australian guests didn't get any pecan pie.

Ever since then I haven't refrained from making a dish with nuts in it when
she was a guest. She never said anything, but if she had I would have told
her to pretend it was pecan pie.

Anny