My Daughter, the Foodie
The Pies by Bink
Bink loves food. In fact, her relationship with it goes far beyond what tastes good and satisfies her hunger. She loves looking at cookbooks, finding recipes on the computer, and watching cooking shows. The painting subject she selects for her weekly art class is often something edible. The paintings on our walls at home, and the stacked finished canvases along the baseboard in the living room, depict pies, ice cream sundaes, candy apples, oysters, brie cheese, jars of pickles, and other things that make her mouth water.
She enjoys cooking and baking. Although she needs the substantial assistance of another adult and takes frequent breaks, her enthusiasm about picking recipes and helping to make them is always high.
One of my favorite observations about this love affair Bink has with food is the photography it’s generated. The girl takes pictures of everything she eats, or finds appealing. That “everything” means every rendition. If she tastes her own meal or snack and finds it lacking, she has learned to say, sometimes, that it needs more salt, or sweet, or some vinegar. Once the missing taste is added, she’ll take another picture. The food on her plate may look exactly the same as it did a few moments before, but to her it is quite new.
A definite omnivore, my daughter wouldn’t dream of eating pedestrian fare like hamburgers, hot dogs, French fries, or chicken nuggets. I certainly have no problem with her avoidance of those foods, and I do celebrate her widening palate. When she was three years old, she went through a phase where she would eat only blueberries and dry Cheerios. Neither is on her Yes list now. So, what does she eat?
Bink is attracted to the spicy, the sweet, the pungent, and the pickled. In her relatively short life, she’s enjoyed an enormous variety of comestibles that you’ve likely never granted transport across your own lips. She once had Ostrich Carpaccio with her father when she was about ten years old. She loved it, as she has also relished occasional octopus, eel, braised rabbit, many kinds of lamb, a rainbow of pickled plant life, anchovies prepared a number of ways, and a small variety of dried spiced crickets. She salivates at the thought of raw oysters and enjoys Teriyaki seaweed and ostrich jerky as a snack, when available. Very, very few of those things have made it onto my plate.
Most ethnic foods are yesses, especially Indian, Moroccan, and Japanese. She also loves many of the Korean delicacies her dear Aunt Young makes for her. Think homemade Kkaennip Jangajji (pickled Perilla leaves) and Japchae ( spicy glass noodles with vegetables).
Over the years, I’ve honed my cooking skills to suit her palate. Eggplant, bell peppers, smoked duck, goat cheese, and the above-mentioned lamb, are generally high on my own list of Will Not Eat. Still, I can handily transform them into dishes with an Indian, Chinese, or Japanese twist for my gourmet daughter.
Bink takes her lunch to her day program most days, and we plan those lunches together. On Saturdays, she’ll decide what she’d like to have for her lunches during the following week. We shop for the ingredients on Sundays, and cook more or less together most Sunday afternoons. Bink favors warm lunches, so typically she’ll take a lidded ceramic container of soup or stew, along with a side of something pickled or some sticky rice chips, and water. Yesterday morning, however, we had to cobble together a cold lunch, as her day program was headed to Newport, Rhode Island, wouldn’t be back in time for her to heat her lunch. She and I managed with anchovy fillets, some of my recent batch of zucchini pickles, Kalamata olives, and some coconut sticky rice chips, each of those foods nestled into a little Tupperware container. The beverage is always water, which makes it easier.
One of Bink’s quirks is that her food preferences can turn on a dime. When she requests something, it can come from memory, or from perusing cookbooks and The Food Channel. Sometimes, she’ll get very excited at one of my (or our) creations, and will eat it with gusto until it’s gone. Other times, she’ll enjoy it once or twice, and then I’ll get a text during a weekday, or she’ll announce at dinner or breakfast,” I’m tired of ______ (that thing that took two hours to make). ”
On rare occasions, we can negotiate a way to doctor the taste of the food with a seasoning or sauce, and she might deign to try it again. Often, though, she will not touch said food again, at least for a few months. So, we might end up with a container of some very spicy eggplant, or a soup that tastes and smells like strong fish sauce. I really don’t like to waste food, but Superguy and I just don’t have the stomach for some of Bink’s choices. We do know a few hardy souls who enjoy some of these things, so we can share some of the cast-offs as well as the excess from my more successful creations.
I’m well aware of how fortunate we are to be able to offer this quirky gourmet a variety of things she enjoys. It’s important to me that she eat as well rounded a diet as possible, and I have come to enjoy a little adventure in my cooking. Also, not all of her preferences are expensive or unusual. She likes particular pizza from certain places, and she’ll sometimes enjoy garlic bread and simple vegetable soups. Raw carrots are in occasional favor at the moment. She really likes sweets and baked goods, though she limits them to once a day and generally writes four NO TREAT days into her wall calendar. That last one is a story for another time.
Next month, Bink will turn twenty seven. Some kind friends, a family with a wonderful adult son who is also on the spectrum, have invited us out to dinner to celebrate in a few weeks. Bink is already anticipating an order of creamy raita, with just the right amount of tamarind and mint sauces mixed in, to savor with her Peshwari naan. She’ll probably share an appetizer of vegetable Samosas with me. Then there’ll be some kind of spicy lamb dish, and perhaps she’ll have a little of whatever curried vegetable there is to share. For dessert, she will be delighted with some cardamom scented Kheer (Indian rice pudding) or sweet sticky balls of rosewater infused Gulab Jamun.
Truth: Just now, on this Wednesday midday as I sat editing this piece for the blog, Bink called me from her program. That doesn’t happen too often, and usually it means Something Is Wrong. What was today’s message? “ I’m tired of the lemon risotto. Lunch I want balsamic mushroom barley soup tomorrow.” And so it is. Would anyone like a serving of perfectly good parmesan infused lemon risotto?
–Melinda Coppola
The Melting Popsicles by Bink
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Your beautiful singing/poetry enriches my life, is part of the amazing tapestry of my life like the Trees and the Sky and the Crows. Such a wonderful blessing at this profound bend of the river in this particular journey of life for me. So appreciative that l appreciate it. A companion that arrives without notice like dappled Light.
Thank You! I have such profound Love for You.
THank you so much, Alexa. It means the world to know my words matter.