I Am A Food Snob!

Yes, I admit it and I am not ashamed of it: I am a food snob. And the older I get, the snobbier I become.

It probably all started when I was a child and refused to eat fat on meat. This annoyed my parents to no end, as my father is one of those people who will eat every last bite of a steak or any piece of meat no matter how much fat is on it. I honestly don't know why my mother, who will not eat fat either, was always so perturbed by my refusals. She will not only not eat the gristley fat pieces on meat but, on several occasions as we were growing up, told my sister and I stories of how it grossed her out so badly as a child when her own father would boil up a piece of fat and it eat it by itself with salt and pepper. (Um...yuck!!!) You would think she would have been a little more understanding of my "pickiness."

There wasn't much room for being picky as I grew up because I lived in a household where you ate what you were given or you didn't eat. We bought a side of beef from a local slaughterhouse every few months or every year or whatever - I don't remember how often since I was a kid and our frequency of meat purchases didn't really concern me. We grew almost all our own vegetables in two separate gardens in which my father, sister, and I toiled away countless hours of plowing, seeding, weeding, and harvesting the fruits of our labors. We also had several fruit trees and bushes on our property. In the springtime, we even went mushroom hunting on a daily basis in the woods behind our house. I could be wrong but, other than occasions when dining out - which was very minimal, I don't remember ever eating store-bought jam or jelly until I went in the military. Basically, we grew or purchased from local sources almost all the food we consumed.

And speaking of the military, this is where I acquired my next area of food snobbery: beer. Having been stationed in Germany, my taste for beer became one of preferring rich, dark brews. Returning to the States was quite a shock, as micro-brews were not yet the rage here. Once Americans started showing more refined taste for something other than Budweiser (Um....yuck again!!!), I was experiencing a little slice of heaven. Micro-brews became my preferred drink of choice when drinking alcoholic beverages and I was now at an age where I could drink a beer slowly and appreciate it for what it was, not just for how it made me feel afterwards.

Dark chocolate has always been on my radar. Even as a child when the Hershey's miniatures bags would come out around the holidays, I was always reaching for the ones called "Special." In my twenties, I started noticing chocolate bars with different percentage levels of cocoa in them - the higher the percentage, the better! Hershey's became a distant memory - even the ones that I had thought for a long time were "special." Don't get me wrong, if I were to have a choice of a Hershey's bar or nothing, I would choose the Hershey's kind every time but put me in front of a specialty chocolate display or a gourmet foods store and Hershey's might as well be just the name of a town in Pennsylvania, for all I care.

When my husband and I discovered low-carb dieting (which can be very healthy if done right!), cheese became my next addiction and area in which I began to acquire a bit of refined taste. Kraft? Phttt! It shouldn't even be legal to call that stuff cheese. I truly thought things couldn't get any better than the time when a gourmet cheese market opened in a strip mall near our house. This was B.C. (Before Children) and I would go to the cheese market at least once per week and try several different types of cheese before walking away with my new finds, usually a quarter pound of one or two different types of cheese. My favorites were the cave-aged cheese and one that had an essence of caramel to the taste and color. The store closed about two or three years ago and I don't even remember the names of any of the cheeses that I once used to go in and ask for by name. My snobbery chalks the closing up to the lack of appreciation for foods of refined taste by the people living in this area. Is that snobby? Yes, but I told you in the beginning that I am a food snob!

I may have forgotten a phase or two in the growth of my food snobbery but that mainly sums it up and brings me to where I am now. As I have mentioned in many of my blog posts and as my blog address indicates, we have been eating a gluten-free, casein free diet for a few months now. We also try to eat organically, no artificial dyes, flavors, sweeteners, or preservatives.

No more beer for me. Because of the wheat used in the beer-making process, the alcohol is considered glutenous for those who follow this way of eating very strictly. No more standing before rows and rows of dark chocolate bars wondering which bar to savor in small bites. My chocolate choices are limited to those brands that adhere to strict GFCF standards. No more cheese for me. Oh, how I miss cheese. I love cheese but I have always known that dairy products are not the best thing for human consumption.

When you eat this way you really, really begin to taste your food. Because we initially started eating this way for our son in hopes that we will experience the same results as many other people with children on the autism spectrum who eat a GFCF diet, we do not let Reiss "cheat." However, my husband and I do sometimes have our little cheat foods and almost every time we do, I am reminded that I am not really missing out on much by not eating junk. I received one of those reminders just this afternoon when I opened up a jar of hot fudge that was left in the pantry from a few months ago. I needed a chocolate "fix" but instead got a mouthful of glop of which I could seemingly taste each and every one of the fake ingredients it contained.

Eating pure food that has been organically grown - or even just eating food that has been made from scratch and you know every ingredient that has gone into it - is just better...better for the environment, better for your health, and just better tasting. I'm still not going to eat the fat pieces on meat - not even the small pieces of fat on the antibiotic-free, free range beef and cage free chicken I buy. No matter that that little piece of fat may be like throwing a quarter in the trash. And I am so glad my parents saw the importance (or was it lack of financial resources on their part?) in bringing me up in a home where we knew where our food came from and there was nothing fake about it.

My next level of snobbery is going to be balsamic vinegar and if anyone knows a good one, I want to hear it!