I want to like fish sooooo bad. It looks absolutely delectable. The meat is such a great texture, you can flavor it all different ways, it's really good for you...!Unfortunately, it also tastes like . . . fish! Like the way a pier smells. Like some kind of chemical is putrefying on your plate!
After a successful acclimation to spicy food (thank you, Chris, my "Spice Coach" ;)), I was determined to overcome my sensitivity to that "fishy" flavor. For years Matt was on the hunt for fish that was mild enough for me to enjoy. He'd order fish every chance he got and carefully evaluate.... Then it was either, "Nope, Auburn, this is kind of fishy." Or, if I were lucky, it was, "oh yeah, I'm sure this isn't fishy at all! You can try this one!"
So I'd try it.
Fishy. Every time.
Makes me want to puke.
Mahi mahi. Fishy. Mahi mahi encrusted with some kind of divine macadamia nut mixture. Fishy. The perfect salmon. Fishy. Halibut. Fishy. $40 fish entree. Fishy! I mean, really people. How can you stand it? Do you lick piers, too?
Eventually, Matt gave up. He'd try something and say, "you know, I could swear this doesn't have any fishiness! But you better not try it.... Sorry." :)
The nail in the coffin happened a couple years ago when Brian and Janelle drove to Denver and offered us some of their road snacks. I went for the beef jerky. Mmmm!! Beef jerkkk.... Wha...?
Tastes like FISH!!!
I started to complain. Does anyone else taste this? The beef jerky is fishy! No one believed me—thought I was crazy. I tried another bite. Ugh. Fish fish fish.
At which point, Janelle, incredulous, with a bit of "I'm in the twilight zone" in her voice, said: "Ummmm.... The bag of beef jerky was sitting next to a bottle of omega-3 supplements. Those have, uh.... Fish oil...." Hadn't come in contact—just supplements in a bottle sitting in a bag next to a sealed package of beef jerky. Could it be possible?
All these years I had wondered if the fishiness were just in my head, and now it all clicked. Why would my psyche randomly decide that beef jerky should taste like fish oil...? I started to remember all those times I had eaten something random at a restaurant and had to throw it away because it was too fishy—french fries, carrot cake?, vegetables.
My mind flashed to that chemical-paper genetics experiment in high school biology. Mr. Jones came in with a tube of little strips of paper, gleeful. "Golding! I can't wait for you to taste this! Muwahahahahaha!!!!" Everyone gets a paper to taste. For the vast majority, the paper will taste horribly bitter. But if you happen to have two recessive genes, you'll taste nothing. We had 25 people in the class. I braced for the taste! My classmates started to moan and spit and gag and complain. I tasted . . . nothing. Out of all 25 in the class, I was the only one who could taste nothing. I chewed on that piece of paper for a while just reveling in the awesomeness that is genetics (and in the chagrin of my teacher who had been so excited to torture me :)). So cool! Genes can make you not taste a nasty chemical on a piece of paper!
So now I'm tasting fish on beef jerky and realizing.... I've got some kind of freak genetic thing that makes me taste a chemical in fish other people don't taste!
My dream died.
I also felt vindicated. :)
But the dream died....
And I'll never be able to eat fish. :-( It's really, really, really sad.
A few weeks ago, Matt bought some Smart Balance eggs. He was so excited about them, too. They'll taste better! They're good for you! Seth eats so many eggs, and now he'll get more Omega-3s!
I made myself an egg-on-bagel sandwich and.... You guessed it!
Fish.
Are you kidding me! Eggs that taste like fish? Who could have seen that coming?! (Disgusting. I had to throw it away after a few bites because I just couldn't take it anymore.)
I don't know what they're feeding those chickens to get Omega-3s in those eggs, but the litmus test—me!—says fish is involved somewhere! I googled it to see if I were crazy. Sure enough, there were but a few souls out there asking the question: "why do my smart balance eggs taste like fish?" The world rose in revolt against them to say, wow, you're insane. But I think they're on to something...!
R.I.P. craving for fish. It's never gonna happen.
3 comments:
This just makes me laugh because Jeff and I have had so many of the same conversations. I used to tell him "this salmon isn't very salmony" and he used to tell me "this shrimp hardly has any shrimp taste." Blech! Gag! It ALWAYS tastes shrimpy. We finally figured out that when we go for seafood we both just enjoy what we ordered without trying to inflict it on the other.
so sad! I actually like good fish.
How about walnuts? Those have good omega-3's too, right?
It IS so sad. SO sad!
I haven't had any problem with walnuts. (Thank goodness! Although, walnuts aren't actually my favorite. And they give me sores in my mouth. But still! They're good in cookies!) I'm assuming whenever some "omega-3" thing jumps out at me as fishy, that they somehow involved fish in the getting of the omega-3. Flax hasn't ever offended me, either. But the smart balance people fed chickens some fish heads, I swear. The fact that they then lay eggs that I cook up and have to throw away because it tastes like fish is just cooky to me!
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