If you had to choose, would you say you prefer sweet foods or savory foods?
Mara here:
I have a sweet tooth. I always have. When I was younger, I remember being about to eat a whole bag of candy corns. Cake has always been my favorite special occasion food. It doesn’t need to be fancy. In fact, I prefer the basic sheet cakes that you get at the grocery store. But my primary food desire is candy: sugar candy. I’m not a huge lover of chocolate. Don’t get me wrong, I like chocolate, but when I’m craving something, it’s usually a sugar candy, like Hot Tamales, Skittles, or Starbursts. I also really like Cinnamon Bears and red licorice.
And for some reason, about twice a year, I get a super strong craving for an ice cream sundae. As with chocolate, I like ice cream, but it’s not something I pine after. Every once in a while, though, I really want a big ice cream sundae with vanilla ice cream, hot fudge, almonds (only because I’m allergic to peanuts), lots of whipped cream, and a maraschino cherry. If we’re really going all out, some caramel sauce and marshmallow cream are excellent additions.
But, aside from those isolated occasions, what I want is candy. I used to like those weird sugar buttons we'd get at fairs. You pull them off the strips of paper and, even though the paper sticks to the backs, you eat them anyway! Or Fun Dip. For some reason it seems like adults all think Fun Dip is disgusting, but I love Fun Dip. It’s basically sugar sticks dipped into flavored sugar. And then there are Necco Wafers. It seems as if people also have very strong opinions about Necco Wafers. They’re old fashioned and hard to find now. They’re sort of chalky, oddly flavored disks of sugar. It’s hard to describe what they taste like, but I love them. Maybe it’s because my dad loves them. I think they could be called an acquired taste.
But really, I’m not that picky when it comes to candy. If it’s mostly sugar, I will probably like it.
Sadly, now that I’m older, my body can’t process sugar the way it could when I was younger. I hardly eat candy anymore except in very small quantities, or I feel shaky and sick. But when I do treat myself and eat a little candy, it’s a blissful experience. And when I think about candy, it’s always with a wistful longing.
Toni here:
My contribution here could simply be comments on the sweet stuff Mara loves so much because, as you're about to see, I'm very opinionated about sweets. I do not like Skittles or Starbursts. The items on Mara's list that I love are hot fudge sundaes (but hold the nuts); Necco Wafers (but only the pink ones); and hot tamales (but they're not as good as those tiny, hard cinnamon hearts that I don't think are made anymore). I don't eat any of these anymore though. And the only one of them I still crave is that hot fudge sundae, but that's because my favorite food is chocolate.
But I'm picky about chocolate too. It has to be bittersweet. I order organic powdered cocoa from Amazon and, now and then, I'll eat a spoonful right from the bag. That must be proof that I've "recovered" from my sugar cravings because that spoonful is not sweet!
And so I'd say that I crave savory over sweet. I looked up the word savory and it said "salty or spicy." It's a good thing my blood pressure is so low because I crave salt. In fact, I'm supposed to eat it because of my chronic illness; it supposedly helps with my blood circulation.
Loving salt is a dangerous habit, though, because anything that's salted, I can chow down fast, from Fritos to potato chips to Cheetos. Not exactly heath foods. I control the craving by telling my husband not to buy them at the store.
I also put myself in the "savory" category because I love spicy foods—not "hot spicy" but "flavorful spicy." We have a great Nepalese/Indian restaurant in town. My husband and I recently discovered that we could order from the place online, specify a time, and, for four bucks, the food is delivered to our door. Yum. I definitely prefer savory!
***
So what’s your food preference? Do you like sweet or do you like savory? What’s your favorite special occasion food?
No comments:
Post a Comment