Wyn Drabble: Eating outside your comfort zone

Wyn Drabble says it's good to try new food but sometimes they are not all they are cracked up to be. Photo / NZME

OPINION

I like to think I'm a reasonably adventurous eater; you certainly couldn't tie me with the epithet "picky".

If I'm in a classy restaurant headed by a skilled chef, I can even go so far as keeping my order very simple indeed. "Just feed me," I might say to the waitperson and then sit back and wait for the surprises to appear.

Possibly because of that, or possibly because they looked intriguing, Mrs D came home with a packet of rosemary crackers to liven up one of our picnic-style meals. They certainly looked interesting. And healthy.

They were quite dark in colour and specked with little seeds – I could certainly identify sesame seeds – and what we supposed was some other form of compressed goodness.

I thought the flavour might be a little overpowering for the cheeses on offer so I opted for the safety of trying one by itself first. I bit it in half – it was only small – and started my investigatory mastication.

Wyn Drabble

When you do that, you're looking for some sort of response which lies along the range bordered by "yum" at one end and "no, I don't care for that" at the other.

This item fell outside those parameters. "This is horrible!" I said choosing blunt honesty over the softness of understatement. Like tree bark but with less flavour.

Mrs D tried one; they couldn't be that bad. "This is horrible!" she agreed.

Occasionally we might say that once was enough and we wouldn't buy this or that product again. Fair enough! You can't like everything. But right now I can't think of any other foodstuff which has prompted a unanimous response of "horrible".

We certainly weren't going to eat them so they would need to be passed on to other members of the animal kingdom and here I'm not meaning to malign animals.

We have a bird-feeding station and every morning the feathered ones line up for their daily seed offering. They'll love these, we thought. All those yummy seeds lovingly encased in … well … other stuff.

The following morning, to our surprise, we found that even though we had broken the items up into little beak-friendly pieces they remained untouched. Even the birds didn't like them! "These are horrible!" they were probably chirping to one another.

Mother birds were possibly nudging their young away from the offending items. Well, you know how picky kids are about food.

So, this called for another contender from the animal kingdom. Madam Dog would be a perfect candidate given that she will eat meat, grass, bugs, dirt, clothes pegs, courier parcels, hosiery, frogs, firewood. In fact, she'll eat virtually anything classified as a noun.

She approached with caution as she knows that treats offered outside meal times can be medicinal (worm and flea tablets and the like) and they are the only noun she doesn't actually like. And that's despite the fact that the manufacturers claim to have turned them into yummy treats.

She took it cautiously in her mouth, obviously not wanting to commit too early. She then asked to go outside (dogs can do that) where she released the food item on to the lawn in front of her and sat barking at things she could see on the property.

It took a while but eventually she consumed the item. I even offered a second and, with that, she went through the same procedure. Cautious, yes, but, hey, it was food.

So, I certainly encourage you to be a little adventurous with your food purchases but, in case you purchase this item, you will need back-up in the form of a dog.

Also remember that birds may be more intelligent than you think.

Wyn Drabble is a teacher of English, a writer, musician and public speaker.