New food experience

Today for lunch we were charged with trying a new food. I pretty much all right with this because it would be funded. And also, I'm okay with trying new things. Just not fish. Because I hate fish. They're disgusting. Matt ordered shrimp once and I was sitting across from him and they had eyes and I was almost sick. They also smelled like the ocean. I don't like food that smells like the ocean. I guess I'm a fairly picky eater. So I was okay with this whole try a new food thing until I learned about the restrictions. No pasta or pizza. And Teri shot down risotto, too. I have been craving risotto since I got here, and everywhere I go it's a seafood risotto, but I figured I could try that and it would be okay. Since I hate fish so much. But that idea pretty much got shot down.

So we went to this little restaurant down the street to have our new food experience. I was feeling pretty nervous until I saw the menu, which was pretty detailed. I figured I could find something on it. And there was even some weird vegetables for Rachel, who was worried because she's a vegetarian and it's kind of hard to branch out if you don't eat meat. So we went in and the place was pretty much empty. There were like two old Italian men and that was it. Our waiter was also an older Italian man and he was extremely excited to see us. We noticed that they don't get a lot of young people in there. We looked over the menu and there was some weird stuff. But I decided that I would eat fish because I hate it so much. And I would just like to elaborate briefly on how much I hate fish. For Serbian Christmas Eve you can only eat food that comes from the ground or from the sea, which is pretty limiting. We have salad, Serbian potato salad (which I think smells funny, so I don't eat it), unleavened bread, and whiting and smelts. We cook the whiting and smelts on the back porch during Pittsburgh January because my mom doesn't want to smell up the house (so I think it's genetic). My dad also makes canned tuna with a lot of salt and pepper so you can't really taste the tuna. At dinner, however, I'm not allowed to hog up on the salad or tuna because my one cousin and my mom also don't like fish and everyone likes salad. So I don't starve, I pretty much have to eat fish. I fill half my plate with ketchup, cut a tiny piece of fish off, cover the whole piece in ketchup and then eat it. You pretty much just taste the ketchup and not any fish at all. It's delicious. I just wanted to tell this to elaborate on how much I despise fish.

I ordered grilled squid. Not fried calamari, which I will eat doused in sauce, but grilled squid. I was feeling pretty nervous before it came out. I was regretting my decision pretty hard-core. Matt, Allie, and Tyler ordered ox tails and I was thinking that couldn't be that bad, an ox is pretty close to beef, I should have gotten that. But then our waiter brought out all these plates of appetizers and we were thinking, "Did we order this?" They were really good. I have no idea what they were, though. Matt said the one pizza had anchovies on it, so I avoided that. I drew the line at the anchovies. I did eat the omlettey-ham turnover and the other pizza with artichokes on it and they were both good. When I looked at the conto he only charged us a dollar per person for all of that, and that's how much plain bread is. No one else got that. So I felt special.

Then I saw him coming out with these three heaping plates of meat with red sauce and I really started to freak out. I knew the food was coming. And I really did not want to eat any squid. AT ALL. This was the ox tail's and it looked pretty good. It smelled pretty good too, like stew. Matt took the first bite while Rose was taking pictures and it was pretty funny. He said it was hard to cut.

Mine came out with Rachel's and Rose's and it was NASTY LOOKING. I did not take a picture and the nasty part has not been preserved with me in a photograph. There were two flat pieces of like yellow and white fish and then these two giant tentacle pieces which I immediately moved to another plate and hid under something. I cut a piece and it wasn't squishy, so I was happy about that. I ate it, and I was just hoping I wasn't going to barf. I was told if I did Matt would take a picture. It really wasn't that bad. It was really lemony and it didn't taste fishy, which I was worried about. I ate the whole first piece but not the second piece. That one was less lemony and I think maybe at first my expectation had been that it would be so nasty that it was so exceeded that the second piece really had to live up, and it just didn't. Matt, however, did eat the tentacle pieces, which I thought was nasty. He ripped off all the legs. We found the head and cut it off and it was pretty cool. You could see inside of it. I like to play with my food, which is kind of a bad habit and why I couldn't order green beans for years. He didn't eat the head though. We discussed whether or not we thought Italians ate the whole thing. I hope they don't but I have a sneaking suspicion they do, because eye balls are a delicacy in some cultures.

I feel like this was overall a good experience. I don't think that I'd willingly order grilled calamari again, but if I accidentally did it, it wouldn't be the end of the world. I could eat it. I would probably order the ox's tail. I tried Matt's and it was good. Allie and Tyler said that you don't get much meat out of it though, which probably wouldn't be a bad thing for me because I never finish a meal, anyway. I think I did a good job with this assignment because I ate fish that wasn't deep fried or covered in any sauce or doused in lemon, which is how I've always ate fish in the past. I ate a whole big piece, which was probably like a whole squid side, and I didn't throw up or get sick. This taught me to not be afraid to try new things. I still think I have limits, though. I don't like squishy meats and I might have an issue with eating something that got killed right in front of me. The best bet for me is probably still to not know what I've eaten until after I'm done. That's why I like zucchini bread.