Yeah, Mom I Am Cooking Like This-Or, How I Became A Super Food Geek

By Mick Spillane

I don't think I ever had a crunchy vegetable until I left home. Uncle Ben's was deemed an exotic rice dish. Yes, I grew up in a very Italian home, which is where my love of food and cooking stems from. My mom is a spectacular cook, as was my grandmother.  Being from the birthplace of Jell-O, food adventuring, well, that is a foreign concept. Should there really be great fanfare at the opening of an Applebee's—that is, a "massification of culture?"

But what is the genesis of my adventurous palate?

Exploring my temerarious taste buds would mean relinquishing my upbringing with food. I really don't want to make my own meatloaf. Relinquishing my food heritage is my choice—a choice to explore other cultures.

Delving into cultural colonialism, or penchant for ethnic foods, and now cooking these foods, foods dominated by third world countries, full of tastes, textures, and smells I never thought I would encounter. Smell a bottle of the spice asafetida and you will know what I am talking about.

So, being a food geek, I am always looking for something new to eat. I'd rather cook something new, or try a new restaurant than repeat something, even though I loved it, again. Cooking or finding a new restaurant is a project, a hobby. Of course, trying a new cuisine, I like to think everyone craves such novelty, such variety. Except fussfaces. However, we as humans do not always seek out this novelty of variety. It seems so strange to me that people place a uniformity in their diet—it perplexes me. As Oscar Wilde said, "I hate people who are not serious about meals. It is so shallow of them."