Weird Food Habits

People are weird, myself included, when it comes to eating. Almost everyone has a quirk about the way they eat some foods, but sometimes people come up with great food combinations through their weirdness.

I suppose I should start with my own food quirk - as a 5-year-old I invented the PB&S sandwich. And the 'S' stands for sprinkles...I know it's a bit bizarre, but I promise I had a good reason. My parents don't like crunchy peanut butter, so when I was little I had never heard of such a thing. I went to my friend's house to play one time and her mom made us crunchy peanut butter sandwiches - needless to say, I was blown away by them. When I told my mom that I liked the crunchy peanut butter and asked her to buy it, she explained that she and my dad didn't like it. So as any 5-year-old would do, I innovated. Sprinkles made the perfect addition to my smooth peanut butter sandwiches - they made them crunchy, made them colorful and added sugar into my meal, can you really beat that? Well here I am, 15 years later and still eating sprinkles on my peanut butter sandwiches. Even though I am perfectly capable of just buying crunchy peanut butter, I feel like it's just a part of me to eat sprinkles on my sandwiches, so the tradition is going to stay.

But over the years, I've observed that I'm not the only weird person in the world. Plenty of my friends and family have their own food quirks too.

One of my close friends at college eats the entire peanut (I'm talking the shell and all) if given the option. He told me this at a baseball game and I thought he was joking just to get me to eat one...turns out he actually eats them like that all the time. I was so intrigued by his weird habit that I had to try it - turns out, it's delicious. Go figure. The shells are extra salty and just add a little more flavor! As an added innovation, we recently decided to try covering the whole peanuts in chocolate just to see if it would be good or not - it was. I think I can speak for both of us when I recommend trying it at least once.

Another friend also picks out all the vegetables in fried rice except the peas. Why? No one knows. He likes the flavor of the vegetables in the fried rice, but won't eat the onions or carrots. Can you imagine sitting there watching someone pick out each individual piece of onion or carrot shred in a bowl of fried rice? Let me just tell you, it's a strange experience.

And you know how the outside perimeter of pancakes get a little more cooked than the rest? It doesn't necessarily mean that the outside tastes different, it's just slightly more cooked. Well, a family friend refuses to eat the outside of pancakes for fear of them being burnt or tasting different. I suppose this is somewhat similar to not eating the crust of bread - but that means I have no room to talk because I don't like to eat the end pieces of any type of bread.

But you know, all these food quirks just make us all a little more interesting -  or at least that's what I'm going to keep telling myself. Bon Appétit!