The Friday Five for 27 December 2024 + A few random notes

Answers to today's questions at thefridayfive @ DW

1. What is the most adventurous food you've ever tried?

I'm a very picky and suspicious eater, honestly, the most adventurous I've been was probably when I tried out blue cheese for the first time. I was in my early or mid-30s, loved cheese but had always thought blue cheese looked very very suspicious indeed. But for some reason I had started to get curious, and one time when I was over at my Mom's and she had some, I took just a tiny bit to taste it. It wasn't instant love, but the kind of weird salty goodness lingered on my mind, and I kept trying bit and bit bigger pieces until one day maybe 2-3 months later I dared to buy my own first Aura blue cheese block and it has been love ever since. I tried out all the other blue cheeses the shops have too, but Aura blue cheese is the best (the one in the silver wrapper, not the one in gold wrapper!)

Another recent try was on this past Wednesday when I tried porkkanalaatikko (Finnish carrot casserole) which is made with rice and carrots and is a traditional Christmas food here. I tried just two spoonfuls and nearly gagged getting them down. The texture was so smooth and kinda slimy and of course, there was the carrot taste too. Which I don't like hot. No love and I don't think there ever will be.

I have issues with texture, if it's too smooth and/or kinda slimy, I gag and if I'm forced to keep eating, I'll throw up (a cummon occurrence as a kid because teachers in school never believed me until it happened). I also have problems trying things if I think they look weird, gross or just somehow suspicious even if it's something I'd probably like or even love. Blue cheese is a great example of this - it looked all three of things to me, but I still fell in love with it when I dared to try it out. Mushrooms are something that for 50 years I haven't been able to bring myself even to taste - they're just too weird and suspicious looking.

I don't like most vegetables, and none of them hot. I can tolerate a completely smooth vegetable soup for a few days a couple of times a year as long as the color isn't muddy brown or something (all the vegetable soups I make/buy are either orange or magenta!). But most of the time whatever vegetables I eat, I eat them raw.

2. What is the most adventurous food you'd be willing to try?

Donno. None of any of the truly adventurious foods! The rest of my no-eat list... depends on my mood, what its made of, what it looks like. I'm not adventurious at all, but I do manage to add new things regularly anyway to my list of things to eat! Things that when I was younger I couldn't imagine ever tasting even!

3. Would you have a problem eating dog meat and why or why not?

Yes, under normal circumstances I wouldn't, no matter what. Dogs are loved and valued family members here, there are no strays etc. and they are certainly not food. That said, I think I'd be able to eat dog meat under apocalyptic circumstances where starvation was the other option, but probably even then it couldn't be a dog I knew and I don't think I could kill it.

4. For the most part, do you consider your diet to be balanced?

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

But it's better than it was 10 years ago, at least. I've done a lot of work on it! Still  nowhere close to balanced and healthy.

5. Which is more appealing: being a vegetarian for the rest of your life or being a strict carnivore for the rest of your life?

Neither is at all appealing. I don't like vegetables so the only realistic option for me here is meat, and I'd get bored eating meat literally always.

Random notes

- this holiday week has me so confused! I keep thinking it's either a day too much or day too little, and wrong part of the week and just overall my sense of days is fucked. I'll be glad when January 7 rolls around and the last of the holidays are over!

- I've been keeping a good sleep pattern the last two weeks or so, after having an awful one for a couple of weeks. Having a proper sleep pattern does feel much better!

- I'm dreaming again every time I fall asleep - if it's even just for five minutes, I dream! And I remember all the dreams again. Lots of action/adventures in scifi settings, one in Wild West, and last night in a world after a vampire apocalypse! There were only a few hundred thousand humans left alive and several millions of vampires. Maddeningly, the dream completely failed to explain how about a hundred thousand captured humans (the rest were in hiding and running) were enough to feed and keep several millions of vampires glowingly healthy while their only source of blood is from those captures humans? Awake!me keeps going: the numbers don't add up! 😂

- On the plus side, currently I have no problems falling asleep, or staying asleep, despite the dreams. That's really good because at times I have huge problems with both.

- I hope the upcoming iron infusion will help with not dreaming so much, or at least not remembering everything! At least before when I had bad dream problem, it went away when I got more iron into my system via tablets.