Anyone who knows me now knows that I love food and I love it rather passionately and devotedly. I’ve woken up in the middle of the night after smelling the aroma of roasted lamb to sleepwalk into the living room to shovel a few mouthfuls of it into my mouth before getting back in the bed. I have flown thousands of miles for meals and dedicated countless hours to reading about and lusting after food and restaurants.

Anyone who knows me really well also know that I don’t discriminate. I love four-dollar-sign restaurants and street carts equally. I crave freshly shelled oysters with the same desire as a McDonald’s cheeseburger. My stomach has been given the finest and the worst the food world has to offer and it accepts most things happily. Those things it doesn’t, I force it through with the assistance of things like Lactaid (unfortunately for this food lover, I am lactose-intolerant).

The funny thing is, as a kid, I was probably one of the pickiest and weirdest eater of all time (and I have to admit that I’ve retained some of my weird eating habits). I used to have epic battles with my parents at the dinner table to finish my plate, which wasn’t particularly big or full to begin with. I would just hold the food in my cheeks until I didn’t think they were looking, or just excuse myself to the bathroom, to spit it out. I’m not sure if I didn’t think the food was good or if I just wasn’t hungry, but mealtimes were not generally fun times for me.

When I did have things I wanted to eat, I would only eat that thing.  Apparently as a kid, I only insisted on drinking milk. I probably went for days without any solid food. Now, this would be okay if I was a toddler, but I was definitely 4 or 5 and only drinking milk. (Too bad for me that I’m not lactose-intolerant and haven’t had a glass of milk in years.)  I loved raw avocados, still in the peel, with a bit of salt and pepper. And hard-boiled quail eggs (they made me feel like a giant). Oh, and I loved raw carrots (I imagined I was Bugs Bunny whenever I ate them). If I figured out one thing I liked though, that’s all I wanted to eat. I would refuse most other things.

Plus, smells would really bother me. Once, my brother made fresh blueberry muffins (oh, the joys of having an older brother who was enrolled in Home Ec), but the smell of the blueberries made me so sick that I had to hide out in my bedroom the rest of the day until the smell cleared. I didn’t end up trying a blueberry muffin again until probably a decade later (and, of course, I loved it).

By the time I hit middle school, I had a steady diet of fast food. I was eating Wienerschnitzel and Carl’s Jr. on a daily basis. When McDonald’s had a special offer on hamburgers (29 cents!), I only ate those for a few weeks. I went as far as buying extras and saving them in the fridge and reheating them for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Truly, it’s amazing that I didn’t die of self-induced malnutrition. Or of a heart attack.

At some point, my taste buds decided to mature and I decided that I liked different veggies and blueberry muffins and that food was enjoyable.

I still have a tendency to obsess over one thing and eat it until I feel sick (Sun Chips and I are still not friends). And, I credit for my fast-food period for preparing me with a stomach that can handle most street foods in any number of countries without any problems. My regimen of eating at least one moderately sized bag of Flaming Hot Cheetos every day ensured that I maintained my cultural inheritance of being able to eat intolerably spicy foods.

I look to the future and I wonder how my relationship with food will mature. Will my palate continue to blossom and introduce me to new flavors that I didn’t know I like? Will I finally get over my hatred of cilantro (terrible, given how much I love Mexican food)? Will I swap out my love of all things savory for something sweet?

I’m starting to catalog my eating habits through tumblr. While I intend to use it to track the foods that I cook (and I am hoping to cook, and not just bake, more), I suspect the occasional bought-en meal will make its way onto it too.

- Discovering new public radio programs not heard on KCRW or KPCC

- Writing ridiculously long emails to friends on a regular basis

- Having more Skype dates

- Eating hundreds, nay THOUSANDS, of tacos

- Star Wars in Concert, because there will be lasers

- Eating one too many lobster rolls and feeling a little sick, but deciding to eat another anyways

- Reading all the books on my shelves before I have to pack them up