Weird Food Combinations

Having grown up in a big family, many siblings made for high and frequent food consumption. I shudder to think what we must have put my mom through all those years, especially when all seven of us were at home.

Since my mom is a no-nonsense woman, she never put up with any sort of picky behavior at the dinner table. There was no such thing as options at the dinner table. What was at the table was what we had to eat. End of story.

This might explain while all of my siblings and myself, have, what some may call, expanded palates. In other words, we'll eat any food, in almost any combination, granted it's cooked thoroughly (and in my case, doesn't come from an animal).

Joseph, who grew up on nearly two foods (rice and beans), is amused by this. He finds entertainment in my interesting food combinations and my ability to eat, say chopped up celery in my oatmeal (I swear it's not as weird as it sounds!). More on our food differences, here.

I admit I'm not as quirky as some of these folks, who due to their living alone, have developed some downright odd food habits, such as, as one solo man said, "instead of adhering to regular meals or meal times [...] he makes 'six or seven' trips an hour to the refrigerator and subsists largely on cereal." And I think there may be some food combinations that I would never want to eat (watermelon and tofu? beans in a smoothie? yuck and yuck.).

Nevertheless, I've become more of a "think outside the box" kinda gal (I guess you could say quirky) in the last few years, particularly when in comes to what's appropriate to eat for breakfast, lunch, & dinner, especially since I'm not convinced that three squares a day is the right way to go.

Not that it's a bad way to go, it just may not work for everyone, and some research even shows that big breakfasts may lead to bigger calorie consumption for the day, which is alright if you're needing to gain weight, but most of us aren't.

I'm no longer tied to this idea of breakfast foods only for breakfast, or dinner only for dinner (we eat breakfast one night a week for dinner and it's my kids favorite meal of the week!), especially since many days I don't eat breakfast at the traditional time (I think breakfast is anytime you're breaking your "fast" from the night before, so it could be 7 am, 10 am, or noon).

Here's an example of a completely "normal" meal--you've got brown rice, black beans, a little butternut squash sauce, and some raw sugar snap peas (a super quick and easy meal to throw together in say, 3 minutes flat).

Here's an example of a not-so-normal meal. You might even say a weird food combination.

Can you guess the food in this dish that makes it a bit strange (look carefully)?

I have eaten both of these dishes on numerous occasions, and liked them both.

Have you guessed yet what the "weird" ingredient is in the second dish?

If not, here are's what's in the dish: brown rice, blueberries, bananas, almond milk, stevia, cinnamon and yes, you might have guessed it...black beans!

I was thinking Caribbean theme here and I wanted some more protein in the dish, but didn't want to eat the beans separately, so I threw them in. I could have sworn Caribbean fare includes bananas and black beans (I realize perhaps not together...)?

I think their bananas are called platanos and are a bit different so they deep fry them, but, close enough, right?

I'm not necessarily recommending the second dish, especially if you're new to vegan food (might be a little too different, even for the most non-picky of eaters), but I guess I throw it out there as a suggestion to try new food combinations even if it seems weird to others.

You never know, you may just create a new favorite food combination!

Question of the Post:

Do you have any weird food combinations that you really like? Or maybe a food combination that you tried that you thought you would like but didn't work well or was just plain gross?