When I moved in with my husband over 10 years ago, I remember the first time he made me breakfast:  some basic scrambled eggs, toast, and bacon.  He made four strips of bacon.

Four.

I was like, “Where’s yours?”

I grew up in a family of four and my Dad cooked a whole pound of bacon every Sunday morning.  That’s 4-5 slices apiece, and we never had leftovers.

This is why I moved in with Mike before I married him.  I needed to know what I was getting into… and this bacon thing?  “Honey, we need to talk…”

Fast forward a few years…

After a few years of witnessing my carnivorous lifestyle, Mike quite aptly nicknamed me Meat Tooth, as opposed to “sweet tooth”, because I’m all about the meats and salts, and care little for sweets and desserts.

Now, fast forward to present day…

Have you ever had one of those moments where in that very moment, you realize something very fundamental about yourself has changed completely?

I had one of those a few months ago: One night after dinner I moseyed on into the kitchen, surveying what was left on top of the stove.  There really wasn’t enough to save.  Too much for me to finish off right then, but not enough for a leftover lunch.

So I started picking at a few bites: 6-7 halves of roasted Brussels sprouts were left, and I ate ‘em.  And that was all I had room for. I left the crispy, roasted potatoes.

…Let me repeat: I left the crispy, delicious roasted potatoes.

(Okay, okay, I added that ‘delicious’ to the repeat line.)

Nevertheless, as I swallowed my last bite of Brussels, I stopped dead in my tracks. Now, 99.999999999999% of the world doesn’t know me, so they can’t fully appreciate what an insane moment this was: I chose the Brussels over the potatoes.

First of all, you couldn’t pay me a billion dollars to choke down a Brussels sprout when I was a kid, never mind any other vegetable.  Nope, no thanks.  I would have divulged highly classified government secrets before I ate one Brussels sprout. Second, I’m an Irish girl – potatoes are like oxygen to me, and to choose the Brussels over the potatoes was like the ultimate betrayal of one’s identity.

It was a gradual shift, but at that moment, I realized how far I’d come. I thought back on all the food shopping excursions over the years, and could visualize how much more space the produce took up in my cart as the years ticked by.

Nowadays produce accounts for half of the content, both moneywise and spacewise, in my shopping cart.

All I know is that I used to stand over Mike’s shoulder when he was searing meat on a grill, drool dripping down my chin.  Nowadays I lick my lips with anticipation when I open the oven and mix around the roasting Brussels with my wooden spoon.

Turn and face the strange, ch-ch-changes.

---

My name is Suzanne Jacobetz, aka The Cursing Gourmet, and I am Bridget’s older (not necessarily wiser) cousin. I’m Generation X all the way and do not enjoy it when I hear 80s/90s rock on classic rock stations. I live in the mountains in Colorado with Mike, my husband of 10 years, 15+ miles from a grocery store. It’s a very quiet, peaceful life, or at least it used to be:  a year ago we had our first kiddo, a sweetie pie named Isabelle ❤️