I’ve had food issues like this all my life, but much worse when I was a child. I think I can pinpoint it to the day when I was a toddler and was eating wide buttered noodles. A noodle flattened out on my tongue about halfway down my throat, and I started choking. My dad had to reach his fingers in my throat and pull out the pieces of noodle. I was never the same about food after that, and I still can’t deal with anything but the thinnest noodles.

I’m sure I ate fewer than twenty foods when I was a kid and, even though I’ve grown out of it a lot, I still have what Hubster calls “texture issues”. No eggs, no milk, nothing with a runny or slimy texture. I love to cook, but my friends nicknamed me “The Picky Foodie”.