Try 100 New Foods Goal

I have never really been adventurous when it comes to food.  In fact, the two cookbooks I used for the first five years of my adult life were: The 3-Ingredient Cookbook and (wait for it) The 4-Ingredient Cookbook.  Granted, for the first few years of my adult life, three or four ingredients at a time were all I could afford.

Since then, I have oh-so-slowly begun to venture outside of my food norms, to try new things. I recently read a bucket list item on Mighty Girl's blog which inspired me: Taste 1000 Fruits.  I didn't even know there were that many fruits in the world.  While I think this goal is so fantastic, I'm going to broaden mine a bit more since I'm still a bit of a food-newbie: Try 100 New Foods.  This could be fruit, vegetable, meat, whatever. But it doesn't mean 'try 100 new meals.'  It has to be a single item which I've never had before.

1. Absinthe
2. Chard - pretty good, especially sauteeed
3. Flax seed (does this count as a food? If it's poopable, I'm totally counting it.)
4. Eggplant - love, one my new favorite vegetables
5. Arugula - yuck, yuck, yuck
6. Shallot - took me forever to figure out this was a kind of onion at the store
7. Starfruit - extremely tart
8. Jarlsberg cheese - like Swiss cheese, not bad
9. Mimolette cheese - did not like, too dry and hard
10. Pancetta - while looking for it at the store, I couldn't remember if it was a fancy meat or fancy cheese
11. Chayote Squash - this has a really mild flavor and soft texture, like a potato and a pear had a baby