Taste Buds

Ter and I are standing at the market deli counter. I’m holding an eggnog tart in a plastic clamshell from the bakery department. She is studying the variety of salads—and I mean variety. It’s not just coleslaw and potato salad anymore. Now there’s Mediterranean chick pea, curried carrot, twice backed potato, Asian slaw, three bean, Persian lentil, pesto pasta, you name it, there’s a bowl of it behind the glass.

“I love their beet salad,” Ter says to me.

I frown, unsure that I’ve heard her correctly. “Beet?”

She nods. I glance at the selection and, yes, there is indeed a beet salad. Heaven knows what’s in it besides beets, but I don’t ask.

“I got some the other day,” Ter continues. “It was so good, I ate it all for breakfast.”

I know. Beets for breakfast? Ewwww. Except for two things: one, Ter loves beets and two, she’s not a fan of conventional breakfast food. I’m the oatmeal/waffle/ granola-and-yogurt/eggs-and-toast half of the unit. During the thirty-plus years I’ve known her, Ter has preferred cold pizza to pancakes and leftover Chinese to Cheerios before nine in the morning. In fact, though we share the same passion for Italian food (who doesn’t like Italian food?), her culinary taste generally runs in the opposite direction to mine. She doesn’t enjoy cereal.  She’ll down a bowl of popcorn while I’m chomping cookies. Sweets are not her thing. Carbs used to be, but not so much now unless you count the chilli rice chips she snacks on while I’m snarfing a brownie or a butter tart with my afternoon cup of sweet creamy black tea. And let’s not even talk tea. Okay, let’s. Stash’s Earl Grey with double bergamot is her morning starter; after that, she might have a second cup of the same flavour at elevenses, though she occasionally deviates to a rogue Red Rose instead – and that’s it. She’s toyed with mint herbals in the past, but nothing has ever stuck. So the tea cupboard overflows with my addle-minded collection. The freezer is jammed with cake, cookies and tarts on my behalf. I tend the chocolate bin and Ter keeps the dishwasher stocked with a selection of corn, potato and rice chips. She likes wine, I drink liqueur. I can do breakfast for dinner, she does dinner for breakfast. Neither one of us can eat like vegetarian for more than a couple of days before we must have meat. Our tastes complement each other perfectly.

Back at the market, we get to the counter. Ter puts in the order, and the clerk starts loading a bin of bean salad. That’s when I realize I’d misheard. She’d said “beans”, not “beets.” Still, you can see why I wasn’t surprised even if I was wrong.

She makes a killer curried lentil/rice salad. It’s loaded with raisins and slivered almonds and carrot and green onion and it tastes like middle eastern heaven. I eat it warm or cold for lunch, with chicken or without, and it’s a kickass side with grilled salmon for dinner. Last time she made it, Ter told me that it’s awesome with a fried egg on top, too. “I had it like that for breakfast, today,” she said.

Of course she did.