Task 26: Eat 5 foods I've never tried before

When I came up with this idea for a task, I initially thought it wouldn't be that difficult.  After all, there must be quite a few vegetables I'd never eaten.  Unlike fruit, they don't feature highly in my list of preferences.  Despite setting foot in the kitchen as rarely as possible, I have a substantial collection of cookery books as I enjoy the idea of cooking, if not the reality.  Looking through the vegetarian section, I found a list of all the vegetables typically available in the UK and was dismayed to find I'd chomped through every one of them at some point in my life.  The list of fruit was a little more promising but basically, having consulted the books in the meat, poultry and fish sections, it looked as though I was going to have to venture into offal.  (Any vegetarians might want to stop reading now.)

Like most people I'm not keen on eating internal organs or even thinking about them. Liver I can manage, having got used to it as a child and again at university when diet was largely dictated by cost.  I'm much too squeamish to contemplate anything else in the offal department.  This was definitely going to prove a challenge, and not a welcome one.

Fortunately on my birthday, when Peter and I went to a French restaurant for lunch, the special for the day was a beef dish which included ox cheek as an accompaniment.  It sounded thoroughly unappetising but I was keen to start tackling the list of tasks as soon as possible and this was too good an opportunity to turn down.  Luckily the offending article was encased in a little pastry Wellington, so I didn't really have to look at it.  To my surprise it was delicious - tender and full of flavour.

So, one down and four more to go....