Our first...

... foods shaped our taste buds.

Cancer Research UK found that we inherit our taste for high-protein food, but our environments influence our preferences for fruit, vegetables, and wait for it... puddings. Another study carried out at Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia , USA found that eating preferences may even develop long before you introduce solid food to your child. These findings suggested the power that parents have in shaping their children's dietary preferences, good or bad.

If you talk to my parents, especially my dad, about how to feed your baby, you will hear the story of how they took me to Chinese restaurants when I was a baby, fed me with shark fin soup and regretted it. No, not because it is considered as not PC to eat shark fin, you know, the whole Greenpeace talk. But because those experience for ever changed my taste buds. :)

Here's the thing, our family comes from Javanese background, though I'd like to think that my heritage was from all over Indonesia, but the Javanese part has the greatest influence. However, when it comes to eating, I am more Chinese or Western than Javanese. To my father's frustration, each time we have Sayur Lodeh at home, which is according to him a dish fit for a king, I have several option to eat: a) rice with some Kraft cheddar cheese (the one that I couldn't find in NL) and a piece of chocolate as dessert, b) if it's for lunch and I am not that hungry at the time, I drink a glass of chocolate milk before and after I took a nap, c) rice with our family recipe of scramble egg or d) Nutricia's baby cereal with 4 fruits (Yes, I am that weird) . Give me macaroni schotel any time of a day, or dim sum for that matter and I'd be a happy camper.

Sure, there are some Indonesian foods that I love, like my mom's signature pepes daun singkong (Steamed cassava leaves), sate bandeng and rabek from Banten, my aunt's gulai with no coconut milk that I still couldn't replicate despite having the same spices from her (I might have been using the wrong tomatoes), I also miss this dish called kaldu kokot that Yuk Nur, my mom's grocer, made us when I was a kid. Notice the trend here?;)

Learning from my parents' mistake, if you can call it that, I know that I won't give my child any Sayur Lodeh so I won't get in to trouble of having to cook them. Yes, we have to introduce a lot of foods to tastes, but I draw the line in Sayur Lodeh. As they say, first cut is the deepest....