The Do Not Eat List

The offending dish, complete with vegetarian sausage.

We have a chalkboard in the kitchen where I write our grocery list. Increasingly, I've noticed it reminds me to get the same things, week after week. Coffee, milk, cheese, bananas, veggies (so specific!), apples, tortillas, beans, red wine. And so on.

Every month or so, I get baking staples like flour and sugar, and every few months I add something especially random to the list. Curry powder or chipotle peppers — specialty items used for specific recipes.

On Sunday night, I was excited to make a pot of red beans and rice for Ryan. It was an opportunity to try a new recipe; an easy, cheap, and homey one at that.

Except it didn't quite go over that well. It was so poorly received, in fact, that it gave Ryan a new idea. "Let's keep a 'hazardous materials' list on the fridge," he said, "of things you shouldn't use in cooking."

Turns out, chipotle peppers in adobo sauce are on the list. So are curry powder, papayas, vegetarian sausage. I added a few things to the list myself: red meat, chicken, anise, licorice.

We're old enough to know what we like and don't like. And while I love cooking, it's actually nice to be able to look through a recipe, see an ingredient I know one or both of us is bound to dislike, and either modify the recipe or move on to something else.

Do you have a "haz mat" list at home? What's on it?