I’m not an adventurous eater. So, there’s that to start with.

I was the “picky” eater in the family, but looking back, I don’t think I was that picky. I just seemed that way compared to my brother, who would not only eat anything, but delighted in eating everything.

Yeah, I had my dislikes: cottage cheese, cucumbers, pickles, and all forms of melons. I stand by these dislikes to this day. But my list of dislikes also included: American cheese, Velveeta, any fast-food hamburger (actually, any kind of hamburger), the mere sight of a Jack in the Box building, any mayonnaise-based foods like potato salad, macaroni salad—in fact, anything with the word “salad” that wasn’t lettuce, such as fruit salad (melons touching my grapes? No thank you), almost all mac-and-cheese dishes, TV dinners, those weird Jell-o foods, sweet potatoes with marshmallows on top, Peeps, strawberry milk, and pepperoni pizza. (This year, I discovered a new detested food: the Philly cheese steak.)

Turns out, I just hated a lot of processed junk.

Growing up, we frequently went to restaurants of cuisines around the world. My brother always wanted to try something new, and being part of the family, I was dragged to Chinese, Japanese, Afghan, Thai, Mexican, Greek, Vietnamese, Ethiopian, and Indian restaurants all across the city. I’m sure I ate relatively tame and familiar items from these menus, but this is how I know I wasn’t a picky eater: the only time I ever ordered from the “kids” menu was at American restaurants (avoiding those hamburgers, you know).

I’m grateful for introduction to other cuisines and the normalization of eating from around the world, as it turned out that I loved to travel. And eating is a requirement of travel.

That doesn’t mean I’m an adventurous eater. Now, I’m not the American who is eating cereal at the breakfast bar in Beijing, but I’m also not about to try the most shock-value items on a menu. I’m interested in flavor, but very hesitant about texture.

Yet the most common question I get about my travels is, “What’s the strangest thing you’ve eaten?”

I think these people have watched way too much Discovery Channel and think 90% of the world’s diet is bugs or fermented vegetables thrown in a hole in the ground for six months. I’m sure my brother has eaten both those things with delight. I, however, have not.

First of all, bugs are entirely off my menu. That is, unless they come attached to the greens I’m eating, or burrowed into the beans that are served up, or floating in the sauce on top of the meat, or their body parts are stuck in the honey or peanut butter, or they are making their home in a fresh piece of fruit. Essentially, I only eat bugs as condiments. And on accident. And while pretending I didn’t just see that.

Second, meat is like a blackjack game that you’re really hoping you don’t lose. It’s either really good or an hour later you’re wondering if this is the bite of food that causes your untimely death. The only thing in between these two is beef jerky.

I’ve had my fair share of meat in the former category, including kudu, impala, zebra, guinea pig, crocodile, rabbit, goat, and probably things I was told were “definitely” chicken or beef that were actually DADT (don’t ask, don’t tell). In South Africa I once made lasagna with ground ostrich meat because it was cheaper than beef. Weird, but memorable.

I’ve had meat that was also, unfortunately, in the latter category: the one titled, “Is this how I die?” This has included multiple rounds of bush meat, that, when asked which animal, was only clarified with, “One that came from the bush.” I’m either going to be Patient Zero of the next pandemic or, best case scenario, practicing my squats really well all night long in the latrine.

There was also the time that I had cow stomach and cow knuckles. I don’t consider that too adventurous on its own, as it’s a fairly common food from one of the most commonly eaten animals on the globe. I’d say what made it adventurous, though, was that it was served in a university cafeteria. In Zimbabwe. If chicken fingers and peas from a school cafeteria is questionable, I shudder to think why I thought it was a good idea to eat it. (I was up all night after that, for the record. Loooots of time to reflect on the day’s decisions.)

Then there’s crabs. I ate crab in Honduras to honor the people who brought it to us, and to humor our Fijian friend in helping me open it, but I stand by my thoughts on crab: out of principle, I don’t eat armored spiders.

Fruits and veggies tend to be the safest to eat. The worst that will happen is a disagreeable texture that forces you to involuntarily dislodge it from your mouth. Like anything directly translated as “slippery greens” in South Sudan (two words I never want put together for something I’m about to eat), or anything that smells like wet, dirty socks (looking at you, papaya), or so astringent it’s like you just ate a giant mouth suction device from the dentist (there’s a reason we eat cashew nuts and not the cashew fruit, which I found out in Trinidad and Tobago).

But there’s plenty of fun fruits and veggies, too: jackfruit, passionfruit, guayaba, lemons that taste like oranges, and countless little bush fruits and vegetables that no one ever told me the name of, but just handed it to me and said, “Eat.” I do what I’m told. Even if it’s papyrus. (Yes, you can eat that, too.)

On the list of hit-or-miss foods are fermented items. As a nutritionist, I know that fermentation can actually enhance the nutrient profile of many foods, and virtually all traditional diets practice fermentation of some food items. Then again, there is a thin line between fermented (properly preserved) and rotting (not properly preserved). I couldn’t eat enough of the fermented millet porridge for breakfast in Senegal (much to my friend Amanda’s horror), but there was no way I was going to partake in the alcoholic milk in Juba that was passed around in a gourd from person to person. (Fortunately, I avoided it by merely being a woman and thus ineligible to consume it. My husband avoided it by claiming a sudden bout of alcoholism that he is recovering from.)

So, there you have it. This is my far-from-complete list of foods I’ve eaten while traveling. There’s no brains, bugs, arthropods, psychedelics, or Fear Factor foods on my list. Having lived in the shadow of my brother who probably has eaten brains, bugs, arthropods, and many more, I figured I was just a sadly picky eater. But looking back on my list of what I have eaten, I’d say I’ve discovered a lifetime of flavors and textures. I’ll keep traveling and eating, declining some items and trying others, but mostly staying in a relatively safe realm.

Just remember my big four “No’s”: cucumbers, melons, cottage cheese, and pickles. Anything but that.