Big Cheese Challenge results

Okay, so it turns out flooding isn't the best approach for trying to like food. It was probably the least fun few minutes I have had in a long while. This picture is the ridiculously optimistic amount of cheese I had hoped to eat. Cathedral City, Grana Padano and Crumbly Lancashire.

The challenge started off badly because I was all ready for it and then people came home who don't know about my eating problems, let alone the challenge, and they started saying, "Why don't you have it with crackers?" and giving me funny looks. So I had to take my plate upstairs.


So, Cathedral City. I honestly thought this would be okay as I have eaten it melted so many times. I was wrong! Believe it or not, the picture on the left is two bites. Admittedly small, but two bites nonetheless. The taste was atrocious and my anxiety about eating the other two shot up.









My boyfriend kindly recommended that I leave the Grana Padano until last, because it's like parmesan and strong. But looking at this crumbly monstrosity my heart was beating ten to the dozen and my stomach was preparing to throw it back up before it was even in my hand. So, I picked up a small amount and put it in my mouth, and it was horrible, as I expected, but no worse than the last. I managed two small fingerfuls.





So, time for the last one and my boyfriend's advice was making me think this was a bad idea. I got a Penguin (chocolate bar, not animal) ready next to me. I closed my eyes, and took the tiniest nibble (as you can see) and attempted to chew. About 2 seconds later the retching began and that Penguin was unwrapped very quickly.





So, in summary, I ate three cheeses, and I kept them down. It's unlikely that any adjudicator would count the last one as a "big boy bite", but I hadn't realised just how strong it would taste. I'm feeling pretty disappointed as I genuinely thought that I would taste it and realise how silly I had been, but I guess it doesn't work that way. The next step is to do what Ricky Gervais did. He once said in an interview that he started with a tiny bit of cheese on a ritz cracker and built up from there. Probably wiser. I shouldn't be too sad though. This morning I ate a whole bowl of porridge with syrup and I almost enjoyed it, then I finished reading "As I Lay Dying" from my list, and then a few hours later I went for a run outside, which I rarely do, and didn't have any pain at all. I can't expect 25 years of dodgy thoughts about food to just vanish because I want them to and I should be pleased that I'm at least trying to vanquish them.

So there's my pitiful entry for this week's little challenge. :-)