Last week I spent the better part of my Monday afternoon looking at recipe websites in an attempt to get out of a cooking rut. Even though I’ve been largely dissatisfied with the meals I’ve made for the past few months, I haven’t been able to shake the boring meals I keep making for our family. So I set out to find some new recipes. But I also learned something about myself. 

If I don’t understand what the ingredient is for, I won’t buy it. If I can’t pronounce the recipe name, I won’t make it. If it seems unfamiliar to me, foreign to me, or too new to me, I will pass over it. As a result, we continue to eat the same types of foods and never expand beyond what is familiar to us. As a result, we miss out on a world of food combinations and ingredients that are probably really good if only I would take the time to branch out a little more to make things that I can’t fully wrap my mind around.

I think that’s often what we do with people who are different than us.