My love for sushi and seaweed is disgusting and incomprehensible to most of my older relatives.
Foodies would scorn my occasional cravings for boxed macaroni & cheese or casseroles made with cream of mushroom soup. Those are comfort foods for me- I grew up eating them (my mom’s not much into cooking, especially not cooking from scratch with fresh ingredients- hey, she grew up in the 50s…) I do sometimes make real macaroni & cheese, and I like it, but it doesn’t satisfy that craving for the boxed kind.
I like Brussels sprouts, but they have to be fresh (not frozen), in season, and not overcooked. Otherwise they have that nasty sulfurous taste and smell. Brussels sprouts should NOT be mushy, ever.
I once had a curry dish with Brussels sprouts in it. That was what convinced me to try them again after many years of avoiding them, and it was delicious.
Asparagus is similar to Brussels sprouts that way. Fresh asparagus in season is good (especially roasted). Canned and frozen asparagus- disgust-o-matic. Canned and frozen asparagus are very different from each other, but each is awful in its own way.
I suspect that most people who hate Brussels sprouts and asparagus have only had frozen or (in the case of asparagus) canned, and have only had them overcooked. They are totally different from the bad kind most people have had in taste and texture when done right.
It’s also good with cocktail sauce. I know this is the sort of thing that only someone who converted to Judaism would eat…
I like pickled herring, but it doesn’t like me. A little while later, I have the worst-smelling poo ever.
If you eat cooked beef, and the only thing you’re worried about is mad cow, you might as well eat raw beef too- cooking, and, for that matter, radiation, won’t make mad cow prions harmless. Irradiation could, however, make bacteria in raw meat less of a threat. We just need to convince the woo-woos that it doesn’t make meat radioactive… :rolleyes:
If you want to avoid mad cow, you’d probably be best off avoiding supermarket beef in favor of grass-fed or corn-fed beef. Kosher beef may also be safer than regular beef, since kosher slaughterers are stricter about cows being in good health than regular slaughterers are (meat from a “downer” cow can’t be kosher), and kosher slaughterers don’t use some methods that non-kosher slaughterers do that are suspected of possibly making transmission of mad cow more likely.
I’ve heard that it’s safer from a bacterial perspective to not buy pre-ground beef- it’s better to find a market with a butcher, pick out a piece of meat, and have the butcher grind it for you, especially if you’re planning to eat it raw or rare. That might also be safer from a mad cow perspective, since you aren’t getting scraps that might contain nerve tissue.