When I was nine years old, my new stepfather took the family out for pizza. He asked me and my 4-year old sister what toppings we wanted on our pizza. We told him nothing, just a plain cheese pizza.
He promptly ignored us and ordered a pizza loaded with all kinds of toppings, including black olives. I was able to deal with the pepperoni and mushrooms, but I didn’t particularly like olives, nor did my sister. So we picked the olives off, making a small pile of them on our plates.
This apparently offended my stepfather, and he proceeded to order the two of us to eat all of the olives on our plates. All of them. Every single one. (To this day, I don’t know why we didn’t simply refuse. It must have been some combination of his intimidation and our obedience.)
If his goal was to ensure that my sister and I would never voluntarily eat another black olive for the rest of our lives, then he succeeded.
When I was a kid in middle school, I used to spend a quarter every day to buy a cinnamon roll or a Little Debbie snack cake, and pocket the rest of my lunch money. I guess I wore out those taste buds, because I have no desire to ever put such in my mouth again.
Three at least: peaches, corn-on-the-cob, and Ontario new potatoes.
When I was a child, we spent summers at Grandmother’s place, outside of our city. Grandma had survived the Depression with canned and pickled foods that she herself had made, and that got her family through the winter. So anything fresh was most welcome.
Problem was, that Grandma forgot that the Depression ended long before the 1960s and 1970s, and fresh food was available year-round from the supermarket. Maybe not as nice as you’d get at a farm stand, but still acceptable. Anyway, on those summer days, she’d hit every farm stand she could; which is why every dinner we had, had corn-on-the-cob, Ontario new potatoes (boiled, naturally, because that’s the only way you could do them, and Ontario new potatoes aren’t good for much else), and fresh peaches for dessert. In short, if it was in season, we ate it, “because it’s fresh and you don’t get this in the winter.” And, IMHO, we ate far too much of it. Every freakin’ meal had corn-on-the-cob, boiled new potatoes, and peaches for dessert, fercrissake!
It’s been at least thirty years, if not more; but I have not eaten a peach, a cob of corn, or boiled potatoes since. I do like a fully-loaded Idaho or PEI baked potato, but the minute you put a potato in boiling water is the minute I lose interest in eating that potato. If I could offer any advice, it would be: Don’t constantly serve anything “because it’s fresh.” Do that, and create people like me who won’t eat it for the rest of their lives.
When I was growing up in southern Louisiana we had red beans and rice at least once a week, whether we wanted it or not. I always hated the thick skin on the kidney beans used in that dish and made myself a promise to never eat another kidney bean once I was old enough to fend for myself. That promise remains unbroken.
Eight years ago I had a near death experience after eating a huge dinner consisting of mushrooms we’d picked that day. The 'shrooms were accurately identified and my gf was fine. It turns out I have a one in a million sensitivity to them.
They were delicious, and I ate a ton of them. After my gf was asleep, I started to feel sick. I spent the entire night vomiting and having diarrhea. At one point I collapsed to the floor and realized I might die. I managed to get up and decided to dress before calling an ambulance. When I tried to put my pants on, I got a violent muscle cramp in my leg and fell to the floor.
At some point I pulled a blanket down from our spare bedroom bed and passed out. My gf found me on the floor when she woke up and wanted to call an ambulance just based on how I looked, but I felt 1000% better by that point.
Anyway, the smell of mushrooms cooking creeps me out a bit to this day.
Black beans. Served atop a baked potato that was, well, a bit spongy before being baked. Well, the potato had turned and I was sick as can be for a few days - it was coming out both ends simultaneous. One moment I was sitting on the toilet and the next I was hugging it. No bueno.
Anyway, I blamed the potato for the event, but really try to avoid black beans since. I have no trouble with baked potatoes (or any potato for that matter), but do check their firmness before using (when in doubt, throw it out!).
I made white sals at Pennsic by putting all the ingredients in a heavy zippy 1 gallon bag and using a wine bottle to pound it since we didn’t have a mortaria =)
This brings me back. Not that I had quite your allergy experience; as bad as you had it, it could’ve been a lot worse.
Back in college I liked to make fried egg sandwiches. First I’d toast the bread in the frying pan in butter, then pull the bread and fry the egg. Meanwhile a heavy layer of mayo went on the waiting bread.
One time I made a sandwich just like that. With bad eggs and bad mayo. Mucked it down not noticing any odd taste.
Maybe 15 minutes later … I laid in the bathtub naked pumping the foul toxins out both ends for a couple hours that felt like a couple days.
It was about 3 years until I ate my next egg sandwich or any mayo.
To this day 40+ years later the idea of warm mayo is disgusting and the smell of warm mayo gives my tummy a turn. Cold mayo on a sandwich is fine; but don’t get it hot. Yeccch!
I always loved black olives. One Thanksgiving when I was a kid I ate an entire can and then got sick. I couldn’t bear to eat them anymore after that. My mom kept trying to argue me out of this, telling me the olives didn’t make me puke. I lacked the language skills to explain to her that it didn’t matter what caused it; once you’ve tasted an entire can of olives in reverse you never want to see, smell, or taste one again. (Actually I did eventually re-acquire my taste for them; it took about 20 years.)
Fat. When I was a kid in preschool back in the 1800s (we called it “nursery school” back then), we were served a bean soup one day. In my bowl was an unappetizing-looking hunk of pork fat, which I carefully ate around and left in the bottom of the bowl. The woman running the place told me I would have to sit there until I ate it, so I sat there for what seemed like a very long time. She finally came over and said “Come on, now, just pop it in and swallow and it’s all over.” So I did and promptly vomited, which enraged her. Ever since then, I carefully trim all fat off any cooked meat prior to eating it. There are some exceptions, such as bacon, but large pieces of fat are a non-starter.
I love you and want to bear your children! That’s exactly the kind of do-it-yourself work-around I learned from my papa. (He once split firewood with a sharp rock. Paleolithic tech! Too cool!)
I used to love chicken done pretty much any way imaginable. In the past year or so I eat it less and less often because it has become this insipid, spongy mass with the only the physical resemblance of what it’s supposed to be. Last time I cooked chicken thighs, the smell alone started to turn my stomach. And these were ostensibly organically raised birds. I don’t understand what the food agriculture industry has done with chicken but I may well be off it for good.
Watch the movie “Super Size Me 2: Holy Chicken”, by the same director as the original. It shows how roaster chickens are raised - they are specifically bred for developing the most massive breasts possible in the shortest amount of time on the smallest amount of feed. They grow so heavy so fast their leg bones can break just by walking around. Yes, something is up with chicken these days - it seems to alternate between spongy and rubbery and lacking flavor.
Broccoli. Didn’t like it as a kid, but as an adult I kind-of forced myself to stomach it and accept it’s goodness - I even cooked it plenty of times. It was never a favourite, but I tolerated it.
No more. I’ve gone George Bush Snr - ‘No more broccoli’.
I haven’t noticed any problem with chicken lately. I think the source may make a big difference, and I generally get it from reputable stores rather than just anywhere.
My story about “can’t face it any more” isn’t actually about food, though I did get really sick once from some unknown food poisoning. I was preparing a frozen pizza and decided to throw on some stuff (olives, peppers) from an old salad that had been sitting in the fridge for a while. I still don’t know if there was something wrong with the pizza or with the stuff from the salad, but I got so extremely sick I thought I was going to pass out. I was pretty much ready to call 911 when I gradually started to recover. But since I can’t link it to anything specific, I didn’t develop any food aversions.
But when I was in my late teens, I was at a party where I ended up consuming most of a large bottle (40-ouncer?) of Canadian Club whisky. You don’t want to know the details but one of the hosts was kind enough (after I had thrown up and passed out) to throw me into a bath and then put me to bed. It was a full two days before I recovered from what was fairly extreme alcohol poisoning. To this day, I have an aversion to whisky, though I can tolerate a small amount of really good Scotch. But the smell of Canadian Club seems to be permanently etched in my memory, even though objectively it’s perfectly good stuff.
Ah, yes. That reminds me of why I don’t drink Wild Turkey any more - no quality control. I was at a party back during my college days and the 1st bottle of Wild Turkey I drank that night was fine, no problems. But about halfway through the 2nd bottle it became quite apparent that something was BAD WRONG with that bottle!
Egg McMuffins. I crunched down on a huge piece of eggshell. It felt and sounded so horrible that I spit the whole mouthful out right into my lap and I was scrubbing my teeth with a napkin trying to get all the crunchy little shell bits out of the crannies. It makes me shiver just remembering it.
Similar story to the black olives…
I was about seven years old at school. I finished my lunch except for the sweet potatoes. I was walking with my tray to dump it out. A teacher stopped me and made me eat the sweet potatoes. And copying a line from the black olive post…
If his goal was to ensure that I would never voluntarily eat sweet potatoes for the rest of my life, then he succeeded.
I’m surprised you all didn’t die of food poisoning. Obviously made of strong stuff in Winterfell.