When I was a kid, I would eat almost any food that was brought forth to me, but I just couldn’t get myself to eat those bland tasteless tomatoes and powerful, smelly onions. Now, I got over my hatred for the tomatoes and onions. I love onions on most of my food and I learned that tomatoes taste 100x better with salt.
When I take orders for sub sandwiches at work, around 1/3 of all orders ask for them without tomato and onion. I want to see how many tomato/onion lovers and haters there are here to see if that ratio holds true and why you love/hate them.
I like onions on about anything. They ad flavor and little crunchiness. I dont really like tomatos on cold sandwiches. All they do is get the bun wet and get in the way of the good stuff (meat and cheese). I like them on burgers though, I don’t know why.
For some reason I usually get tomatos on subs and eat half of them and take the other half off.
Onion lover, in any form or function. Bliss for me is a batch of New York style onion sauce made using the Frugal Gourmet’s recipe on top of a grilled weiner (ketchup optional).
Tomatoes on the other hand are evil incarnate in their raw form. Unless they are in a salsa, I don’t want them anywhere near me. They make everything taste like tomato. And if I order a sammich with no tomato, and you forget, don’t just pluck it off the lettuce and bring it back. Nothing worse than a fine meal ruined with tomato gloop.
Hell, for yesterday’s dinner I made a tomato-cipolline (pearl onion) compote, to serve with roasted cod. It was terrific.
And nobody better start disrespecting raw tomatoes around here…the New Jersey Tomato Season starts in another week or two, and I look forward to these all-too-short three months of decent local tomatoes all year, and nobody better spoil it for me.
The basil plants on the back deck are looking good, the local cheesemongers have me on their lists for the best feta and fresh mozzerella…yessir, I’m READY for them tomatoes.
Oh, and onions are a basic foodstuff. Every day I thank the Great Hoo-Hoo in the Sky for giving us onions in all their rainbow of forms…yellow, red, white, Vidalia, scallions, shallots, leeks, chives…and at such popular prices.
I used to hate onions in all their many forms. Now I like them.
Regular “yellow” onions I can only eat cooked and in things though, and I don’t like big pieces.
I love red onions raw and cut up in salads, or thinly sliced on sandwiches. I’m not sure if I’ve eaten them cooked or not, but can’t imagine not liking them if they were.
Tomatoes, on the other hand: EWWWW. I don’t like them raw, I don’t like them cooked, I don’t like ketchup, I don’t like salsa. I can deal with marinara sauces and pizza sauces as long as there are enough seasonings to mask the pure tomato taste, and that the tomatoes are pureed so there are no big chunks.
I love tomatoes, properly ripened - not those nasty, hard, orange things one sees in grocery stores. True bliss is picking a ripe tomato from the garden, slicing it on lightly toasted, lightly mayonnaised white bread, lightly salted. Can’t think of anything I wouldn’t do for that bliss…
I can’t handle raw onions, but I use them in cooking all sorts of things. Sauteed onion on a mushroom swiss burger… pardon me while I sop up the drool…
Ewww. My mom used to salivate at the thought of “native tomato season.” She would take one of these things and slice it up on white bread that had been buttered (with cold butter - but that’s another thread). A tomato sandwich, gah.
Onion hater. Serious allergies to them and all members of the family: shallots, chives.
I am not a fussy eater. I am allergic to them. I get more than mild ogeda, I am up half the night sick as a dog and a couple of times have ended up in the hospital. And I still hear:
“Oh, you won’t even taste them.”
“They’re big enough to pick out of there.”
“Everyone likes onions, just try one.”
“Yopu eat that now, it’s good for you!!!” (from Gramma, the b*tch, may she rot in peace, who never believed me or my mother that I had allergies))
I loved (former)Roommate’s cooking, but had to train him to cook the celery ahead of time for the chicken casseroles: the crunch and texture of raw celery is too like onions. and my stomach would rise in revulsion.
Even if I could eat them, the smell is just way too strong, even after cooking.
Love all kinds of onions, cooked or raw. And their cousins, garlic. I put onions in almost everything I make. I like to grill a big ol’ slice of onion on the barby with a little olive oil on it, and just eat it by itself…yumm.
I also love tomatoes and am proficient in their use. Tomato sauces, salsa, or just fresh from the garden, sliced, with a little cracked pepper. Oddly enough though, I don’t like tomatoes on sandwiches, or in a green salad.
[Uke,] do you make that salad with basil leaves, tomatoes, and mozzerella, with olive oil and salt & fresh cracked pepper? Love that. Sometimes we add a little dry salami. Is that so wrong?
Count me in as a severe onion hater! No allergies, just can’t stand them.
I do use them in cooking for seasoning, but mainly use diced (teensy miniscule pieces, nearly microscopic) dried onions for that, or onion salt. If I bite into a piece of onion, my appetite completely vanishes, and I have to go rinse out my mouth.
I can’t tolerate the smell of raw ones, but in cooking I don’t mind a bit. Really, the only way I can actually eat an onion (by itself) is at Japanese steak houses, where they use Vidalia onions and certain oils to take away from that onion-y taste. Of course, Vidalias are sweet anyway, so that helps.
My MIL makes a potato salad that consists of about 95 percent onion. I can’t even be in the house when she makes it. I call it onion salad; every single forkful is chock-full of hot, tear-making onions!
As far as ‘maters go, well, they are never on any kind of sandwich of mine. Raw, uncooked tomatoes I can only eat if they are ice cold, sliced, with salt and by themselves. I can count on one hand how many times in my life I have actually done that. I love tomato soup, V-8,(mmmmm…Bloody Marys!) tomato sauces, and the like, but plain ol’ raw or cooked/stewed tomatoes make my stomach churn.
I love dem 'maters! I will spend way too much money on “home-grown” ones at the store. They smell so good, and make your mouth water! I love onions, too. Though they give me heartburn, I can’t give them up. Almost everything I make has onions in it. My favorite is grilled, I think. Almost carmelized…mmm…
My son, on the other hand, likes tomatoes and hates onions. He’s getting better. He’ll eat salsa with raw onion, but not much more. Cooked onions are OK now, but when he was little I couldn’t let him see me put onions in anything or he wouldn’t eat it without a fuss. I think it stems from when he was about 18 months old. He got into the 'fridge and grabbed a whole onion (with skin!) and took a big bite. Yuk! He was not a happy camper…
Tomatoes are nasty. They don’t taste good, they don’t smell good, they have a particularly icky texture. I don’t like them on anything. (I’m not really that big a fan of tomato sauce on things, only as much as is absolutely necessary) When sliced tomatoes are put on food, they pretty much only succeed in making the food taste worse and making whatever the tomatoes are on soggy - why do you want soggy bread? I simply don’t get it. And no, you can’t pick them off, they leave icky tomato goo behind and you can still taste it.
Onions are a crapshoot. If high quality onions are prepared well they have potential to be a welcome addition to many foods. If done badly, they also ruin the food (soggy onions that aren’t supposed to be soggy, overpowering onions so all you can taste is onion) I have yet to eat anything at a sub shop where the onions didn’t need picking out. I’ve learned.
So, yes, I’m one of the “no tomato, no onion” people.
Ask nicely, and I’ll give my mini-rant on pre-prepared sandwiches with mustard and/or mayo already added.
I don’t like the way onion feels when I eat it cooked and I am not too keen on the taste. As for tomoatoes, I don’t like the smell or the taste or anything. It really turns my stomach sometimes.
Now for the really wierd food thing…
I don’t like cheese either, which means pizza and pasta and most Italian food is out. I am a very fussy eater. There are lots of spices and stuff I don’t like too. I am just a boring plain food eater at heart.
As a child I hated onions in any form but now I find them okay, as long as they’re cooked.
Tomatoes I hate. Ketchup makes me gag. Marinara type sauces without chunks are fine. In fact, I have been known to really enjoy them. But don’t give me pieces of tomato, raw or cooked. Ewwwww…just give 'em to my grandma. She loves them and doesn’t see why I don’t.
I adore onions, and garlic for that matter. Oh heck, any of the lily family. My garlic crop for this year is presently drying.
I also love tomatoes. If they’re proper, homegrown ones and not those bland orbs the grocery sells. I’ve got about 14 or so tomato plants in my back yard happily producing tasty fruit for me. Quite a number never see the inside of the house, I munch 'em right in the garden.
I’m not a huge fan of raw onion, although it has its place.
I also only started eating raw tomato regularly in the past 5 or 6 years, and I’m still very picky about them. They have to be very sweet and ripe or I won’t bother.
Tomato juice is a guarantee of instant heartburn. No other food or juice seems to do this to me.
I like both, raw or cooked, any variety. Except I don’t really like ketchup, even on fries… it’s just too, I don’t know: crass? juvenile? gauche? (I much prefer my fries hot and greasy, with plenty of salt and pepper. Or covered in chili and cheese.)
However, I do have a particular peeve about tomatoes: Most restaurants slice them too thick.
Fast food joints generally slice them thin enough, but then they use the cheapest, greenest, most flavorless tomatoes in existance. They might as well be putting tofu on their burgers.
There’s a restaurant here in Pasadena that still grinds their own beef and serves hand-formed burgers cooked to order. But then they desecrate them with a slice of tomato that’s nearly as thick as the burger, and a slice of onion just as thick! Idiocy! I have to specifically ask for thin-sliced tomatoes and onions, and they still come out over a quarter-inch thick.
Tomatoes should be sliced only a couple of millimeters thick, at the very most. If they fall apart, it’s because you’re slicing them wrong. Slice across the stem axis, not parallel to it.
And I’ll add my vote to the tomato sandwich lovers. If it’s a good tomato, all you need is white bread, real mayo, and salt and pepper. Anything else distracts from the wonderful and satisfying flavor of a fresh, vine-ripened garden tomato. I’ve yet to find a store-bought tomato that made a sandwich that could compare to home grown.
