My grandma had an ancient old twisted crap apple tree that had several old bleeding gashes with huge chunks old dried and fresh sap. I’m not quite sure where the hell the idea came from, but somehowo I got the idea that that was what the “manna from heaven” the pastor talked about in church. So i tried some, it was horrible.
In the more mundane world of food, my mom had a a can of leek soup. I thought it said leech and told my mom to throw that disgusting stuff out. She said that they were just onions. Which of course meant that onions are just another name for leeches(which obviously explained why onions in onion rings are a bit slimy). So for a year or so I refused any kind of onions.
To Have and Have Not, and I don’t know why. Eddie, played by Walter Brennan, would ask it of people who were having a bad time of it for one reason or another.
I play chess with a friend who is a 92 year old WWII Vet. He has asked me a few times to bring him a minced meat pie. Did not know that was a real food:o
When I first heard the term “soda fountain” I assumed it meant a drinking fountain that soda came out of. I had never seen one, but I knew they must exist somewhere, so I tested every drinking fountain I came across. My mother noticed this and asked what I was doing. When I explained, she told me the disappointing truth.
I thought mayonnaise was a mixture of cream cheese and vinegar until I was well into college. Then one day I looked at the front of a jar of Hellman’s and noticed that the kosher certification was OU-Parve. “How can they say it’s parve when it’s full of dairy?” I exclaimed in bewilderment, turning the jar around to read the ingredients for the first time in my life. Oh. Eggs. Blew my mind.
When I was a tyke, I really wanted to travel the world. Really, really wanted to do so. I couldn’t, so I did the next best thing: whenever we got ice cream, I’d find a flavor with the name of another nationality in it. French vanilla, Swiss Orange Chip, Belgian Chocolate. I was a goddamned world traveler–in my mouth.
Oh, that reminds me of one! My mother used to tell me stories about mean-ish things my grandfather did while working at a drugstore as first a soda jerk and then a clerk as a teenager. When I was little I thought you actually had to be an jerk to people to serve them soda
There is a restaurant near where I work that really does make a Philly Cheese Steak with cream cheese. I’m sure they are just trying to be different. It sounds kinda good, but it’s an absolute mess to try to eat.
OK, not exactly a food misconception, but. . .
I remember hearing as a very young chap about oxen having a ‘yoke’ on their necks. I wondered, “Why are they putting [egg] yolks on their necks?”
I remember reading somewhere that beeswax contains antiallergens, and it was recommended that you chew it if you suffer from hay fever, asthma, and so on. Apparently regular consumption of honey is good for your respiratory tract in general.
Even though we’re not Jewish, my dad loved kosher food. He always bought a certain brand of sour cream that had Hebrew writing on the container and to me tasted as though it was full of horseradish.
I thought all sour cream tasted like that until I started sampling it elsewhere other than in his kitchen.
My brother once had a goldfish in a little bowl. Of course he lost interest in it and stopped feeding it, so it died, and was left floating on the top. That night, my mother served custard for dessert. I was sure she had made it with the goldfish. It was many years, possibly decades, before I was able to eat custard again.
