We hosted some Japanese students. At one point, my wife set up a party where they could show off some non-standard Japanese cuisine.
During the course of preparation, one of the girls came to me almost in tears because she had forgotten that her recipe required “special Japanese seasoning”.
I asked her to describe it, and maybe we could find a substitute. She said it was called “kon-soh-may”. Knowing that Japanese is big on using “loan words”, this lit up a bulb over my head. I asked her if it was maybe beef or chicken flavor and came in a little cube?
“Yes-yes-yes!”
:dubious: “Special Japanese seasoning”. Yeah, right.
I’ve shared this one here before: When I was very young, I asked my mother how margarine was made. She told me that it was made out of oil. I spent too many years mildly repulsed by the fact that we were eating a petroleum product, because, when I had asked, that was the only kind of oil I knew anything about. It didn’t stop me from spreading it on my toast, though.
You must have been raised with Best Foods/Hellmann’s. Comparatively, every other “mayonnaise” IS repulsive glop. Organic substitutes are even worse (My wife tried to get me to use one, and I finally started refilling the jar with Hellmann’s ;)).
Miracle Whip is even worse than that. The taste, to me, is identical to the time I accidentally got industrial cutting lube in my mouth. I consider the “miracle” is that people will eat it.
When I was growing up, my parents apparently were still practicing terminology they had picked up during World War II. Until I was a teenager, I thought margarine was butter and Miracle Whip was mayonnaise. My mother also made what she called “ham salad” – except it contained no ham, just bologna. Once I tasted real butter, there was no going back, but to this day, I prefer Miracle Whip to mayonnaise and I still get occasional cravings for Mom’s ham salad.
Oh, and I also thought cheesecake was cake flavored with cheddar cheese, and thought pizza sounded awful. I sometimes wish I had never discovered otherwise since I love them both now. Too bad the things I changed my mind about were fattening, whereas I never did change my mind about eating fish or seafood.
When I was a kid I overheard my parents talking about rices from leprosy camps. I didn’t really understand if they were donating to them or eating them. Anyway, it crept me out and I didn’t eat rice at home for 2 weeks. When I did eat rice again, I would stare at my hands and afraid it would transform into leprosy.
In re margarine: I remember my dad going grocery shopping with me once after I started college. At the checkout counter, he assumed a very superior air (as he was wont to do) and asked me why I was buying 2% milk and butter instead of 2% milk and margarine.
“I’m buying 2% milk precisely because I’m buying butter instead of margarine. I want to eat less fat.”
“All margarine is, is corn oil!”
“No it isn’t. If it were just corn oil, it would be liquid at room temperature. You ever read the label on a box of margarine?”
[Somewhat sheepishly] “No.”
“Trust me: If you did, you wouldn’t eat it! I’d much rather die of a heart attack than from cancer!”
As we now know, margarine is more likely to cause you to die of a heart attack than butter is. I don’t know whether the rest of the ingredients cause health problems, but hydrogenated vegetable oil is terrible for you.
That reminds me of another one: When I was a kid, my aunts had me convinced that pecan pie was yucky, and tasted terrible, and that there was no way I wanted to eat any of that. I was embarassingly old before I noticed that they didn’t seem to find it yucky themselves, and realized the real reason they were telling me that.
I also thought that pierogis were “Eww, one of those vegetarian things”, because the vegetarians at family gatherings usually ate them as their main course. So I figured they’d taste like tofu or something.
