What are some foods that you’ve given up since you got married? How could a marriage compel one to give up a favorite food, you ask? Well, in my case, I’ve been off meatloaf for 25 years* since Mrs. Homie hates it. I could easily make some, but it seems pointless making two meals – one for me and one for her – so I just erased meatloaf from my menu.
*OK, so I’ve had meatloaf in the past 25 years. I’d have to give up my Midwest card if I went off it entirely for two and a half decades. But when I’ve had it, it’s been at a restaurant or at Mom’s house or what have you. I’ve probably made myself a meat loaf, oh, three times in 25 years.
Macaroni and cheese. Husband likes pasta, he likes cheese, just not together. He said he had a bad experience in a high school science class once, looking at a yeast mold that reminded him of it.
Beans and cornbread. Hubby’s not a big fan of beans.
Amish style pot pie. Sort of looks like this, but the noodle to meat ratio is about 5:1, and it’s just home made noodles and meat, no veggies. And the meat is usually bones with some meat. Hubby thinks it’s bland and the noodles are too thick.
We often have one or both when we visit my parents, and he’ll eat something else.
I didn’t give these up exactly, but two foods that I swore I would never eat again after getting married and leaving my parents’ house were meat loaf and macaroni and cheese.
I hate them both and always have. I have childhood memories of my mother saying “you’re going to sit there until you eat that…” and me, being obstinate, refusing.
My wife likes them both and simply can’t understand why I feel so strongly about them, but after 50 years she’s accepted it.
Salmon. I adore it, and my husband loathes it. After 20 years of marriage, it’s still the one meal that he told me “Please don’t ever make that again.” So salmon is either my “girl dinner” or my treat when we go out to eat.
Heh. That’s probably the reason why, when my mom made liver and onions, it was for her to eat by herself (not a problem as far as we kids were concerned; liver isn’t made out of food. It’s just wasteful of what could be a life-saving transplant organ for an alcoholic bovine or porcine patient. Dad didn’t seem to have a problem with her hogging all the L&O either).
As for me, after I first married, Lorita wouldn’t allow me to buy margarine or Miracle Whip. Even though MW is the same price as mayo, I had the idea that it was more economical. Anyway, I still to this day use mayonnaise exclusively. During times of financial difficulties, I did often choose margarine over butter, which only appeared on my childhood dinner table at holiday feasting times (and apparently when my dad’s union went on strike. I think one of the union benefits during strikes was food aid).
Steak. I love pretty much every kind of steak but my wife and kids do not so steak is something I get only when we eat out. I have purchased cubed steak to make the Pioneer Woman’s Marlboro Man Sandwich (which I first learned about here on the Dope many, many years ago) but that’s it.
Fish. My wife and kids will eat fish sticks but no other fish so, again, fish is something that’s an eating out only treat. Luckily we live an hour from the ocean so getting good halibut, salmon, and clam chowder is easy-peasy.
Peaches. My wife does not like peaches so peach cobbler (drool), peach preserves (drool), and any other peachy foods don’t have a place on our table.
Chocolate chip cookies and brownies containing nuts. I haven’t had either one in ages.
I don’t mind nut-less brownies - they sort of culinary make sense - but it is a mystery to me how anyone could dislike walnuts in their chocolate chip cookies. But here we are. At least he likes chocolate chip cookies without the nuts.
On the other side, I do eat things I would never choose to eat at home if it were just me, because he likes them. Mostly just the occasional steak, which I don’t mind.
But he has a family tradition of homemade sticky buns at Christmas that are just gawd-awful: they are yeast rolls baked in muffin tins that have had a big dollop of corn syrup poured in the bottom, resulting in a tooth-defying, sweet-but-otherwise-flavorless coating that wrecks what would otherwise be harmless rolls. I eat one or two a year, usually at the home of my in-laws, just to be polite.
I have some really delicious leftover Chinese “green beans with shrimp” in the fridge. It’s green beans seasoned with a sauce that includes little dried shrimp. It’s delicious. And the little dried shrimp really look a lot like large maggots or grubs. Did i mention it’s delicious?
I don’t eat fish for dinner, because my husband won’t eat it. (He won’t eat those green beans, either, but we ordered a lot of dishes, including some i don’t eat.) I don’t make Mac and cheese, because my husband won’t eat it, and it’s not worth making just for me. He’s cut way back on spicy food, because i don’t eat it, and we’ve edited his family spaghetti sauce to make it palatable to me.
Veal. My gf doesn’t eat veal for reasons. Meanwhile, I love it.
The first meal I made for her was Osso Buco. I used veal shanks. The meal was delicious ands she ate as much as I did. Over coffee I mentioned that it was difficult to find veal shanks and her jaw dropped.
Since that night I’ve been careful. I only make veal dishes when she travels for work.
There’s a whole set of foods (basically, bachelor-type quick meals) that I gave up, mostly because they are high in sodium and she never puts salt in anything unless it’s for baking. She doesn’t stop me from fixing and eating them, but it’s kind of rude to make something that is a meal that won’t be shared, especially when she firmly believes that I SHOULDN’T be eating them. (She is probably right.)
There are many things she makes that I simply do not care for at all, but I eat them because I was taught to eat what is placed in front of me. And, yes…she knows I don’t care for them. The only thing I absolutely REFUSE to touch is olives. She is Greek Cypriot, so this can be an issue.
And there are several food items I love that she has no interest in at all. One of those is baked potatoes. In 12 years of marriage (plus several dating), I don’t think she has ever made a baked potato. She will eat them at a restaurant, but she won’t make one. I have to hunt, kill, and bake those myself, usually for a quick lunch.
I gave up any recipe that makes it overly difficult to hide the fact there are onions in it. I love the flavor of onions; carmelized, sauteed, sliced raw and thin reds over salad, French onion soup, etc. I do cook things with onions but they either have to be cooked to oblivion (thank you Instant pot) or minced super tiny and again cooked to oblivion. Sometimes, I can get away with really big chunks in a stew or pot roast, as long as they can be easily spotted. So I did not really stop using them, but there are a lot of recipes I don’t attempt because onions are more central, won’t cook long enough, etc. I also have to make my own separate veggies because he will only eat corn, carrots and green beans and I’m basically sick of all of those.
Huh. When I got married, about the only thing husband would eat was burgerfries. Some form of hamburger every. single. day. Gradually he expanded his palate over the years (though he mostly ate junk food if not burgerfries. Half a bag of Doritos at every meal). One of those picky eaters with eating issues, like a big toddler. … I refused to put up with that horseshit and cooked a regular meal for myself and my daughter. (I would cook pounds of hamburger at the start of the week to heat up separately just for him). I was a good cook and eventually he started eating other things, if they were not too elaborate…I haven’t cooked burgerfries or eaten Doritos since he passed on to the big McDonalds in the sky.
Mrs. Homie has the palate of a toddler, at least in some contexts, and it drives me fucking nuts. Mainly it’s about meat – it’s not done unless you can snap it in half. If it’s chicken or turkey, there better damn well be neither skin nor bones anywhere near it. And if it’s pork, just put it back in the freezer.
