I’m really glad I’m with my gf.Other than veal, she’s happy eating anything I choose to make. And I have never turned down anything she has made. We are both fairly adventurous eaters and will try anything.
Once we took my kids out to a nice restaurant. On their specials board they had a brain appetizer, which my kids noticed. My gf ordered it just to mess with them. Our server came back to the table to inform us that the last order of brains was just taken. My gf was relieved.
Sesos (cow brain) is a popular tapa in parts of Spain - Granada, for example. I mention this because in Granada, when you buy a drink in a bar, it comes with a small tapa to nibble on. I don’t know if you can specify which tapas you do or don’t want, and my Spanish isn’t good enough to have that conversation anyway. So a night out in Granada has a certain sense of culinary Russian roulette about it.
j
(I’m don’t know what sesos looks like, and I’m not aware of having eaten it.)
To answer the OP’s question, tuna fritters is the standout. This was one of my mother’s recipes: savory batter with tinned tuna, fried. Cheap, fast, simple - the perfect bachelor staple. Mrs T hated it from the get-go. So that went.
Others (speed of exit may vary by item): merguez, cassoulet, pork pies, beef, corned beef. As it turns out, my dietary limitations now mean that I can’t eat any of those anyway. Kippers (which she also hates) I can eat, however, and they remain something which I cook when she’s gone out.
I didn’t have to give up anything. In fact, I can’t think of anything I eat that my husband doesn’t - there are a very few items that he wouldn’t choose on his own but he will eat them. There are , however, many things that he eats that I don’t. He didn’t have to give anything up , either. Sometimes our different tastes don’t matter - if he makes a seafood boil sort of meal, I will eat the parts I like and leave the rest for him. Other times it’s more he has a pork chop and I have a lamb chop but that’s not really any different from cooking two pork chops. Worst case, I’m just fine with having a garden salad for a meal so it’s never a matter of cooking two separate meals. There are a very few foods that he doesn’t eat when I am home because I can’t stand the smell.
I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen bologna sandwiches on a restaurant menu.
I checked the menu of the Double T Diner in Annapolis, figuring that of all the places I’ve eaten in recent years, a diner would be the most likely sort of place to have a bologna sandwich because it tries to have pretty much everything. No bologna there.
I checked the lowbrow chains: Denny’s, Bob Evans, Cracker Barrel. Nope, nope, and nope. I thought of Culver’s, since it’s a Midwestern chain that’s recently popped up in Florida near the in-laws. Nope there too.
There’s a local restaurant, the Dream Weaver Cafe, that only does breakfast and lunch. Maybe there? They serve grilled cheese sandwiches and tuna salad sandwiches, which few restaurants IME serve because, again, too basic to need to go to a restaurant for. But no bologna there either.
And as far as PB&J goes, (a) one restaurant in one town that serves PB&J doesn’t prove much, and (b) the kids’ menu doesn’t count. That they’ll make a PB&J for your kid while you and the spouse are ordering real meals, doesn’t mean they’ll serve one to you if you come in by yourself and order one.
I’ll get meatloaf at the meat and three around the corner from our house. That’s also the only place I can get lima beans. Mrs Magill does not like them and has convinced our sons that they don’t like them ether.
Mmm… steamed fresh lima beans with butter. Lovely.
Many places here serve meatloaf - sometimes fancy upscale, sometimes home-style.
Here’s an example: Bacon-wrapped veal, pork & Painted Hills beef meatloaf. With seasonal veg, red potato mashers & red wine veal demi-glace.
I’m perfectly capable of making meatloaf, but why not try some other version while I’m out?
I dislike tomatoes unless they’re finely chopped and disappear into the sauce.
Italian dishes are rarely served in my house because they are tomato sauces. A few times a year, a Stouffer’s frozen lasagna or Stouffer’s Three Cheese Ravioli is baked and served. That’s enough.
The acidity tears me up for a few days. But that cheesy goodness is worth it.
Pizza chains used to be ok. But the fancy places use nasty chunks of tomato in there sauce.
It took me a long time to think of something. My bf doesn’t eat meat or eggs, but I refuse to give them up, so we’ve just resigned ourselves to all the extra work of having to cook two separate dishes for dinner, all the extra cleanup from two sets of dishes, and having to buy two different sets of ingredients for the recipes we make.
And then I thought of something. Whole Foods sells some really yummy moonshine peaches that are something like $15 a jar, and they’re only about two servings. My ex-husband would get irritated every time I bought them because they were so expensive for so little food. Once we divorced, I went back to them with glee, but then when I started splitting the grocery bill with my bf, he would get mad about them, too, so I’ve stopped eating them again.
Huh. I don’t like the texture of tapioca pudding, and won’t eat it. But my husband and (adult) kids sometimes make it. Some dishes of tapioca in the fridge don’t do my any harm.
I’ve never cared for salad. So much work and all you have is a salad. When people visiting ask what they can bring, i often say, “salad, if you’d like one”. So… If you want salad in my household, we are kind of making an extra meal for you, and probably going out and buying extra ingredients for it, and the leftovers will turn to slime in the fridge.
Different households have very different norms.
The only thing i really can’t stand the smell of is cooked peppers. I’m not wild about raw onion, and he doesn’t like fish, but we agreed to put up with those odors so the other can enjoy their food.
My husband, who doesn’t like seafood, once took me to a new lobster restaurant in town to celebrate something. I had the works, and he ordered the pb&j sandwich. The waiter obviously thought i had overspent my date’s budget, and was really nice to my husband. I shared all the sides with my husband (well, not the clam chowder, he doesn’t eat that, either, but the fries, slaw, dinner roll, whatever) and we had a good laugh.
There’s a diner just down the street from us that has a bologna sandwich for $19.
It may not surprise you to find out that when the new owner bought it a few years ago, he turned it from a reasonable greasy spoon into an insufferable hipster joint.
It also may not surprise you to find out that they recently went out of business.
This is why I like salad kits. Just plop and toss. That way you can pretend the flank steak and baked potato are good for you.
I hate when that happens. The Meat & Three near me has been recently bought by some folks and is showing worrying signs of this. It used to be called Nana’s. It’s now some funky name.
That’s kind of why I said salad did not involve making an extra meal - because for me, just pouring it out of a bag into a bowl is good enough. If it involved buying a whole bunch of ingredients and cutting them up , it might be a different story.