Benchley and/or Kaufman may have said it, but I’m pretty sure the quote actually originates with the composer Sir Arnold Bax.
As for the OP; there is such a thing as being open to new things, and there is such a thing as knowing your own tastes well enough to know some new things won’t be worth trying … and what the heck’s wrong with that?
I’m with the OP. I find it kind of rude when people (especially those who don’t know me well) insist that I’m going to like something. Excuse me, when did you take up residence in my brain?
There are times I feel adventurous and feel like trying something new, and there are other times when I’m not feeling as open-minded and I just DON’T want to try new things. I have to be in the right frame of mind for it, and the more you try to push me into it, the less receptive I’m going to be.
And food … geez. I was a picky kid, and I’m still a bit picky as an adult. If I’m grumpy, if I’m stressed, if I’m tired, then I just want something familiar and comforting. I want to be sure that I’m going to like what I’m eating, because otherwise I’m just going to end up more grumpy.
The worst thing is when someone thinks it’s cute to “sneak” something into my food to trick me into eating something I’ve said I don’t like. How rude! And then when I ask if there’s something different in it (because I can taste that it’s not what I’ve had before), they flat-out LIE to me. For crying out loud, treat me like an adult, not like a five-year-old! All that the sneaking trick is going to accomplish is that I won’t trust you anymore.
Bingo.
I will not ever fault someone for not liking something, ever - taste is taste, y’know? Completely subjective. For me, bloody steak I like; bloody fish has the consistency of snot. I’ve tried bloody fish several times - different preparations each time - and it is still the only food product I’ve ever spit out (well, except for that China-Chinese candy which tasted almost exactly like that flouride crap my childhood dentist used to use to make me vomit at each and every six-month checkup). Once a year I sample sauerkraut just to assure myself that I do, indeed, really detest rotted cabbage.
Pot’s the same way. Lots of people love pot. Me? I upchuck last week’s lunch. The first time I tried it it was Hawai’ian pakalolo. I puked. I was told later that Hawai’ian was the strongest, so I gave the Texas version a go. Same deal. A couple of years later I gave some homegrown Minnesota stuff a shot. Puked that up, too, so I’m done. If fish makes you vomit there’s no reason for you to try it again; my old-wives-tale/layman-medical/barnyard-vet sense tells me you’re mildly allergic.
However.
I’m 32, and over the past five years I’ve gone from “Athlete’s foot is a fungus. Mushrooms are a fungus. No mushrooms for me!” to “Mushrooms are all right if properly cooked” to “Y’know, mushrooms aren’t half bad, most of the time”. The only reason I got from A to C, though, is experimentation: for example, asking if I can have a forkful of something off of someone else’s plate at dinner. Experimentation also taught me that cranberries and milk will NEVER go together and that smashed Saltines stirred in with softened vanilla ice cream is the shizznit.
I wish to make myself perfectly clear: I force nothing on anyone. If people say they’ve tried it and don’t like it I’m done. If people say they’ve never tried it but it sounds gross, I’ll say something along the lines of, “Are you sure you don’t want at least a taste? It really is pretty damn good,” and leave it at that.
And on that note.
RickQ, give gjetost a shot. It’s a brownish Scandihoovian thang - it’s great shaved thin on rye (Wasa) crackers. Brie en croute with Granny Smith apples and toasted almonds isn’t half bad, either.
bouv, you talked a lot about seafood. What about lake food? Ever had panfriend walleye or smelt or sunfish?
Nagging is rude. And movie’s are expensive.
But …
you should alway try a bite of any food offered (I never thought I’d enjoy boar);
you should reluctantly accompany a friend to movies, if the friend pays;
you should listen to any music that does not cause your ears to bleed for half an hour;
you should visit any art exhibit (there is always something or someone entertaining at an art exhibit).
This I have done. Though as Lamia said, tastes may not change so much as an adult. I once heard – and it may be a fallacy – that you lose 2/3 of your taste buds between childhood and adulthood.
All my life I hated cucumbers, olives and tomatoes. One day, I sniffed a cucumber – it did not make me recoil with revulsion (a sniff is a great predictor for taste). Took a nibble of cucumber and now – yay! – I can not only eat cucmber, I actuall enjoy it (I used to get headaches from the “melted plastic” taste/smell.)
Ditto, with olives. I love green olives and will order maritnis just for the olives.
So I thought, “hey, maybe I like tomatoes now too!” Took a nibble. Wrong! Oh, very, very wrong! Wrong wrong wrong! spit! ptooie! aak! aak!
And before I get a barrage of “how can you posibly hate tomatoes???” Let me explain that several years ago I discovered that it has something to do with the acids in a raw tomato. Thoroughly cooked (as in a really, thoroughly, throughly, throughly cooked), I can eat them no problem. I have difficulty chopping them up too and have to wash my hands thoroughly afterwards (though I don’t seem to be “allergic” in the medical sense.)
But I too can not stand it when people have the “how do you know you won’t like it?”
If the smell makes me gag, I can be fairly confident I’ll vomit if I try to eat it. The senses of smell and taste are closely related. I trust my nose.
Certain directors/actors/genres never, never appeal to me. I would rather stick a pin in my eye than watch Dumb and Dumber. The kind of humour contained therein does not make me laugh, never ever has. Not even as a dumb kid.
Mental associations: I will NOT try pâté, foie gras or any of that. I’m sorry, but I have cats. That stuff looks like cat food, smells like cat food, and if I took a bite I’d surely wretch because my brain would think “I’m eating cat food!”
Generally, I have really diverse tastes and will try almost anything once.
Me: “What’s that?”
Waiter: “A squid-like bug from the planet Creepy Shit, that has been deepfried in sugared lard.”
Me: “Okay, I’ll take a side order to try it.”
Rarely do I refuse something I’ve never tried. But some things I just know I’ll hate, so leave me the hell alone and don’t bug me about it.
I want to know where you people meet these friends that pay to take you to the movies! Are the people I know just unusually cheap or what?
Does this come with a dipping sauce?
Besides that, in some cases I wouldn’t care if they offered to pay for the movie ticket.
Well, okay, pay off my entire student loan and then maybe, just maybe I woud accompany you to Dumb and Dumberer. Otherwise, you’ll have to knock me unconcious, and bind me to the seat in the theatre.
Anyone who knows me would know that I would not enjoy such a film. It would be much more fun for everyone concerned if a compromise could be reached so we’re watching a film we all enjoy.
'Cause wouldja really want to sit next to a sourpuss who is trying but failing to enjoy a movie you think is fun? That’s not fun for anybody. Sure I could go with you to see a movie I know I’ll hate – I could try and pretend that I’m having fun, but you’d know I’m not really, and that would be a downer for you and your movie experience would be spoiled too.
There are, of course, exceptions:
If my friend had a bit part in a wretched film of course I would go and see it.
If my friend made some cat food – I mean “pate” – I would sample some.
But when people generally say “don’t be stupid, this is great and you will enjoy it, no matter what you say to the contrary” they are deluding themselves.
It comes with mango chutney.
Another picky eater checking in. Among the things I will not eat – which, according to most people I know, is an oddly long list (but I’m 27 and will eat or not eat what I WANT to!) – is mayo. I will not venture near a dish if I even think it MIGHT have mayo. The smell makes me want to throw up. (Mustard has the same effect, though I can stand to be around the more expensive sorts; the cheap crap makes me ill.)
So last weekend I was visiting my mom’s husband’s mother, and she asked if we’d (my maternal grandma was along) stay for lunch. At lunchtime she pulls out some bread and butter, and then goes into the fridge. Potato salad. Ah. I won’t eat THAT, but I’ll make do. Then…fruit salad. (Yes, with mayo. She spent a LONG time in Minnesota, a fine state aside from their apparent mayo fixation.) Then…chicken salad. And lastly, HAM salad!
It was the Lunch From the Depths of Hell as far as I was concerned. I came T-H-I-S close to just eating bread and butter, but remembering that my mom’s husband won’t get any nearer mayo than I will, I said something like, “Um…this all looks nice, but I don’t eat mayo. Ever,” hoping that she won’t get all offended.
Blessings on her, she says, “What about peanut butter, then?” Fine! Then, in an apparent change of mind, she pulls some turkey out of the fridge. Perfect. I made a sandwich for myself with the aforementioned bread and butter.
Yes, I am a picky eater. And if you push food at me, I will not eat. Grandma still hasn’t figured that out; she thinks that if she keeps telling me how she’ll eat almost anything and how good those salads and (if it’s around) that tomato was (I hate the taste of straight tomato, and yes I HAVE tried as an adult) I’ll break down and eat whatever it is that I don’t eat. It didn’t work on me as a kid, and it certainly doesn’t now!
would you never raise the subject again if they said that they didn’t want to try it in the first place? if someone doesn’t want to eat something, they dont want to eat it. pestering someone to eat something guarentees that they will never want to try it.
Forget it, I just know I don’t like chutney.
Pfeh! You’re missing out then. Deep fried squid-bug is to die for!
sneaks some into Casey’s lunch while no one is looking
Yes, and altough it tastes less nasty to me, I still don’t like it. The smell is 10x better, too, amd sometimes that’s the worst part with fish, for me anyways.
I also just wanted to add that I do enjoy calamari (well, deep fried calamari, haven’t had it any other way, but I would be willing to try since I like the fried kind.)
As a kid I could usually identify food I wouldn’t like by the smell. Anything that smelled distasteful did indeed taste awful to me. My parents would insist I try it anyway. They didn’t seem to believe I could tell by the odor.
So sometime in science study in elementary school we were taught that taste buds only react to four basic things, and that the great majority of what we identify as the flavor of food comes from its aroma. Now, how come my parents (and other adults) are totally ignorant of something that schoolkids know? It’s not like this was a recent breakthrough.
I resented not being believed that if a food smelled unappetizing to me, I would not like it. I resented being forced to eat stuff I knew I wouldn’t like. I resented the various snide (and stupid) comments like “You don’t know what you’re missing!” (I knew damn well what I was missing–I was missing agony and suffering).
Now that I’m an adult, I don’t have to eat food I don’t like. What I put into my body (think about how personal that is) isn’t subject to someone else’s opinions. And anyone who thinks I should take a taste of something that I don’t want to taste is welcome to shove it.
Those who don’t mind tasting new stuff may not be able to relate to this. But rest assured, like Lamia in the OP and some others posting in this thread, I know what works for me. Even if it doesn’t make sense to other folks, we’d like our position to be respected.
My sister did the same thing to me when I said that I shouldn’t say ranch dressing on chicken nuggets would be awful.
I hate ranch dressing, so why would I want to slop it on to something I do like?
When people tell me I should try something that I don’t think I would like, I tell them that it is impossible that I would like it, because my annoyance at having my initial opinion proven wrong would outweigh any potential value to be gained. That seems to stop them.
I don’t think I’m a very picky eater except when it comes to meat. I have a strong psychological aversion to pretty much everything sans your typical beef, pork, chicken, turkey, etc. and will puke it up if I eat it. Even more common place stuff like lamb and venison will make my stomach rumble and send me running to the bathroom.
I’ll try a nibble of any vegetable if you ask me except for possibly radishes. God, I hate those things.
Conversely, I’ll drink almost any sort of beverage (minus animal stuff again. Milk and honey being the only exceptions to my… er, exception) As a matter of fact, when my parents visited Atlanta a couple weeks ago, they brought me back a bag full of international drinks since they know I love trying different flavored stuff. The water chestnut juice from Malaysia (with chunks of water chestnut in it) was quite… interesting.