No, I agree with Zsofia. If something is just a minor annoyance I’d rather avoid, I’d never even think to mention it in the first place, let alone single it out as an item not to serve on my account.
Yup. Because the host isn’t a short-order cook, and if everyone who was invited gave those little ‘meh, not a fan’ comments, it’d be really hard to cook anything at all.
My father in law hates mushrooms. He and my mother in law were just here for Rosh Hashanah, and I made mushroom and non-mushroom versions of my stuffing and savory noodle kugel, so he could have some without mushrooms. My mother in law once tried to sneak mushrooms into a dish he ate, but he knew they were there and refused to eat it. She hasn’t tried anything like that since. I got the idea of making mushroom and non-mushroom versions of things from her.
I mention my kosher restrictions when I am invited to eat with someone else, but not my general food likes and dislikes. I’ll just pass on whatever I don’t like. If a dish has celery or cucumbers in it, Mr. Neville will basically eat around them (this wouldn’t be an option for us if a dish had something non-kosher in it, with the way we understand the kosher rules). We’d appreciate it if no one commented on what we do or don’t eat (at least not where we can hear it). We’re not food critics who will trash your reputation as a cook if we don’t like something you made, and you’re not our dietitian. Even if you are one of our mothers, we’re grown up now, and grown-ups get to make their own food choices. It’s one of the things that compensates for having to worry about bills and not getting a summer vacation.
It’s only your job to convince someone else to try a food if the “someone else” is your child under the age of 18. If it’s somebody else’s child, or an adult, it’s not your business.
I offer a deal to anyone who’s interested. If you won’t push foods I don’t like or won’t eat on me, and if you won’t blather on about how your diet of choice is superior to mine or how I’m going to die of some dread nutritional deficiency, I will offer you the same courtesy. I basically think you should never offer dietary or nutritional advice to anyone (other than your child under 18) who hasn’t specifically asked you for it.
I’m another vegetarian who’s had belittling remarks aimed at their diet on numerous occasions. I’ve had people do that annoying thing where they talk about their food in an effort to rile me up, like “oh man, this cheeseburger is SO GOOD. I just love eating this DEAD COW”. That sort of thing.
Since I don’t find eating meat inherently disgusting or wrong (well, I would be disgusted if I tried to eat meat after so many years of not doing so, but it doesn’t bother me to watch other people eat meat in front of me), it has no effect on me except to think that the speaker is a dumbass.
I admit that if I were confronted with someone who didn’t eat fruit at all, it would be hard to accept that unquestioningly, though.
I will snark if it is seriously oh my freaking god salty r sugary or seriously badly prepared/totally unhealthy vegetarian … especially if they are crowing about how healthy something is … I had someone serve an avocado salad with a tiny amout of romaine a few croutons and a metric assload of commercial blue cheese dressing … being touted as way more healthy than my spinach and romaine and assorted veggie salad with an egg, some ceci beans, some croutons and a homemade balsamic vinaigrette dressing all because it had about 2 tbsp of a really beautiful grilled sushi grade tuna on it [the horrors of killing a fish for food :rolleyes:] I ran both of them through a nutritional program and the avocado salad was 2 days worth of fat and sodium, and less than 1 serving of fiber or anything mildly nutritional.
I don’t like birthday cake at all: when offered some, I’ll usually say “oh, you don’t want me to eat that… if I do, I’ll be a bratty 3-year-old in 20 minutes!” (True. I eat only little tiny amounts of sugar for just that reason.) Nobody pushes cake on me now.
Johanna: in my area, I get too many of the oh-so-superior variety of vegetarian who lectures me about my food choices. I’m really glad to have one dear vegetarian friend who happily eats everything I cook for him and NEVER preaches. I’ve learned new recipes of old faves so he may eat them 
Markxxx: those of us who <3 hot foods often lose track of the idea that what is mild to us may be HOTHOTHOT to others. My apologies!
TheMerchandise: I’d tell FoodBully’s supervisor that you’d appreciate FB not harassing you with food on company time.
FallenAngel: I <3 <3 <3 mushrooms… but if I did not, and you told me you were making steak (mmmmmmmm Steak!) I would have asked for mine without them instead of scraping.
I’ve heard a lot of vegetarians/vegans relate how someone fairly close to them has tried to sneak in some sort of food or ingredient of animal origin. Using chicken or beef broth as an ingredient seems to be a favorite trick. Now, I’m a big fan of using broth, especially the kind with lower sodium, as it boosts the flavor without boosting the fat, but I’d never do so if I was cooking for someone who didn’t want that sort of thing.
Usually, it’s relatives that try to do this with me. My mother insisted on putting raw onions in a lot of her dishes, because SHE liked them, thought that onions were good for you, and that anyone who didn’t like raw onions was just overly fussy. She went so far as to tell me, when I was a child, not to order a hamburger with no onions at fast food restaurants, because she said that doing so would mean that we’d have to wait for a special burger to be made up for me. :rolleyes: Yes, it would have taken an extra minute or so for the worker to make ONE BURGER to order. Later in life, she took up veganism for a while, because she wanted to avoid the antibiotics in animal products. My mother had and still has a lot of issues with food. For a while, she watched me when I ate, to make sure that I chewed each bite a certain number of times.
I refused to eat my mother-in-laws cooking mostly because of hygiene issues. She’d lick the cooking utensil and then serve up food to other people with that utensil. If it dropped on the floor, hey, no worries, five second rule! She also used to shop at a place where out of date food was offered for sale at bargain prices. Then she’d bring some over and tell us what a great deal she’d found. My husband finally told her that even if she left the stuff after I’d said that we weren’t interested, it went straight into the trash.
My father’s relatives were all amazed that I hated shellfish and seafood when we visited them. They were amazed that I refused to eat lobster at a big family gathering. I was in grade school, but I already knew that I didn’t like lobster. I had one bite on my plate, and had chosen other items to eat. However, here came the aunts, insisting that I have some clams and scallops as well.
People used to push alcohol on other people a lot more than they do today. Nowadays, it seems to be more acceptable to indicate a preference for just water, but it used to be that hosts were NOT happy unless you accepted at least a soda, and preferable some beer or wine. I like alcohol, but I don’t drink it very often. I used to get pushed to have some booze, though, until I learned to put a sad look on my face and say “It interferes with my medication”, at which point even the most insistent host would say “That’s too bad” and leave me alone with my glass of water.
I don’t like pork. I have yet to meet a pork product I liked. (I can tolerate pork tenderloin if absolutely necessary, but I don’t like it.) Mr. Serenata makes jokes every now and then about “how can you not like bacon? Bacon is the best!” He’s a chef and my finicky nature restricts what he cooks at home, so he usually makes that comment when looking at a recipe that he can’t make because I won’t eat it. It’s frustrating for him, I understand, so the once in a while comment I can tolerate. He’s very understanding in that he doesn’t force me to eat foods I won’t eat (like bacon, sausage, steak, etc.). I figure I can handle the once-in-a-blue-moon comment in exchange for not having to eat it.
I don’t eat seafood at all because I just think it’s gross, but people always feel obligated to tell me that I clearly just haven’t had good seafood. This just isn’t true. I’m not one of those people who refuses to try things, so I’ve tried seafood oodles of times-- including at $100+ a plate, 5 star restaurants on the beach in Hawaii where they go out, grab a fish out of the sea, then cook it up immediately. I. Just. Hate. That. Fishy. Smell. I even hate going to piers, because the smell makes me gag. It just ain’t for me.
“But you don’t eat crab?”
“But you don’t eat lobster?!”
“But what about fishsticks?”
“Oh, you just need to try some fresh seafood!”
“But what about shrimp?”
“But you like sushi, right?”
I realize sushi doesn’t always have fish, but even seaweed is gross to me. So, I avoid a lot of sushi, too. Have I tried sushi? Absolutely. Lots of times. It just ain’t for me.
So, that gets annoying, because every time I say I don’t like seafood, I have to go through 20 questions about why, then get told I just haven’t tried the right stuff. Sorry, bucko, but I promise that the fresh mahi mahi in Hawaii was 100% better than the salmon you’re stinking up your house with and I still didn’t like it.
That said, I am allergic to milk fat and tend to avoid things with a lot of dairy. The minute I say I’m allergic, nobdoy bugs me.
Why are all you people giving reasons? I don’t eat meat and I don’t drink alcohol. I learned a long time ago to literally just say no.
C’mon have a drink.
No.
It’ll losen you up.
No. Everybody can handle just one drink
No.
I look straight ahead and never change my tone. As Lora Brody wrote in her book about entertaining “For any number of reasons, a guest may refuse your offer of an alocholic drink. The reason doesn’t have to be explained to anyone, including you.”
Someone at work once assured me her pasta and begetable salad was meatless. I took one bite and tasted–shellfish. While I don’t eat any flesh food, I literally cannot eat shellfish. It always taste to me like something that went bad. I spit it out and screamed “YOU BITCH. There is so shellfish in this.”
Her response? Oh, you can’t really taste that little bit of crab.:mad:
Can I have your allotment of pork? Because I dearly love pork of all kinds.
Me, neither. I even prefer Morningstar Farms veggie bacon to real bacon (it’s less greasy, and I prefer the texture). The idea of lard always squicked me out. This is part of keeping kosher that I had absolutely no problem with. Giving up shellfish and mixtures of milk and meat was harder, but this one was easy.
You can have mine.
That’s is super-excellent, ultra-fantabulous advice. The second you offer a reason for why you don’t eat something, it invites debate (it shouldn’t, but people are stupid, so they feel they have to persuade you that you’re wrong in your preferences.
It’s like playing tennis. They can serve the ball, but if you don’t send it back, the play is dead.
It’s a little different if there is a dinner planned. I do offer up that we’re vegaquarian so as not to surprise the host, otherwise, if it’s something like a company potluck, I try to stick with “No, thanks.” Mystery is better.
Well, that’s not what annoys me, that’s something different entirely. Lord knows there’s lots of completely unhealthy vegetarian food out there.
Avocados are good for one’s soul, though. nomnomnom.
There are still plenty of people who’ll do the same thing with soda or coffee. I’m not a big soda drinker now, and as a kid I absolutely despised it. This was incomprehensible to many adults and I was constantly having it forced on me everywhere by everyone but my own mother.
I didn’t (& still don’t) care much for candy which drove my mother crazy because I’d get loads of candy from my older, often diabetic, relatives and it would just sit it the closet until it melted or spoiled. We’re talking entire Easter baskets full of candy. I once suggested she just stick everything in our freezer and save it up to give to tricker-treaters on Halloween, but no. Giving out out-of-season candy at Halloween would make people think we were poor. :rolleyes: Just like actually refusing the candy would be rude.
As adult I get the same deal with coffee. You’d be surprised at how many adults find it incomprehensible that another adult would not want to drink hot coffee, ever. Sure, I’ll drink the odd iced coffee (that’s been loaded with milk or cream and flavouring to disguise the coffee taste), but I rarely drink hot beverages of any kind. And when I do it’ll tea, usually without any cream or sugar. It’s like you’re not a real adult if you don’t depend on drinking hot coffee to function.
I think people (or at least I don’t) don’t get this because not all fish and seafood smell fishy. I hate the “fishy” taste as much as I suppose is humanly possible. I won’t eat fish sticks or the like, and don’t care much for Salmon because of the fishy taste. However Tuna steak and Lobster tail doesn’t taste fishy at all. Neither does most Sushi that I’ve eaten.
To you they don’t. To me they do. This is like people telling me I just need to try fresh fish, because fishy fish is old. Well, clearly we have different definitions of what fishy means, that’s all.
And I, by contrast, have never understood what people mean when they refer to the “fishy” taste. That is, I don’t understand it with regards to properly stored, properly handled seafood - I agree that spoiled fish smells vile, and fish that’s on its way out smells only a bit less vile. But fresh salmon? It just smells kind of wholesome to me. I wonder if there’s some component of seafood and fish aroma that I am simply incapable of smelling and/or tasting.
I don’t think we have different definitions of what “fishy” taste is, because I have definitely tasted fishy stuff before. It’s just that I don’t see how tuna steak qualifies. For me hearing you say “Tuna steak tastes fishy” is just as odd to me as hearing “bananas taste fishy”.
Surely you can agree that different people taste different things, well, differently? Obviously, even a minor hint of what I consider “fishy taste” (which might be “wholesome” to another person, as pointed out) is off putting to me. Some seafood is worse than others, certainly. Clearly, some people like the taste of various fish and seafood, I do not.
But see, this is a clear example of what the OP is talking about. I say I don’t like seafood and people argue with me that. . . seafood is good. You are welcome to think seafood is good; I’m sure it is to you, I just don’t like it.