I feel the OP has suffered child neglect of a similar level to denying books to a child. I have loved espresso and turkish coffee since I was 6 years old.
A brewpub near where I work is serving an espresso stout. Yummy stuff.
No coffee? Ever?
That’s. Im. Possible.
Interestingly (well, in my little universe, anyway), one of my submissions to a recent BBC comedy writing competition was a sketch featuring a person who had never tasted coffee.
The palette of ingredients from which I paint my recipes (all masterpieces, naturally) is very broad - not without reason am I called Mangetout - but I can’t bring myself to eat oysters.
Another non-consumer of java here, although at least I can say I’ve tried it in its various guises. It just doesn’t do anything for me. Beer I can take or leave as well, and drink very little of.
But tea – well, let’s just say I have about 27 different types of tea in my cupboard at the moment, and none of them are that foul swill that goes by the name of Lipton. Whatever culinary horrors the British hath wrought upon the world are all redeemed by the invention of that manna from Heaven known as “a nice cup of tea and a biscuit”.
Back to the OP: What I want to know, MercyStreet, is how you managed to survive to adulthood without dying of malnutrition or contracting scurvy or something similar. I’m guessing Flintstones vitamins.
More? You want more? Here you go.
I never had bread other than white until I went to school in England, and no white bread happened to be available for the next several years. Turns out whole wheat (“Nought taken out!”) is a taste sensation. Confession: Any visitors from the States were required to bring me many jars of Jif peanut butter. Creamy.
You know what was really high praise in my house? That so-and-so “is a good little eater.” If I had a slumber party and the girls joined my mother eating eggs sunny-side up the next morning, they were good little eaters. My college roommate happened to love my mother’s homemade split-pea soup. Hence: “That Jo is a good little eater!”
matt_mcl: I do believe Hamish secretly is my fourth sibling. As for “revolting” and “Kafkaesque,” well … yeah. I’ve come to realize that some people are really, really into food. And when two people who are NOT really, really into food decide to marry and raise several children, chances are those children won’t become adventurous eaters until they’re out of the house and meet nice people such as yourself. … You know what’s really odd? We never had TV dinners. We never ate fast food, or went to diners, or cooked up minute steaks and hotdogs. Every meal, unless it was leftovers, was freshly prepared. It just kind of lacked … variety. Flavor, even (and let’s be honest here: color and, hell, texture.). I think my senses of taste and smell were so deadened that even coffee – a bev beloved by zillions! – makes me want to heave.
Lightnin’: Exactly! Exactly! (… Look at me, getting all fancypants with the HTML coding.)
Vanilla Toast: I laughed until I bled. And then I realized: For several unfortunate young men, I was that date.
Bippy the Beardless: I know, I know. It SOUNDS like neglect. Other than the whole food freakout thing, though, we were pretty much spoiled silly. … Although now you have me thinking. Hunh.
jr8: Funny you should mention the “malnutrition” angle. As a child I fainted a lot. I was, like, a SWOONER. I have no doubt The Starch Diet had something to do with it.
Had coffee and beer exactly once each. They aren’t worth ever having again, or aquiring a taste for. I’m sure my body thanks me. They aren’t exactly healthy.
I sorta grew up like the OP, my mother thought pepper and salt were all the seasoning anything ever needed, so I grew up disliking alot of foods, that I’ve since discovered taste pretty good if prepared corectly. Though mushrooms still have a texture similar to rubber, and are therefore nasty, they can actually be made to taste good, for example.
[Bill Lumbergh]Ya… I’m gonna have to go ahead and sort of… disagree with you there…[/BL]. I’d rather have a cup of black or green tea, or a Pepsi if I’m in need of caffeine and instant coffee is the only alternative. Just calling it coffee seems like sacrilege. Coffee should be hot, strong, fresh and robust.
I first started drinking it around age 9, and was hooked by 16. Now I grind it fresh each morning, and make a delicious cuppa with half and half. As a present to myself when I finish my thesis defense, I’m getting a $700 espresso machine so I can brew the ultimate ristrettos and cappuccinos each morning. Mmmm…
Good beer is also ambrosia. The Double Black stout with Starbuck’s espresso is pure genius.
I feel for those of the Limited Childhood Diets in this thread. I can barely envision such a bland existence…
I’d never eaten mushrooms or strawberry shortcake until I had dinner at my girlfriend’s house.
I’m probably inviting a pitting here, but here goes anyway:
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Coffee is disgusting, unhealthy and totally useless.
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Coffee drinkers are pathetic.
Come on, guys! So far I haven’t met anyone who actually liked their first cup of coffee. Nooo, they all tried and tried because grownups drink coffee and they sooo wanted to be grown up. So they force this horrid stinking sludge down their throats until it doesn’t make them gag anymore, and before they know it they’re addicted and can’t live without the brown goo.
And not only this, but they assume that everyone understands their self-inflicted predicament and sympathizes with them! When they can’t get their feeble bodies working before their morning cup, they think that everyone should understand, and probably crave that cup themselves.
The really horrible thing is that they’re in the majority…
Hmmm. Sounds liek the way most flks start drinking alcoholic beverages, too. “But all the grownups do it. I I do then I’ll be a grown up, too.”
Coffee is nasty shit, acceptable only as a substitute for other caffeinated drinks when nothing else is available.
Yeah, and alcoholics are pathetic too. It’s my aggressive day today.
Hmmm. On re-reading my last post, I come to the conclusion that I am operating under the influence to too much caffeine ann too little sleep - and a pathological inability to use preview.
Ah, to heck with it. I might as well give up typing.
As one who has been allowed to drink coffee from earliest memory (which probably explains a few things) and now co-heads a household that goes through at least two pots a day, consider me properly horrified.
On the other hand, my immediate family is 3rd and 4th (me) generation Irish, and perhaps due to this, I grew up eating a lot of cabbage and not much “interesting” food. To this day, I am much more comfortable eating mashed potatoes than say, nachoes. I learn to like new things as I get older, though. In fact, a few months ago I tried an egg roll and found it to be good. Now we have two boxes in the freezer.
Ahhh…the childhood of limited diet.
I grew up on a strict meat and potatoes diet. And I learned to hate meat and potatoes.
However, what I ate were not true “meat and potatoes”, as I later discovered. My mother had an aversion to red meat of any sort. That doesn’t mean we got pork or chicken every night…it means that she cooked her beef until it was black in the middle. She also had an aversion to lumps in the mashed potatoes. She’s add way too much milk and put the concoction in the blender until it came out as smooth as pudding. It wasn’t until much later in life that I actually learned that a potato was a solid object…and they taste so much better if they are mashed just to the point where they hold together on their own. That is completely discounting the orgasmic feeling I encountered the first time I ever ate a steak with a bit of pink in the middle.
The only varieties I ever got to eat of this very bland diet were the occasional ethnic horrors my mother would occasionally come up with. There was the cabbage stew that smelled just as bad as it tasted…there was the meatloaf that was, evidentally, leftovers from the previuos week. And then there was the hot-dish. That is what one gets when adding meatloaf to macaroni and a bit of ketchup. To this day, I can’t eat ketchup. As a matter of fact, I love fresh, red, ripe tomatoes…but have to be very courageous to eat them in any sort of a processed way.
Now…on to coffee. I loved coffee from the first time I tried it at age 11. One teaspoon of pure cream is all I ever needed to turn it into a wonder of delight. From age 12 to about age 25, I had one cup a day…usually right away in the morning. Then, something horrible happened. I was training in for a new job. My trainer and I would both go for a cup of coffee first thing in the morning before we got in the work truck to make our rounds. One day, he decided it was my turn to drive. We switched seats, but forgot to switch cups of coffee. I took a sip about two blocks later only to find that my trainer was mixing some sort of brandy-coffee without my knowing. One tiny sip turned into about a quart of spit as I simply could not swallow the horror. Ever since, the taste of coffee reminds me of brandy. I simply cannot stomach it anymore unless it has other flavors mingled in.
Yes, I’ll still drink an occasional cappucino, but I don’t brew coffee anymore. I used to love the smell of fresh brewed roast, but the smell these days makes me nauseous.
You’re not alone Mercy. I can’t stand coffee. The flavor is God-awful. Every once in awhile, I try it to see if I feel any different, and I can’t get more than a sip without gagging. (And it’s not a matter of age – I’m 50).
I like a lot of flavors, but coffee is one of only three that I actively hate. If I need caffein (rarely), I’ll drink tea or cola.
But coffee? <shudder> Might as well drink cold vomit.
“You won’t put your lips anywhere near a cup of coffee, and yet you want me to put my face WHERE?!?”
This is silly. We’ve had entire threads in MPSIMS about popping pustules, and you wussies swear that coffee is the most disgusting thing ever? Well, excuse me for liking coffee, and don’t let me keep you from enjoying that warm mug o’ puetrescence…
When I was really little and we would go out to eat, I would always want coffee, and I still like coffee. I like tea better, but coffee is still good.
Dang, and here I was hoping someone would smack me down in the Pit for being a schmuck. Sorry, I hadn’t had my morning coffee when I posted that one. 