Crap. Put chitlins under the WILL NOT EAT EVER column.
It was only a few years ago that I discovered for certain that my tastebuds don’t perceive things the way others do (not even in my own family). F’rinstance, shallots (or green onions, if you prefer to call them that) have an aroma and aftertaste that, to me, rather closely resemble those of gasoline (yep! I got a mouthful once, when trying to siphin gas – never *ever *again :p). Can’t eat 'em by themselves, and they must be cooked and sparsely dispersed if included in other foods.
Tomatoes and onions are revolting to me. Until you cook them (preferably into abject submission). Then I actually like them. The first time I voluntarily ate an onion was an onion ring at an A&W stand. Tomato sauce has never been a problem for me.
I really don’t like having dinner at other people’s houses because I fear I will unintentionally insult them when they sit their family favorite before me and I discover that, to me at least, it is a gag-inducing concoction of underdone onions, shallots, and tomatoes. Feh!
On the other hand, I usually try anything I’ve never encountered before at least once. If I like it I ask for seconds, and only if it is truly vile will I spit it out.
On the gripping hand, I suppose everyone has something that sets their tastebuds on “reject” (and their stomach on “eject”). It’s just different things for different people.
–SSgtBaloo
I’ll eat damn near everything mentioned so far, under certain circumstances. For example, I used to dislike coconut, until I had a fresh-off-the-tree coconut in Fiji. Ditto for beets, until I decided to give them a shot as part of a prix fixe menu at a nice restaurant; I figured if these guys couldn’t make 'em edible, nobody could, and as it turned out they were quite tasty. I’m sure I’d continue rejecting both of them in substandard settings, though. I’m also excluding liver, because I don’t eat quadrupeds.
So yes, Maureen, I do like oysters, or loogies on the halfshell, as you call them. Of course, when I have oysters, they’re usually freshly collected off my grandparents’ beach and cooked over a crackling fire, stewed in their own salty juices, quickly shucked before the shell burns the hand, and sucked down while squirming. Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.
But I do have a couple of stomach-turning foods that, despite my best efforts, have not been able to cross the childhood “eww!” border into adult “mmm” land. One is conventional, the other makes people look at me funny.
Black licorice, or anything with a palpable scent of anise. I don’t know why, but this stuff just smells and tastes like soft, smoky road tar to me.
And here’s the odd one:
Canteloupe. Just a regular melon, right? Not much different from any other? Because I don’t have a problem with, say, honeydew. It’s a complete mystery, but there’s a bizarre cloying sweetness to canteloupe that makes me want to puke and puke and puke until my skull breaks loose and flies out of my mouth.
That’s pretty much it, though. Well, except, maybe:
Is “them them” a panda? Cos I can see how that would suck.
This is making me hungry. A lot of the foods that have been mentioned are my favorites. Artichokes, milk, asparagus, bananas, olives, zucchini, lima beans, salad, cucumber, tomatoes… mmmmmm.
As for what I hate, here is a meal composed of the foods I Will Not Touch With a Ten-Foot Pole:
Ham
Sausage
Beef
Pork Chops
Eggs, Sunny-Side Up, or any version which results in any vestige of runny whites
Oysters
Bratwurst
Calamari
Lobster - I’ve never had it due to not being able to deal with how they’re cooked!
And a side of Raw Onions
That’s it!
Wow, you’re a picky bunch! I like almost all of these reviled foods, especially liver and onions, raw oysters, sushi, sauerkraut, black licorice, stuffed peppers, stuffed cabbage, spinach, etc.
I like cherries, but I hate the fake, mediciney taste of cherry-flavored anything (candy, juice)–it all tastes like cough syrup to me. I can’t stand Dr. Pepper and Mr. Pibb sodas for the same reason, they taste like nasty cherry medicine.
I can’t get into V8, no matter what. I don’t expect I’d fare any better with Clamato.
I’m not a HUGE fan of olives, but I like the “olive salad” you get on muffaletta sandwiches in New Orleans.
I don’t like pickles, but I like sweet pickle relish mixed into tuna salad, for color and a bit of crunch.
I don’t seek out beets, brussel sprouts, or cottage cheese. I’ve never had chitlins and can probably live a full and meaningful life without ever trying them.
I LOVE coconuts and mushrooms, but they upset my stomach every time I eat them. I also love spicy foods, hot sauces, salsa, and the like, but I often pay for those as well. I consider the temporary discomfort worthwhile, though.
To echo Cervaise…I have a friend who is, or used to be, a professional chef. He knows that I don’t particularly like fish, and that I absolutely loathe squash. I was invited to dinner one night. The menu: fish and squash. :eek:
By the end of the meal, I was fighting with my companion over who got the last piece of fish (“Back off, bitch! It’s mine!” ) His trick: cream sauce for the fish, and a sweet glaze for the squash. Both items were fresh, and prepared by someone who knows what he is doing. Was one of the best meals I’ve had in a long time…
But I still won’t let him cook me liver! 
Don’t think anyone has posted this: I can’t stand celery. Hate it. Even the slightest taste makes me wanna throw up. Urk.
On the other hand, though, I really really like liver. Isn’t the kidney the one that removes wastes from the blood system, though? Not the liver? Hm.
The liver filters many bacteria, viruses, and other microorganisms from the blood. Special liver cells surround these microorganisms and chemically digest them.
But that’s ok…I won’t eat steak and kidney pie, either!
What’s with you people hatin’ on V8?? I love the stuff…especially the spicy kind. Yum.
There aren’t too many things I never like:
-any meat. I quit eating it because everything about it grossed me out. It’s like taking a bite out of someone’s arm.
-olives. I can ignore the black ones on my pizza usually, but the green ones are gross gross gross.
-cottage cheese. Why anyone would want to eat something that is the exact texture of vomit is beyond me.
A lot of things I am very particular about:
-I love fresh cherries, but I hate anything cherry flavored.
-I like orange flavor…and orange juice. I HATE HATE HATE oranges. Always.
-I only like granny smith apples. Any other variety is gross.
-I love bananas when they are slightly green and ice cold. Otherwise I won’t touch them.
-I generally don’t like warm/hot desserts. I will throw them in the freezer for awhile.
-I can’t drink too much milk without getting sick, but I do like it. Just not whole milk. It makes me gag…literally.
This thread just confirms what I always suspected: As an eater I"m about as picky as a garbage truck. I like, if not love, just about everything listed so far. There are a few exceptions for my Meal From Hell, though:
- liver: I can gag down beef liver to be polite, like most pates but loathe the taste of chicken liver. It’s one of the few foods I just plain can’t stand, no matter how gussied up it is.
- lutefisk: This isn’t food; it’s toxic waste. It’s just unbelievably repellent, in taste, texture and stench. (Wouldn’t you just know my Ex was a Norwegian?)
- cinnamon: I can handle it in very small doses in pastries, but really hate it otherwise. Cinnamon gum, toothpaste, potpourri? ::shudders::
- prune whip: A nutrionally sound offering in school cafeterias during my youth that we’d sooner die than eat. (Softened prunes pureed with cream cheese and fake whipped cream.) It looked exactly like a small pool of diarrhea. I tried one bite–my parents didn’t raise no wimpy eaters–but it was somehow greasy/slippery, rubbery and absolutely wretched.
I draw the line at insects, though, even those gag things in suckers. Ain’t gonna go there.
Veb
Including lobsters and crabs? Don’t get me wrong, I think they’re yummy, but The world’s most deadliest has a point: They’re basically just gigantic water bugs.
Alton Brown is clearly on a crusade to make me not want to eat lobster, because he’s always referring to them as basically being giant bugs (I think the word spider has featured, but too tired to know for sure). I don’t care. I have partaken, I have enjoyed, so they can be just about anything they wanna be, I’m eating em.
Ah, excellent point, Grasshopper. I crack me up. No, it most decidedly doesn’t include crab, lobster, crayfish and other aquatic bugs.
Gotta admit that crabs of all sorts rather spook me out visually just because they so closely resemble spiders. Of course most of 'em don’t look quite so spiderish on the plate. Most of the ones I’ve personally tossed into the fire, so to speak, have been the smaller, chunkier varieties. (Soft shelled crab. Yum!)
One of those huge Alaskan King suckers might spook me out if I saw the whole critter. The leg chunks don’t look really spiderish on the plate, and any stray resemblence gets sublimated in vengeful gluttony. They’re one of the few critters I honestly don’t feel one bit guilty eating.
My insect comment was aimed more at deliberate gross-out foods, like chocolate covered ants and fried crickets.
oh man, that was priceless (she types, now that the tears have finally stopped rolling down her cheeks so she can see the monitor again). and i love the irony angle, Chefguy.
well, i always suspected i was a human garbage can where food was concerned. i guess this confirms it. liver, okra, stuffed peppers, snails – bring it on! there’s damn little mentioned so far i wouldn’t eat (and probably some stuff getting to the questionable “has it REALLY spoiled yet?” phase that i’ll bet YOU wouldn’t!).
however, even a garbage disposal unit like myself has limits. there actually are some things i would prefer never touch my tastebuds:
cilantro, or worse cilantro-infused cooking oil – Husband Mine managed to make inedible a number of very nice tuna steaks when he mistakenly used such oil instead of plain olive oil while cooking them. (the barn cats were happy for days.)
oranges, or anything of that flavor – most likely a carryover from a childhood allergy. i think i still get a rash by my mouth if i ever eat too much of ANY kind of citrus within a given timespan.
lima beans – what a waste of chlorophyll.
licorice – bleacccy (plus my drunken stepfather used to love that shit). yeah, draw your own conclusions.
pepper (any variety except green [or like-shaped reds, yellows, oranges]) black, hot, jalapeno – it’s all bad, nasty, bitey stuff.
anything sporting an active crop of mold – and i can taste any unseen bits that might not get trimmed off. i blame my penicillan allergy for that one.
other than that, there isn’t a whole lot that i won’t at least give a try. (i had seconds and thirds of the roasted rat in Thailand.)
I am a particularly unfussy eater and like if not love everything mentioned so far but the one thing that makes me heave and gag is my stepmother’s tuna and pasta with sweet corn. I like all the ingredients in it but for some reason her version of it has the perfect texture to make me want to puke with each mouthful other than that I’m into it all, offal, liver, haggis, oysters, raw fish, milk, sprouts (I used to have cold sprouts instead of desert when I was a kid) and anchovies. Wait up, I like anchovies but there is one product made from anchovies that I can’t hack at all - Gentleman’s Relish, this stuff is like Satans semen. It has the pungency of Marmite (which I adore) with the intense fishyness of anchovies and ultimatley tastes like fish food flakes. It is vileness personified.
Olives. Loved 'em as a kid (put on on each finger and snack before dinner). Can’t stand the little roaches now.
Organ meat. This has been adequately explained above.
Peas. After being forced to eat peas as a small child, I vomited on the white carpet. I was not asked to eat peas again. (I’d eat any other veggie, especially broccoli, spinach and brussel sprouts, so peas weren’t an important part of my diet.)
Anything that is cooked while still alive is an absolute no no. Shrimp are okay, lobster is not. I don’t like lobster anyway, so that’s easy enough.
Anything that I keep in my home as a pet.
Veal and any other baby animal I can think of.
As for asparagus, I’ve been known to (often) eat several pounds of asparagus (and nothing else) for dinner.
I just watched a show on the food network about chitlins. My other half who will normally eat just about anything, says that is one food he won’t even try. And after watching the show, I won’t be either. They actually have to squeeze the crap out of the intestines. That is just sick. I have to agree with the fact that chitlins would be an aquired taste.
Cervaise, darlin, congrats. You have just managed to top my sweetie on the grossout meter. 
I am literally sitting here just as green as that smilie.
However:
This was my BIG craving all through my first pregnancy, and I still love it.
Whoa. I think you’ve hit a nerve, WILLASS. Loathing some foods in their pure state is one thing, but some otherwise blameless foods shouldn’t ever be mixed with others. Tuna, pasta and sweet corn, f’rinstance, not to mention the components for Gentleman’s Relish.
Much can go awry in the mixin’, which could probably be its own thread. (Food Combinations From Hell.) I love bitter chocolate in mole but that ain’t like melting a candy bar over salmon.
I think I need to go rinse my mental palate with Drano.
Olives…
Liver…
Venison (and no, it doesn’t matter how you bleed it. It ALWAYS tastes nasty)
Asparagus…
Pecans and cashews…
And if you really want me to not eat something. Throw a lot of salt on it. I don’t mind a little but if I can actually taste the salt, ewwwwwww