We just got back from Greece and brought several jars of Kalamata olives with us. You may hate me for this if you like.
A good olive is transcendental. A bad olive is unspeakable. I can smell the rancid miasma of a substandard green olive three rooms away.
DDG, mine is 16 (17 in 10 days! :eek: ) and has this same annoying habit. I recently purchased a monster jar of Vlasic Kosher Dill Pickles at Walmart - the big 80 oz. size. I have brought three pickles to work with my lunch to date. When I was making my lunch last night and figured I would liberate a few more for my lunch today, I grabbed the jar, and found one goddamn pickle (and it was a deformed one at that!) floating there. He ate 80 oz. of pickles (minus four). All by himself. We also grilled hamburgers and hot dogs for mother’s day - he ate two hamburgers, three hot dogs, and a half a bag of potato chips for dinner. All but the potato chips had buns to boot.
The kid is 6’ 3" tall and weighs 130 lbs. - where is he PUTTING THIS FOOD???
Teenage boys - I’ll NEVER understand 'em.
:eek: So this nasty black things that are all the pizza places offer these days (having phased out green olives as toppings decades ago) really are as foul as I thought? I’M VINDICATED!!! Those things taste like metallic slime, honestly there’s no flavor in 'em except for, I dunno, tin or aluminum or something.
I loves me some good olives like the greek ones, which were quite a revelation to me - my family’s idea of “exotic” growing up was a pepperoni pizza. I even like (well, love) the pimiento-stuffed green ones as lowbrow as they seem to be. They at least have some flavor left in 'em.
OHMYGOD. Is THIS what I have to look forward to???
Green olives are nice.
Black olives are nassssssssssty.
Kalamata olives are the food of the gods!
Did he drink the olive brine?
I was what you might call a finicky eater as a child. I would sometimes declare something like “Today, I’m only eating food that starts with W.” My mother, having raised three other sons, would say, “Great. Good luck with that.” I did not starve. I also did not grow up with a very experienced palate.
Enter my lovely wife - who loves foods that are strong flavored or smelly. While I wouldn’t have eaten an olive on a bet before, I’ll now eat the entire jar (much like your son). Anchovies? Hell, yeah. Soft cheeses? Yep, I’m game (within limits). I’ve even started to introduce some of these to Lilly, Queen of the Universe. She’s much more adventursome than I was at 8. She’s into lots of foods that most little kids wouldn’t touch.
Og, I cannot WAIT to have a starving teenage boy, preferably a social one with many starving friends. You see, I love to make cake, cookies, brownies, casseroles, doughnuts, stir fry, homemade bread … I am a cookin’ fool. But I am limited by what my family can consume.
My son, now 9 and a pipsqueak, is under strict orders to become a human vacuum cleaner no later than age 16.
Well, he will, you can count on it. It must be a “burgeoning testosterone” thing or something, that makes teenage boys go through a “keep yer hands and feet away from his mouth” phase.
You can make mass quantities of homemade beanie-weenie to fill him up–just get whatever brand of canned baked beans you like, and cut up hot dogs (or chunks of bologna) into it, heat it up in the oven in a big casserole, put some French onions on top if you feel fancy and Og the Devourer hasn’t yanked it out of your hands and is gobbling it standing up in the kitchen.
(QtM: No, he did not drink the brine. Even Og the Devourer has his standards.)
Teenaged boy ⇒ Ramen by the case.
My siblings and I were all very easy to feed. We would eat pretty much whatever we were given (except mushrooms or eggplant… blech!), and my mom was big on healthy foods; lots of vegetables, granola, yogurt, etc…
My brothers have both been fortunate with non-picky eaters as well. We’re Greek, and we all love our olives! mmmmm Especially the ones with whole garlic cloves or jalepenos stuffed in them!
I’m trying to teach my friends 3 year old son about different foods too. We got him completely hooked on sashimi. 