My comparisons do relate… saying that someone has has “short man’s syndrome” or an “eating disorder” is equally dismissive and insulting.
Not on my planet. There is nothing dismissive or insulting about someone having an eating disorder. I guess will just wait to see what the mods think about your comments.
Hi-jack over.
I’m not buying it. If it walks like a jerk, talks like a jerk and looks like a jerk, it’s probably a jerk. Good-bye.
That’s a bizarre, though not uncommon, conclusion.
I love to travel - see new sights, explore different parts of the world, meet people (talk when I can. I’m iffy with languages, but I’ll do my best), try new experiences. I’m just probably not going to like the food (I might. I’ll try it, but my hopes are not high).
I always find it strange when I come back and people ask me about food. I’m thinking that I just saw something amazingly beautiful or walked on a part of the world I’ve only read about in books or connected in some way to some historical fact or met some really wonderful people or learned something about the way the world is and was and I’m being asked about dinner? That’s not even in the top 300 interesting things about a trip.
Yeah really. What is so special about onions that someone is auto-childish for not wanting to eat them as opposed to say, pomegranates?
I live with roommates and cook for myself, so those 4-8 things I don’t eat are because I’m an adult and I eat things that I like, so I choose not to eat them. When someone is cooking a special meal to get to know me, I am going to eat it even if it has onions, because I am not a rude jerk. In fact my GF knew I hated onions and the first meal she ever made me she diced them super small thinking she could trick me. I knew they were in there while eating them but I just stomached it and said it was good, politely. When she did the “AHA! GOTCHA!” moment, I simply said “I knew they were in there the entire time. Why would you cook food for me with an ingredient you know I hate to try to trick me?” Much crying ensued. I wasn’t the asshole in that situation.
I have to confess I don’t care if you wouldn’t be able to cook for me, your cooking styles and tastes aren’t privleged except to you.
We get it, you like onions, and can’t see how anyone else would be disgusted by them. It’s one food, get over yourself. I bet you dollars to donuts I’ve tried stuff you wouldn’t give a shot before.
I bet you’re very much in the minority then. Traveling is to experience a new culture usually, and food and culture are deeply intertwined. I bet you “trying new, authentic foods” is in the top 10-15 reasons people travel for pleasure.
It’s not unreasonable to think someone who is not able to go out of their comfort zone beyond mac n’ cheese and potatoes would be unlikely to want to travel to Jakarta…what would they eat when they got there?
I am 99% sure there is a strong correlation between adventurous eaters and people who like to travel, so I started a poll here:
I don’t think it makes you childish, but it makes you extraordinarily difficult to cook for or dine with. Onions are probably the world’s most common ingredient, and play a crucial role in most cuisines.
I only know one person who doesn’t like them in any form, and listening to him order is rather painful.
If it were me, I’d type up a nice Dear Joan letter and put it in a bun with her favorite dressing.
Seriously, I couldn’t imagine a future with someone who loathes something I enjoy as a hobby. Good food is one of the truly great joys of life.
Funny, I’m in the very beginning of planning a trip there now (well Indonesia, I’ve ruled out Bali, I’m looking closely at Java). I’m going to see things. As far as what I’ll eat, I haven’t given it a second thought - I can’t imagine I will.
Well, she’s right on this point. Mushrooms are generally disgusting and don’t belong in spaghetti sauce under any circumstances. 
That said, yeah, I share your pain. My best friend (for the first 10 years I knew him) would eat:
Dintey Moore brand beef stew (over rice or mashed potatoes)
McDonald’s hamburgers–plain (no condiments, onions, tomatoes)
Several Taco Bell items (I remember pintos and cheese but not the others)
Fried chicken
Generally “midwestern home-cookin’” type dishes. (Roast chicken/pot roast/turkey–meat ‘n’ potatoes type stuff-no casseroles though–that has stuff mixed together)
He wouldn’t eat anything else. Even stuff as innocuous as salad or spaghetti and meatballs.
I finally snapped and forced him to try Chinese food (via the “I’m going and I’ll treat if you don’t like it, but if you don’t at least taste it, I’ll kill you and bury the corpse” methods that buddies can get away with)
"YOU LIKE BEEF STEW, RIGHT??? :mad:
“Yeah.”
“YOU LIKE BROCCOLI AS LONG AS IT’S COOKED, RIGHT?? :mad:”
“Yeah.”
“YOU LIKE RICE, RIGHT???”
“Yeah”
“THEN EAT THE DAMNED BEEF AND BROCCOLI OR I’LL KILL YOU!!! NO MORE BURGERS!!! :mad: :mad: :mad:”
It was a revelation for him. He loved it. I ordered sweet-and-sour shrimp (knowing he liked fried shrimp and it’s an “easy” dish for a noob. He at literally never tried anything like it and loved it as well.)
20 years later and we’re still best friends and he’s as adventurous, foodwise as I am. (Maybe too adventurous…he actually enjoys mushrooms. Tsk. )
Yeah. Pickiness can be because of childish tastes in foods, but someone can be picky for non-childish reasons. And it can be a bother dealing with them too.
A friend of mine hates red peppers. She came to visit me in Baltimore once and insisted we eat at a restuarant that was bit out of the way, but hey, no problem right? Well, when we get to the place, famished after a long hike from her hotel, I’m all set to enjoy a hearty meal and relax with a glass a wine. Except I have to hear her sad commentary about how all the menu items contain red peppers. There was like maybe one thing on the menu that didn’t use red peppers as an ingredient. But I’m not talking about chunks or slices of red peppers; for the most part, the stuff was such a minor ingredient that it was invisible. I really couldn’t get what the big deal was. It wasn’t like she knew for a fact that it was going to taste bad to her; the mere knowledge that it was there was enough to turn her off.
So she had dessert for dinner. I insisted we go else where but she insisted we stay. It was kind of a bummer.
I’m watching the evening news and they say a woman was denied travel to DEN because they sent home all the female TSA screeners for the day at an airport.:rolleyes: Well I guess that’s one way to stop half the potential terrorists.
Magiver, did you mean to post that in another thread?
I can’t have caffeine anymore – it triggers my seizures. 
Unfortunately, I love many foods that have caffeine. So if someone were to make their tiramisu, I’d have to turn it down. There’s gastric distress, and there’s having a full on seizure right in front of my hosts. (Yes, that does happen when I have caffeine). So if someone’s offended because they just got a new espresso maker and I turn it down, so be it.
(And I love tirimasu. :()
That’s strange. I’m not one of those people who if an onion TOUCHES my food, it’s forever sullied, I will just pick the onion out unless it’s minced in there or something. I often forget to ask “Does that have onions on it? Oh, then no onions on mine please”. And if they forget I will just remove them, because to me it is the texture that is disgusting, I actually like onion FLAVOR.
I have never had difficulty at all not eating onions, and I’m lazy as heck so if it were that hard I’d probably just get used to them. Like I said I’m an adventurous eater and not eating onions isn’t a big deal.
Cool! Would you say that at home you are not that interested in food and it is just fuel? Maybe food isn’t a big deal to you anywhere, so of course it’s not a big deal to you overseas as well. So far on my poll it looks like people who travel but don’t at all care about the food like yourself are around 1/3 of the respondents, so a sizeable minority but bigger than I would have expected. 
yep, thanks. It was for the TSA appreciation thread.
You didn’t really equate not liking onions with not liking pomegranates, did you? In terms of what is—or can justifiably be—considered childish pickiness, they’re not in the same ballpark. At least in the context of Western cuisine, that is. One is a fruit of minor importance that, while growing rapidly in popularity recently, is not on the average person’s weekly grocery shopping list. The other is a fundamental ingredient of a huge proportion of Western cuisine, and indeed most of the rest of humanity as well. You almost couldn’t name an ingredient more universal.
Now, being universal doesn’t mean you have to like it. But it does mean that you’re “more odd” for not liking it than not liking a food relatively removed from the core of your local cuisine. If you accept the premise that not liking certain things that everyone else does, especially grown-ups, is a bit childish (and I’m not pushing that view, I don’t even particularly hold it)…then you can’t claim that it’s equally childish to hate onions and pomegranates. It has everything to do with how normal it is to like it.
This is not some omnivore bashing your picky ways…remember, I’m one of the picky ones. And I’m not being hypocritical either. Because I recognize that many of my preferences are considered childish pickiness by most. I don’t like raw tomatoes; I will pick them off my sandwich, along with the slices of raw onion. And I recognize that such behavior is more childish pickiness than the fact that I also hate, say, water chestnuts.
Ya know, I love to cook. Married for 14 years and I do most of the cooking. Works well.
I can’t eat seafood, but I will grill a salmon steak for my wife. No prob.
Because I can’t eat seafood I am labeled as a picky eater.
As the cook in the house I pay attention to what my wife likes and does not. She does not like gravy of any type. So a good stew is hard for me to make. She loves hamburgers and meatloaf but can’t stand meatballs in spaghetti (?). Meat sauce it great though Must be a texture thing for her I guess.
Thick soup? Nope. Texture thing again. But since I can’t eat seafood I am labeled the picky eater.
Uh huh.
I see what you are saying, but not liking onions doesn’t make me “picky” IMO because 1) I have never had a problem avoiding eating onions, I have friends who aren’t even aware I don’t eat onions, and 2) It would be picky if I couldn’t eat anything because every food people try to make for me/order at a restaurant would have something “wrong” with it. I have no problem finding food to eat and try…so I can’t be “picky” or “childish”. Children don’t try fertilized duck embryo, BBQ chicken intestines, etc.
Huh. But like others have said, onion goes in about everything I cook. That’s got to be a tough one.
I wonder what “anti-picky” eaters think about vegitarians and vegans? My two best friends are vegitarians but eat seafood. I can’t eat seafood but will eat anything on the hoof. Somehow we get along just fine and have no problem eating out together.
I don’t consider my veg friends picky, and they don’t consider me picky.
So, to you that have problems with so called picky eaters, is a vegitarian picky?
Huh, it’s funny, in my time here I’ve come to expect people here to be so inflexible that they can’t even handle such simple and basic things as American Chinese food the way ordinary adults would.