Find somebody who doesn’t mind your pickiness.
Were I back on the market, I’m not sure I could stay with someone like that. I can deal with picky eating, but unpredictability is another thing entirely. There’s no way for you to cook for her without running into something that grosses her out. Can you even go to a restaurant with her, or is she completely unable to find something on a menu that works for her?
Seriously, does the woman have two vaginas?
My SO was very picky when we first met. It drove me nuts so I told him I couldn’t deal with an adult who wouldn’t eat food that had touched other food on his plate and it was a deal breaker. Well I guess he was really into me because he got over it. He’s still not a foodie but will eat a normal variety of foods at a normal selection of restaurants. So, I suppose if your SO has a magical vajayjay and you want to stay with her, tell her to smarten up. It worked for me, might work for you. (FWIW, hubby was never obnoxious like the girlfriend in the OP - more like food phobic.)
OK, I have to say that it sounds like she’s picky. But she might have reason to be picky.
I have irritable bowel syndrome. If I eat something that is one of my triggers, then I can count on at least three days of explosive diarrhea, sometimes as long as three weeks. It’s not that the trigger food stays in my system that long, it’s that my system takes that long to recover from the inflammation. One of my triggers is raw onions, or any raw allium. It’s not good enough to just pick the raw onions out of whatever, because the onion juice is enough to trigger an episode. For many years I didn’t know I had IBS, I only knew that if I ate certain foods, there was a risk that I’d feel bad for some time afterwards. I could go into more detail, but a lot of people with IBS have had the same experience…we know that we’ll suffer if we eat certain foods.
Or it could just be that she’s picky without reason.
I was with you until you put spaghetti sauce in the soup. Bleargh.
Bleargh this too.
I’m in the “dump her” camp. Life is too short to deal with that crap.
I read it as adding mushrooms to soup, or adding mushrooms to spaghetti sauce.
According to this Cracked article, some ultra-picky food habits can develop from growing up poor and depending on storable and instant foods – http://www.cracked.com/blog/the-5-stupidest-habits-you-develop-growing-up-poor_p2/
I haven’t either but I’d gladly try them if offered. I wonder if the OP lives in a hunting region where this kind if game meat is common.
This, and if she isn’t really heavy now, she will be soon.
Since childhood I was sure I hated asparagus and Brussel sprouts. Turns out I love them and the reason I hated them was because we were served asparagus from a can and never had it fresh. Same thing with the sprouts. My guess is that a lot of people who hate veggies were served canned vegetables boiled to death when they were young.
This is a fallacy. Seriously. My mind was opened when I heard a report on Radio 4 about how people with Alzheimer’s / senile dementia literally forgot that they didn’t like foods and subsequently enjoyed them. That wouldn’t be possible if it were purely chemical.
There are some foods I have a stronger aversion to than others. With most foods, repeated exposure lessens the distaste. Again, how would that be possible if it were purely chemical?
The signals you receive are real, no doubt about that, but you do have some measure of control over it.
Exactly. There are some foods that I don’t like, but every once in a while I’ll give them a try to see if I can get over them. And over the course of years, my palate is almost unrecognizable when you compare it to when I was a child.
When I was a kid, I would diligently pick cooked onions out of everything on my plate – we had Indian food for dinner almost every day and there were cooked onions in at least one dish served as dinner. As I matured, I made efforts to get over it, and now when I cook almost anything, I start by frying onions and garlic.
I also had an aversion to tomatoes. I would eat anything made from tomatoes – ketchup, soup, juice, salsa picante – but not chunks of tomatoes. There are still times I don’t love biting into chunks of tomatoes, but I will happily eat a well made bruschetta, which is largely chunks of tomato. And every once in a while, I will not bother to pull the raw tomato slice out of a pre-made sandwich or burger. I don’t like it as much as I would have if it didn’t have the raw tomato slice, but I can still enjoy it just fine.
My family was always very encouraging and enthusiastic about trying new foods, even when I was a picky eating kid. And I eventually learned to enjoy it, to the extent that my parents now seem like picky eaters to me because they hesitate to have things like raw fish sushi, raw molluscs, raw beef (steak tartare, kitfo, etc.), “exotic” seafood (octopus, squid, snails, etc.), organ meats, etc.
At a Korean cultural festival once, I tried a spoonful of what turned out to be beondegi (boiled silkworm larvae). I have never been hot on the idea of eating insects (I have a kind of phobia about insects), but I tried them anyway, intentionally not asking was it was until after I had tasted it. It was not gross at all, and only after I swallowed it did I feel my learned revulsion creeping in, requiring me to down a bunch of Sprite. But I discovered that eating larva is not intrinsically gross and maybe someday I’d be able to further my experience with them, even though it still doesn’t appeal to me as a general matter.
Totally agree. Someone who is noticeably picky has maturity problems.
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What do you mean by “certain”? How many? Somebody upthread said that two hated foods is the limit. I’m not sure I would be so strict about it, but it should be a small enough number that it doesn’t become a factor that people interacting with you socially have to take into account, as if you had a major allergy or illness or strict religious prohibition. If it’s just a few things you’ll absolutely refuse to eat without literally vomiting, then that’s one thing.
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Unless you have a major physical disorder, then you cannot blame it on an uncontrollable reaction to chemical signals by your body. It’s just a matter of being accustomed to eating something and you can absolutely control it, by acclimatizing yourself to eating things that you don’t like. Again, even if it’s a food you don’t like, you should still be able to eat it without having a physical reaction to it. After all, human beings are evolved as omnivores, so unless you have a major disorder, there should be nothing that other people in the world eat that you just can’t physically take in.
Yeah, that is absolutely not acceptable in an adult.
Yes, yes, a thousand times yes. I grew up thinking I hated zucchini squash (courgette), because the only time anyone ever served it to me, it was in heated-from-frozen succotash and it was an absolutely disgusting, flavorless mush. Now, fresh, raw zucchini or the same thing freshly grilled in a pan or on a charcoal grill with olive oil, salt and pepper is one of my favourite foods.
I thought I hated brussels sprouts, literally until last year, but, again, it was always served to me as heated-from-frozen much. But one day I was in the market and I saw a bag of fresh brussels sprouts, and I thought, what the hell, why not try it – took it home, steamed some and then put some in a fresh stew, and wow, it was really good. I’ll gladly eat brussels sprouts these days.
There are still some childhood eating quirks that affect me, especially having to do with fruits, but I will periodically push myself to get over them, especially when someone else has gone to the trouble of preparing them nicely. And every once in a while I am pleasantly surprised and have a very nice experience.
There is some research indicating people who are picky are more sensitive to particular tastes.
But there’s picky and then there’s crazy and rude. Everyone has different things that they can tolerate, but there becomes a point when it becomes pathological rather than just quirkiness.
To the OP, you are not going to change this woman. It’s just going to keep getting more and more annoying until both of you are ready to kill each other. It’s better to end it now rather than pretending that you can cope. You can’t.
The main difference between a picky eater and a rude bitch is how it is handled. There’s a large difference between “no thank you, I don’t care for any salmon” and “ew that turns my stomach”.
There are certain foods I don’t care for, but it is mostly due to texture, not taste. I’m not a big fan of squid because it is so often overcooked and rubbery, which is blech to me. I love raw tomatoes and tomato sauce, but don’t care for chunks of cooked tomato. If I am served something I don’t care for, I eat what I can and politely decline the rest.
This reminds me of an experience in New Orleans when I was in my teens. We had a visit planned to a resturant famed for it’s barbequed shrimp. I love shrimp and was really looking forward to it until the waiter brought the food to the table. Huge bowls of whole shirmp. Eyes, feelers hanging over the rim of the bowl - I dined that night on baked potato and bread and butter.
Can’t handle or have patience for people who are overly picky. I understand that we all have preferences and likes and dislikes, but picky eaters are a pain. You can almost expect it with some kids regardless of age, but eventually I would like to think that most adults can get over this and learn to enjoy a wide variety of foods/styles of preparing them. I didn’t like many different foods when I was a young kid that I now enjoy very much and wonder why in the hell I didn’t then.
And the difference between a mature person and a picky eater is whether you say “no, thank you,” so often that people begin to notice.
Try roasting them in the oven for a real treat. Trim any tough outer leaves, split them in half, toss in a plastic bag with olive oil, salt, pepper and garlic powder. Spread them on a baking sheet in a single layer, and roast at 400 degrees for 15-20 minutes, or until they are just starting to brown. Really good flavor, and tender, not mushy, texture.
This only matters if you care to please people all the time. Tons of people have allergies, tolerance issues, or religious diet restrictions and are perfectly justified in saying “no, thank you” as often as it is warranted, regardless of who gets butthurt about it.
You can be a “no, thank you” person and still be quite pleasant around. You just have to find folks who don’t mind being around a “no, thank you” type of person.
This is the basic source of disagreement in these threads. Health problems and religious restrictions are not comparable to mere dislikes, not even a little bit.
And if you refuse what you’re offered often enough, there’s a point at which it doesn’t matter how pleasant you are about it.