What part would that be? 
I probably shouldn’t be surprised that some people are shocked at finding a common ingredient in their food. In the mid-'80s I met a woman who had no clue (and had to ask) what one does with guacamole. I shouldn’t be surprised, but I am.
As for complaining about finding a bay leaf, as I said,it would never occur to me to complain. It would be like ordering a salmon fillet and finding a bone in it. Pick it out, and set it aside.
That sounds right to me. People can’t distinguish between parsley and cilantro, grapefruits or large oranges, or any tuber aside from a russet potato.
I’ve had CASHIERS who couldn’t tell the difference between a cucumber and a zucchini.
Learning to cook well requires a lot of acquired knowledge and copious amounts of practice. And some recipes are just awful – but you need to know a lot to know when a recipe is wrong.
We are no longer farmers or hunters. We’re people who don’t like to cook.
Yep. I’ve many times had a cashier ask “what is this?” when buying something at the grocery. (Rutabaga, celery root, and turnip all seem to be commonly confused where I shop.)
‘It’s an organic dildo.’
To be fair, flat-leaf parsley and cilantro DO look a lot alike, especially when swaddled in plastic. I’ve occasionally had to resort to the sniff-check.
Cucumbers and zucchini can, again, look similar when wrapped in multiple layers of plastic bags, but at least they feel different.
I can identify most things that pass by me as a cashier because I cook. We really do have a problem with folks under 40 being unable to identify fruits and vegetables, and under 30 it’s really bad. The company cashier training does cover identifying the most common things, but it’s an on-going problem. I have a lot of coworkers holding stuff up so I can see it and yelling “Broom, what is this stuff?”
Often, I find that similar-looking produce is priced the same, presumably to mitigate the effect of cashiers not telling the difference.
Growing up in Iowa, I never heard of guacamole until the mother of a HS friend who had a much-older sister living in California told me that McDonald’s had guacamole (called, what else, Mac-a-mole or however they spelled it). She told me what it was, and said it was as disgusting as it sounded.
I never actually had it until years later. Yummy! But then again, it wasn’t from McDonald’s.
That’s one I really pay attention to. My one known food allergy (sort of) is kaffir lime leaves.
Not a swell-up-and-die allergy, but if I eat something flavored with it every bit of my GI tract protests vigorously, each in its own way. I will leave the cumulative effect to your imagination. :dubious:
If I eat in a Thai restaurant, I ask about ingredients VERY carefully. And take the first bite like an unpopular king’s food taster.
Heh. I worked with a woman from Iowa who pronounced tortillas as ‘tor-tilly-uhs’.
Southern Liveoaks, and for that matter, Black Mangroves, have a leaf that looks like a Bay Laurel.
By the way, did you know that the storied “Crown of Laurels” is bay leaves? 
I have a friend who is this way with coconut. More than once, she’s eaten something and had to run to the bathroom immediately to throw it up, and the person who cooked it said, “Oh, yeah, it had coconut oil in it but I didn’t think it would hurt you.”
:eek: :mad: :smack:
Funny thing is, she sometimes uses her housemate’s coconut body wash. She said, “It’s not like I DRINK it or anything!” and I told her that it was probably fake coconut scent anyway.
Probably ethylene glycol. That’s what artificial coconut flavor is.
Blecch, celery is sharp, astringent, and extremely off-putting when raw (to me). VERY strong taste.
Yes, celery’s taste is quite distinct and strong. I mean, I like it, but subtle it is not.
The dipwad(s) at the “center for science in the public interest” is dipshittier.
I guess that many cooks just want to rest on their laurels…
Huh, is celery maybe like cilantro, in having a flavor component that’s invisible to some people but objectionable to others? Because no matter how I think to describe the flavor of raw celery stalk, “strong” is never on the list.
Then there is the rare NYC, Philly & Baltimore regional treat, Cel-Ray is a celery flavored soft drink from Dr Brown’s.
Celery is a lump of objectionable, nasty texture with no taste at all to me.
I wouldn’t be surprised if that were the case. Celery is a common taste aversion, in my experience, and it doesn’t take much to ruin a dish for those who hate it, much like cilantro. Like i said, I like it, but it’s a very distinct flavor to me. I made some chicken broth the other day, and all I could think was, shit, I overdid the celery on this (and I had used two stalks instead of one for like two quarts of broth.)