Weird hang-ups (without any logical explanation)

I avoid foul-smelling public toilets

I solved this when I was a mere babe.

I eat out of a ramekin, of which I have a couple dozen because they are very cool. But any very small cup will do, you don’t want it to hold more than 3/4 cup volume total.

shake out about 2-3 spoonsful of cereal, splash with milk, eat.

Repeat until sated.

Single adult modifications: I usually have 2-3 cereals: at least one sweet, instead of sugar, and one that’s natural and healthy and unadulterated (Favorite is Uncle Sam cereal…jsut flattened wheat and flax. Good stuff.) My sweet cereal faves are multi-grain cheerios, quaker corn bran, and cracklin oat bran, which is pretty much candy. Anyway, I scoop a little of each so I have a cereal blend.

Also, since I live alone, I open all the boxes in front of me and just scoop a bit out of each with my hands. It’s my cereal , no one else is gonna be eating it.

Sometimes I use my freezee cups (frozen beverage cups to keep things very cold) so the milk will be VERY cold. that’s the other ick about cereal…but the time you’ve stirred and scooped a few bites, the temperature of your milk has plummeted. Ew.

Freak.

I *love *chunky salsa, pizza sauce, V8 Juice, even ketchup.

But I hate fresh tomatoes. Hate them, hate them, hate them.

I like raisins alone or with nuts, but I hate them in cake or any other food.

I don’t mind creepy crawlies if I’m outside; I’ll brush a centipede off of me like it’s no big deal. In the house I freak out like a little girl.

I can’t eat puddings or custards, mayonnaise, meringues, whipped cream, creamy salad dressings, pumpkin/sweet potato/sugar cream type pies, etc. because of their thick, creamy textures. My gag reflex just kicks in.

Yet I happily eat cake batter, sour cream, cottage and ricotta cheeses. Which makes me believe that the texture thing is all in my head.

Odd that the majority of the posts in this thread are food-related.

Food related:
I loathe Jello in all flavors…including shots.
Love pudding.

Non food related:
I cannot stand to find a newspaper with the pages turned “inside out”. If you are holding it and reading it, OK…If you set it down it had BETTER be turned back the right way, as in page one on top…if not my blood will boil.

Now that someone else mentions them, it seems like I have a lot of the common hang-ups.

Raw tomato aversion? Check.
Newspaper must be straight? Check. Also, I never take the top newspaper from a pile if I can avoid it.
Pies?

I can’t abide fruity custardy pies like banana cream, lemon meringue, or straight-up custard. It’s a texture thing, and the very thought of them is nauseating. Key lime pie, on the other hand, gives me powerful cravings. Even mediocre stuff made with normal limes is something I can’t resist. I know this makes no sense because it’s usually just as quivery and wobbly as the lemon pie filling, and both are made with some combination of eggs, milk, sugar, and juice, but there you have it.

So…not a fan of orecchiette, then?

Raisins alone are great. Nuts alone are great. Raisins in cake or other foods are great. Nuts in cake or other foods are great. Raisins mixed with nuts are an abomination.

I don’t like pretzels or yellow mustard separately. But if you put a little drop of yellow mustard on a pretzel, I love it.

I sort of like bananas (I only eat them underripe too, though), and like banana flavored pudding. The mere thought of bananas in anything or anything else banana flavored makes me slightly ill.
To my mother’s great frustration, my brother and I both enjoy meatballs, but won’t eat meatloaf. “They’ve got exactly the same ingredients!” she’d cry. It wasn’t until we were both grown up that she finally figured out that we won’t eat it because of the texture, not the flavor. We told her that all along, but she didn’t believe us for some reason.

Both the smell of hazelnut coffee and apple cinnamon air freshner have made me throw up. Not taste, mind you, the smell.

Banana flavored? I’ll eat it until I burst.

Bananas? Oh hell no! Wont touch the nasty things.

As for non food related: I cannot stand it if someone has to pee, but doesn’t opt to go. Like, if we’re in a car, and they say to me, “God, I have to pee!” I’ll say, “Oh, okay, I’ll pull over at this diner here -”

“Oh, don’t worry. I’ll wait until we get there.”

For the rest of the drive, my skin itches. I get insanely tense. I have no idea where this came from .

That gets to me also. So do people who wear hair rollers outside the house. That tells me that the people who see you on the street pumping gas or getting burgers at Jack in the Box don’t deserve to see you looking presentable the way your husband/boyfriend/baby daddy will later tonight.

Another thing that gets to me is wet towels left on the bed or on the floor. I try to hang them from the towel rack or, in a pinch, from the shower curtain rod. There’s just something about damp towels left fermenting in a pile that makes my skin crawl.

I don’t know why this bothers me so much: kids over age 2 wearing pajamas in public anywhere other than at the drive-in theater or when they just ran out of a burning and/or collapsed house in the middle of the night. If you absolutely have to run to Wal-Mart for a few things, at least have the decency to dress your kid first. That goes for grown-ups as well.

Crunchy wet lettuce spines=aaack. It’s like eating a bug. A big crunchy wet bug.

You are not alone. Tomatoe, tomato, or tomoto(e), cook the friggn things before you put 'em in front of me. Even if it’s just a turn on the grill.

Eating air freshener didn’t make you throw up?

I loves me some fresh coconut. I like coconut milk, and coconut liqueurs.

I DETEST any form of candied coconut. Like the filling in a mounds bar, or German chocolate cake frosting. It’s a bit the taste, but mostly the texture…sweetened sawdust.

I like pickles, tomatoes and lettuce. But if they’re in a burger I remove them and eat them separately. The onion can stay.

And if I’m having hot dogs, I have one with mustard and one with ketchup, then take alternating bites from both.

And all sandwiches must be eaten around the edge first, then the middle.

I like natural, unsweetened coconut used in coconut bars, a cookie, granola. or toasted on a cake. Hate sweetened coconut. Gross.