I, too, MUST have something to read when eating alone. This is bad because it leads to polishing off a bag of chips or popcorn without really realizing it.
Have you guys ever heard of Adult Picky Eaters? I didn’t know such a thing existed as a group of sorts until I saw it on the Discovery channel a few months ago. You guys would fit right in! Personally I’ve met a few people who had eating issues and it just confuses the hell out of me. The worst I’ve ever gotten was that I can’t really eat raw tomatoes, but I can stand them in salsa just fine. I used to have to pick them off burgers and everything, but now I can stand them.
People don’t even realize I have food issues. I select my own food, after all. If someone forces something on me I don’t want to eat, I thank them and then dispose of it quietly.
I don’t like peanut butter. This isn’t the weird part. The weird part is that I must have at least one jar of it in the house (in case of what, exactly? I don’t know. Maybe the coming zombie apocalypse.) And the peanut butter in that jar must be chunky - smooth has no place in my house. So, not only do I not like something, I must have it in the house and I even have a preference!
I think my jar is about 10ish years old now - I just keep moving it from place to place. I should really throw it out, but inertia, I guess.
Oh. And no canned peas, ever. Nasty things.
Peanut butter is good for baiting mousetraps.
What about pork chops and applesauce? Yum!
I also don’t like gravy on my veggies, but it doesn’t gross me out, I will eat it anyway, it is more of a separation of flavors thing. The gravy overwhelms the flavor of the vegetable. Vegetables need butter.
Speaking of butter, I was raised on margarine because the goddamn doctors said it was healthier, and I wasn’t doing the shopping. Now we know it is loaded with trans fats, so you might as well be eating the good stuff. To this day, I scoff at most nutritional advice from medical types. Let me know when you change your mind again, eh geniuses?
When my roomie shops he always buys margarine, claiming “what’s the difference?” but evidently there must be some, because he will eat my butter instead when I have it and leave the margarine. Leave my butter alone! :mad:
So generally, I have an aversion to fake stuff. Give me the pure whole food. I always get a kick out of going into “Nature Mart” (local health food store). Half the crap in there is fake, nothing natural about it. Fake meat, fake cheese, fake milk, fake bread. You can stick your “Tofutti Cuties” where the sun don’t shine. Give me a goddamn ice cream bar. And I love how they claim “no sugar in our store” when half the junk in there is sweetened. Basic chemistry fail. Honey, molasses, cane syrup, white grape juice concentrate, or whatever you want to call it, all contain sugars of various descriptions, dumbass. Oh, you mean WHITE sugar, that some new age fraudster told you was EEEEVIL! Ok , now I get it. You are gullible as well as ignorant.
And everyone in there looks sickly. If that is health food, they can have it. You guys all look like you are dying of cancer on that crap! “Natural” foods. Biggest scam ever.
Sorry about the rant. I’ve been waiting for an opportunity to get that off my chest. 
Nope, definitely not! Admit I haven’t tried it, but doesn’t sound appetizing.
And get that mint jelly away from my lamb while you’re at it.
If I’m eating chinese or japanese, I need chopsticks. I’ll eat it with a fork, if none are to be found, but it feels somehow off. My mother thinks that this is very pretentious of me.
Short, small utensils are preferable. If it were socially acceptable, I’d probaby eat with baby spoons and forks.
I love those individually wrapped kraft cheese slices (yes, I know), and I eat them alone as a snack. However, I can’t just take them out of the fridge, unwrap, and eat them. I have to leave them out or keep them in my hands for a while. They have to be close to room temperature.
I like eating my food with the Hello Kitty spoon and fork I keep around for my niece. It feels like I’m eating more…
I generally eat only one meal (supper) a day.
All dressings and sauces must be served on the side.
What’s worse than canned peas? Canned peas and carrots! :mad:
I’m not big on vegetables. I’ll eat them (except for green peppers, cucumbers and beets…gross!) but as a small side dish only. If a meal consists almost entirely of veggies, I feel cheated.
I’m also not big on things with vinegar in them. I like mayo mixed with tuna, and ranch dressing and most barbecue sauces are okay, but I don’t like sauces where the vinegar or its smell overpowers every single other flavor. Or, worse, just plain vinegar. Though I will submit that the salad they had at my sister’s wedding (which had a champagne vinaigrette) was pretty darn good.
And I don’t understand mixing fruits and meats. I guess people feel like the opposite flavors and textures complement each other, but I don’t think it works at all. I’ve never had a fruit/meat dish that I truly enjoyed. And don’t get me started on sweet and sour sauce, or any variation thereof…blech!
All this being said, though, if I’m a guest at someone’s house, or if someone else is cooking for me for free, I’ll eat whatever is put in front of me. My philosophy is that if I’m not allergic to it, it’s not hurting me, and they put in an effort to make it, which I appreciate. And it’s very rare that I completely dislike an entire meal.
Like the OP, I have to eat everything equally throughout the meal, so that I have equal amounts of everything til the very end. Even if the amounts are disproportionate, I will skimp on one and go overboard with the other, to make sure that the amounts are roughly equal til I’m finished.
Sandwiches have to be cut in half. Except for grilled cheese sandwiches, which must be quartered.
And if I’m at a pot-luck type dinner, I will not eat anything with mayo on it. I got sick from pototo salad at a pot luck when I was a kid, and while I’m not positive that the mayo was the guilty party, I’m not taking any chances. (My dad ate it too; my mom and brother did not. Dad had one bathroom and I had the other. Mom and bro were fine. A case could be made that we were both just horribly unlucky, and the potato salad was innocent, but to this day I have issues with potato salad.) :eek:
There are foods I avoid, but really none I hate or wouldn’t eat if I was hungry. And food arrangement/ordering has never been on my radar.
That said, I don’t enjoy eating that much. I take care to eat enough because I want to gain weight… but I tend to eat very slowly, and often wash down bites with water to make it go faster.
LOL. That’s what picky eaters sound like to me.
I guess my main food issue is just that I like food a lot. I’m Italian. I derive great pleasure from cooking, eating, and sharing food with friends and loved ones. It’s a sensuous, physical pleasure that’s the core value of good living.
My only real restriction is that I’m vegetarian: No animal corpses. It’s quite simple that way. I’m not picky, really-- I just wholesale exclude meat from the category of food. Perhaps it’s “weird” in the eyes of some that I love vegetables. I can never get enough vegetables! The way I prepare them, they’re colorful, crunchy, sensuous, and bursting with fresh flavor. And never overcooked. Al dente is a vegetable’s best friend.
The other food issue for me is it has to be ¡spicy! Bland food just makes me wonder “what’s the point?” For me, spicy vegetables are the ultimate delight.
I hate other people eating off my plate and I won’t eat off other people’s plates. Once it is on my personal plate, it is mine and if it’s on your plate, it is yours and I don’t want it.
Alfredo is the sauce, you can use it on any pasta.
Oh, and wanting the kitchen to be clean enough to be able to eat soup by licking it off the floor isn’t weird: it’s “having standards”! Same goes for not wanting people grabbing food off my plate, specially without asking. My mother will do that; we’ve taken to leaving - and if it’s a restaurant, leaving her to pay.
Gosh - you all are a difficult lot.
My only weird food issue is preferring that it be at least stunned so it doesn’t fight back on the way down.
Hot, cold, spicy, bland, shared, double-dipped, out overnight? Who cares? Large, small, soft, hard, red, greeen, or blue? Who cares? It’s Food, Wonderful Food!!! Food, Food Food Food!!!*
*With apologies to Monty Pyton’s *Wonderful Spam *song.
Taken in aggregate, I’m sure that’s true. However, one weird issue at a time, we mostly seem to be able to have friends and lives anyway. (Or do we? I mean, how much time do we spend on message boards? )
Funny, as much as I love Monty Python (and love the idea that unwanted yet persistent email is named after one of their sketches!), I was trying to fit that into “Food Glorious Food” from Oliver!. 
This is my grandma’s hangup. She sort of bent the rule once when she had taken my kids to eat at a buffet restaurant. My son had gotten a bowl of soup but didn’t want it after stuffing himself with other food, so she ate it for him. Imagine her horror when she learned that he had tried a spoonful of the soup, but it was too hot, so he put it back in the bowl.