I used to be this way about rice. The feel of the little grains just creeped me out to no end. Then, well, for some reason I got to eating it again. It has to be made well though-I won’t touch the stuff when mom cooks it.
Beef Stroganoff…I despise this stuff. Another one of those dishes that mom makes. Maybe it’s that I’ve never been a big wine fan.
Tripe. You know, tripe. If I had never known what it was…it wouldn’t have bothered me. But after eating it at lunch with my co-worker, she told me what I had eaten. sigh I felt bad afterwards because she was so apologetic, but I also felt lucky to have made it to the bathroom.
My tongue is forged from an array of dynamic tastes. And my stomach is as powerful as an iron-clad lockbox.
But even I carry a few supervillains of my own:
Mushrooms
(any) seafood, including mollusks.
Overly-spiced curry. (I know curry is traditionally served with heavy spicing, but my poor palate can’t take it.)
That’s about all that comes to mind. I think I’ve tried everything else that’s been mentioned in this thread and thought it was delicious.
Geez, there’s some good food mentioned in this thread.
See, I like food. I like tomatoes, mushrooms, cabbage, peas, limas, seafood (mussels! mussels are the world’s most perfect food!), olives, sour cream, broccoli, feta cheese … I’m getting hungry.
I do have a few dislikes. My chief one is beets. I will never, ever, ever ingest a beet in my entire life, unless possibly if I am starving to death, and maybe not even then. Beets are completely disgusting.
I also agree with people who don’t like scary processed foods, like Miracle Whip (shudder), aerosol “cheese,” strange margarine-like spreads … yuk. Simple and natural foods are good foods (with the exception of beets).
I also won’t have anything to do with artificial sweeteners. I don’t care if Cecil says they probably won’t give me cancer – they’re gross and sugar isn’t, and I’m not diabetic, so that’s that.
[ul]
[li]most cooked veggies, except potatos, corn – those starchy ones need to be cooked – most are best raw[/li][li]asparagus[/li][li]brussel sprouts[/li][li]fish or seafood of any kind, thank mom for the spoiled salmon loaf that made me violently ill as a kid[/li][li]saurkraut – man that stuff stinks to high heaven (goes to the cooked veggie thing I guess)[/li][/ul]
I am not as picky as I used to be but being from a family with Kansas ties (parents divorced so mom did all the cooking) a lot of your typical “home style” cooking was the norm. Lot’s of casseroles, meat and potatoes etc. But she sure did a number on my hate for fish and seafood.
I will not eat onions or any other kind of allium except garlic; identifiable tomatoes; sweet peppers; sweet potatoes or yams; organ meats; mushrooms; or fish. And I do not drink alcohol.
it would be easier to tell you what i do eat. very, very, very, picky eater. thankfully the table we ate at when i was a kid had an empty drawer that faced me. otherwise i’d still be facing a dinner mum made me.
i am not really a picky eater. i don’t care much for fish and seafood, but i will eat it to be polite.
some foods take you back though. last week i was at a local day care at lunch time. as i walked by the table i noticed a smell: instantly i was transported back in time to a school cafeteria in the late 50’s and sister mary of corporal punishment was forcing me to eat stewed spinach and fish sticks. what strange sense of dietary need led someone to come up with that combination?
it would be easier to tell you what i do eat. very, very, very, picky eater. thankfully the table we ate at when i was a kid had an empty drawer that faced me. otherwise i’d still be facing a dinner mum made me.
I don’t eat anything that used to live in the water. That is, I don’t eat seafood. I used to actually have to leave the house when my mother made scallops.
I’ll eat pretty nearly everything and will try at least once things that I know will probably gross me out. This includes durian, nearly all British food outside London, and some of the odd stuff you encounter during travel: goat, yak butter, eel, anything with the eyes still in it.
Odd British food: ‘lasagne’ without noodles or tomato sauce (I think it was a leek casserole), mushy peas, cottage cheese sandwich on white bread, meat with more fat than meat, devilled kidneys, faggots (pig’s liver, suet, onion, bread), stuffed lamb heart, creamed parsnips, haggis - I could go on! I usually like brussel sprouts but in the UK they’re soaked overnight and then boiled beyond recognitions as are most of their cooked veggies.
I gotta agree with the anti-mushroom people. It’s a vile fungus. Keep them far, far away from me. I don’t want them on my pizza, I don’t want them on my burger, I don’t want them on my chicken breast. No mushrooms for Morphy. I also refuse to eat cauliflower. It may look like broccolli’s albino little brother, but broccolli doesn’t cause my gag reflex to kick in.
I’m working with an actor now who has a funny Sunny Delight story. One of his first jobs in town was in a Sunny D. commercial. You might remember it from a few years back; it was the one where this kid is outside playing basketball, and a comely young lass his age has just moved in next door. He tries to impress her with his basketball skills, they enjoy some Sunny D. together, then she shows him up at basketball, revealing she was all-state the previous year. Ha ha. Anyway, this actor was telling me how when the director showed up on set, he had assistants bring garbage cans by the set, standing by. Having made Sunny D commercials before, this guy knew that the actors were going to be drinking so much of the crap, that it was only a matter of time before they yakked it up. Hence, the garbage cans nearby. After about a half-dozen takes, the director calls cut and the actress races over to the trashcan and loses it, followed by the who crew applauding wildly. My friend swears he made it through the whole shoot without having a Sunny D. vomit, but having had the “suspicious chemical aftertaste”, as you so rightly put it, I wonder.
[list=1]
[li]I’m heartened to see that I’m not alone in detesting tomatoes in their natural state. Sauces and such are fine (great, even), but the raw item is pretty nasty.[/li][li]Most preparations of egg. Only really dry scrambled ones don’t have that slimy feeling that tends to make me gag.[/li][li]Hi, Opal![/li][li]Organ meats. Tried liver & kidney (once) - never again.[/li][li]I can’t bring myself to try raw oysters.[/li][li]Caviar. Tried it once - it tasted like little globules of seawater.[/li][li]Peas. As a kid, I’d swallow my “ration” at dinner whole, chasing them with iced tea (much like Dire Wolf).[/li][li]Lima beans.[/li][/list=1]
There are a pretty large number of things that I’m not real fond of, but those are all that I can think of right off that I simply cannot/will not mess with. Curiously, I generally have no problem with cheap, processed, and/or artificial foods.
Quality is a factor, but the elements of my list aren’t really dependent on quality. I hate raw tomatoes, and it’s not because “I haven’t tried good fresh ones.” I have: they were just as disgusting as any other tomatoes I’ve eaten.
I must take some responsibility for the decline in the level of culinary sophistication in America today: I regularly enjoy Spam[sup]TM[/sup].
I have very few things on my list of will-nots.
[list=a][li]Squid…Sorry, I’ve tried. It’s just too squeaky.[/li][li]Oysters… N-O. They are not only raw, they are alive. GROSS![/li][li]Headcheese…The thought just makes my throat tense up.[/li][li]Testicles…Pass.[/list=a][/li]I also agree with almost everything Jekeira said…except for one part:
Scallops. I had them three times as a kid and they made me sick each time. I like seafood in general, so one day when I have nothing better to do I’ll broil up some at home, have a taste test and see what happens.
Cilantro. Has a very unpleasant musty flavor. I only found out after growing a three foot high bunch of them in my herb garden.
I’m surprised at the prevalence of anti-brussel sprouts sentiment in this thread. Granted, brussel sprouts are one of the least palatable vegetables when bought frozen but I find them to be delicious fresh.
guacamole-looks like gorilla snot. cottage cheese (particularly large curd)-whose idea was it to put this in their mouths to begin with? vienna sausage-sorry, AudreyK, but this stuff is too vile for words. cilantro-if I wanted to graze…
…and as stated in another thread, Miracle Whip-ughh.
