Acquired from my mother: a taste for tea (hot or cold but always sweet), Miracle Whip (she won’t touch mayo, I’ll use either and consider them interchangeable on sandwiches), spicy mustards and Pepsi-Cola. Avocados. Ethnic foods (Chinese, Indian, Japanese including sushi, though now I go for vegetarian sorts, Eastern European, authentic Mexican).
Acquired from my father: PB&J with cheese, or just cheese and jam sandwiches. Tabasco in, not on scrambled eggs. (Cooking mellows the flavor. Mmm.) Sweet whole wheat breads, like Roman Meal. Black olives on pizza. Mint ginger ale. Mixing mint ginger ale or apple juice into iced tea. “Tin can spaghetti” which wasn’t the spaghetti in a can, but spaghetti with canned or jarred sliced mushrooms, olives, artichoke hearts and roasted peppers plus cheese from the green can. I now make it with better quality ingredients but it’s the same idea. Apples. Grilled cheese sandwiches.
Didn’t acquire: Meat. Shallow fried foods especially home fries (usually made in bacon drippings). Ketchup as a basic, daily condiment (that was dad). Pineapple. Banana Splits (mom’s all time favorite dessert). Shoofly Pie (dad’s fave). Milk. (From dad, like mom I don’t touch it.) Celery. (Mom ate celery when dad ate apples.)
Bonus – Acquired from my two best friends: Matzoh brei. Parmesan on popcorn. Bean sprouts in egg salad or tofu salad in place of celery. Coffee. (It was never in our home, ever.)
Not acquired from my mom: all overcooked food. She even liked her toast burnt to a crisp. Canned mushrooms. Iceberg lettuce. Miracle Whip (never ever bought a single jar.) Oddly enough, when I’m sick, I sometimes crave creamed corn on white storebought bread (wonderbread sort). That reminds me of her and is reassuring, somehow.
Acquired on my own: rare beef, even tartare; lightly cooked fish; sushi and sashimi. Indian (subcontinent) food; northern Chinese food, all kinds of ethnic food. FRESH mushrooms of all kinds. Fresh vegetables and home-grown herbs.
Mom and Dad grew up southern and kind of kuntry poor. I grew up watching them “snack” on cold cornbread and buttermilk. In a glass. Like a sundae. Yum, right? I remember trying it when I was a kid and thinking they were knuts. How could anybody deliberately eat something that tasted like vomit?
These days, pretty good stuff actually, although I don’t eat it as often as Mom & Dad. You really need to put some onion in there, too.
I picked up my tea-drinking habits from my mother. In the morning it should always be regular (black) tea with neither milk nor sugar, switching to herbal tea in the afternoon/evening.
I also subconsciously think of coffee as a male beverage and tea as a female beverage, mostly because my mother was exclusively a tea drinker and my father was all about coffee. I can’t remember ever seeing my father drink tea, and could probably count on one hand the number of times I’ve seen my mother order a cappuccino.
That’s as far as it goes, though - I do drink both coffee and tea, and never bother to switch to decaf coffee even if it’s well past my bedtime… it’s just that it feels odd to drink “real” tea after dark, because that’s not how it’s supposed to be.
picked up - mom put sugar in her bean soup, dad put ketchup, all 3 of us kids put both. Not picked up from dad - pickled pigs feet. Mom wouldn’t even let him keep the jar in with the real food, it went in the cupboard with the pots. Not picked up from mom - canned spinach and mushrooms, either one. Just ick. Spinach is good, but I can’t stand soggy canned spinach, and I have some weird mental block against mushrooms.