Inspired by this thread What is something you liked as a kid that isn’t necessarily geared to a child’s palette? For example I loved salt & vinegar chips as a kid, still do. And when the late Mr. J was little the servers in the px would watch him enjoy liver & onions! What about you?
Lobster is the first thing that comes to mind. I first had some when I was about 5 and loved it.
Jajangmyeon:
One of my favorite dishes at a tyke.
From a very young age, I liked un-childlike foods such as liver & onions, creamed chipped beef on toast (S.O.S.), and kipper snacks. I’ve been eating them regularly for 6 decades. In fact I just made L & Os today.
Spinach. I have always loved spinach.
Steamed broccoli. (Granted I had it in the broccoli-and-cheese-potato form, usually.)
I also liked liver and onions as a child, because my parents did too and nobody told me it was supposed to be gross until they served it in the school cafeteria.
I also remember when my grandmother made a mincemeat pie and my parents tried to persuade me not to taste it, but Grandma gave me some anyway, and guess what? I loved it! To me, it was a raisin pie, so what was the big deal?
Smoked oysters and kippers
I enjoyed liver & onions. I really liked tinned fish, like sardines and mackerel. My mom used to send me to school with them in my lunch. I was up for the smoked oysters from a tin, eaten with a toothpick, as well. (Hell – it’s probably been about close to 40 years since I last had them, too – back when I was a kid.) Pickled herring. Pickled beets. Chicken hearts (my brother and I would fight for the one in the chicken soup.) Fried chicken livers from Brown’s chicken. My mom’s rumaki sans chestnuts, which were a special snack for Saturday night movie watching. Chicken aspic with vinegar (still one of my favorites, but only when visiting my parents. I never buy it or make it for myself.) Beefsteak tartare. Radishes. Is corned beef hash “un-childlike”? After I discovered it, that was my favorite breakfast to order the rare times we would go out for breakfast.
Porkchops, thin cut, over cooked and slightly burned, with iceburg lettuce and tomato wedges salad (with carrot rounds and/or radishes) and ketchup based salad dressing. That was our version of “beans and weenies” meal when I was a kid, and I loved it. It’s comfort food for me. Well not the ketchup salad dressing.
I love mincemeat pie! I think it may be the beef suet ingredient that turns some people off.
I’m American, but my mother (RIP) was a WWII British war bride, She was a top-notch cook, particularly talented with pie/pastry crusts. So, mincemeat, steak & kidney and other English pies were in constant rotation in our house.
And, I too always loved spinach. Quite good with a chopped hard boiled egg mixed in.
My mom would mix ketchup and mayo for a salad dressing. I thought soup and salad was a very elegant, ladylike meal to eat, so I loved to have a bowl of canned soup and that salad for such a sophisticated lunch.
Fruit cake. Claxton fruit cake to be specific. I’ve always loved dried fruit and nuts.
Caesar salad. Made from scratch, with anchovies and coddled eggs.
I have a hard time even thinking of “childlike” food. Man, in my house, you ate what mom cooked or you went hungry.
So, yeah, I grew up on liver and onions, Pigs in the Blankets, all sorts of ‘Mexican’ food, sushi and sukiyaki, spinach, the whole menu.
The only thing I won’t eat (just about) as an adult is lamb/sheep. Disgusting, stinky greasy meat.
I grew up eating - and enjoying - whatever was served, no exceptions. I never understood why so many kids didn’t like the foods I loved.
The only two foods I’ve ever had that I won’t eat again are haggis and Limburger cheese.
I always like steak, I liked it even more as an adult when I realised it didn’t need to be cremated like my mother cooked it. Liver, tick, although my version is better. Liver, onions, bacon with a red wine sauce.
Wow. I can only assume you’ve had some really badly cooked Lamb. A Lamb leg roast with garlic and rosemary, and all the veges is food of the gods. Loin chops are mini T bone steaks. Yum.
When i was very small, my parents would give me the lemon wedge to chew on when they ate at a restaurant. That seems unchildlike to me. I, too, loved rumaki (without the water chestnut) and still make it sometimes as a treat for myself.
I’ll have to check it the other thread to see what people think childlike foods are. Some that are mentioned here seem like food every child likes.
Coffee. Folks are skeptical when I tell them that my daily breakfast as a child, going back to age 5 or so, was peanut butter toast and a cup of coffee.
mmm