What foods do you dislike?

What foods do you dislike?

Butch

RANT ALERT! Since I have been asked to name the foods I dislike, it should be no wonder that these comments will take a negative tone.

Onions

Anyone who knows me can name my most hated food. ONIONS! It makes no difference what kind. Scallions, chives, shallots, green onions, leeks, white and yellow onions, and the absolute worst, the insidious purple death onion. This last onion has some napalm-type substance in it that makes the ooze from its oniony pustules stick to your tongue and can’t be neutralized or otherwise rubbed away. It can only fade over five or six hours time causing an eternity of unpleasantness.

I have a theory about onions and their over use in cooking shows. It is that peoples’ like or dislike of onions fits a perfect standard distribution or bell curve. Chefs tend to like onions and come in at one end of the spectrum and therefore overuse onions. They seem to think that the huge number of people in the middle of the bell curve really like onions. I maintain that people don’t care one way or the other. If you didn’t put onions in a recipe they might think something seems missing, but they wouldn’t refuse to eat it if the onions were left out. At the “dislike” end of the spectrum, there are just as many people as at the “must have” end. The difference is they have such an aversion that they can’t eat whatever dish the onions are put in. Given a choice, chefs should opt for leaving onions out. Having an oniony sauce served on the side should satisfy everyone.

Some people like to include garlic along with onions, but not me. I like garlic as long a reasonable amount is used. Like any strong flavored ingredient, it is best used in moderation.

Bitter Things

I have a particular aversion to bitter things. Black coffee doesn’t appeal to me, but is easily fixed with healthy additions of cream and sugar. Also, most herbs are bitter. Only three herbs that I like spring easily to mind; cilantro, tarragon, and mint. Most of the rest jump from “acceptable” to “avoided at all costs”. The nastiest herb of all is rosemary. It’s as bad as eating pine needles. Spices generally don’t cause me any problem whatsoever.

Salady Stuff

I don’t particularly care for salad ingredients, but I can stand most of them. They fall more in the category of “I don’t care if I eat them, but wouldn’t seek them out”. Three exceptions are raw tomatoes, cucumbers, and cooked egg whites. Tomatoes are too sour but do make good sauces. Cucumbers have no reason to exist. Egg whites bring an immediate gag reflex the second they hit my throat. If thoroughly mixed with other ingredients so as not to be noticeable, they are acceptable. Onions are also saladlike foods but I have covered them in detail already.

Other salad type ingredients generally just make me blurpy or gaseous at one end or the other and bring me no joy in compensation. These include lettuce, melon, and peppers, but not croutons, avocados, and palm or artichoke hearts.

When I was in grade school I started realizing that there were things I liked and disliked. I didn’t have any methodology for distinguishing between them. With time I was able to figure out which was which and since then I have had fairly constant attitudes towards the things I eat or don’t eat. I am open to trying new things and I think there are many things I enjoy but others can’t stand.

Karen

I pretty much eat everything. As I’ve gotten older, though, some foods disagree with me and others are just not favorites. After being married to Butch for so many years I have come to dislike and avoid onions but I can even eat those if they are already included in a dish and well cooked. There were some foods that I hated as a child and were regularly served to me at meals.

We always had a lot of vegetables for dinner when I was a kid. I was used to eating them and as we were expected to eat everything that was served, most vegetables were fine with me. In summer, we ate many fresh vegetables like corn, tomatoes, beans, carrots etc. But in winter we had only grocery store canned vegetables which had an overcooked mushy texture that I didn’t like. I hated canned peas, asparagus, and worst of all, canned spinach and hominy.

Canned spinach had the look and texture of pond scum. My parents particularly liked this dish and seasoned the spinach with vinegar and topped it with sliced hard boiled eggs. Yuk!

Canned spinich

Hominy

Hominy is some kind of corn product that is processed so that the kernels puff up into large white blobs. It turns out they are processed with some kind of lye! The taste and smell is like moldy corncobs to me!
E-w-w-w!

When I was in first grade, I was invited to spend the night with a girl in my class at school. Her mother was my Bluebird leader and I was very excited for this new adventure. Since it was my first sleepover, my mom gave me many instructions about being on my best behavior and above all, to clean my plate at dinner. To my horror, when dinner was served they had fried liver, and canned spinach, and hominy! Somehow I choked it all down and have not eaten any of those foods since!!!!!

This post is part of the StoryWorth project that I am participating in.
At the ButchieBoy main page click the “StoryWorth” category to see the rest of the entries.