Food Phobias

[RevDahlia]

We already know liv despises cilantro so much that she is forced to speak about it in snarky metaphors, and that blue cheese coleslaw (and possibly blue cheese, period) makes little vm cry. What are your food prejudices, phobias, and pet hates?

Just to make this more interesting -- if you have in your posession a recipe which you think is divine enough to help another poster overcome their fear and loathing of a certain food item, please post it here.

Me, I'm easy. I will eat almost anything. I don't diet. My only allergy is a slight one to mangoes (yet another point against the existence of God.) However, there are a few exceptions to my usual acceptance of anything edible. They are:

Swiss chard. I love greens in general, and view Swiss chard as being a cruel trick. It's so sickly, so bland-yet-uncomfortably-acidic, so feeble and hostile. For awhile we were getting a weekly organic-vegetable delivery -- a very good thing for the most part, but all autumn the damn hippies who ran the delivery company would send us bale upon bale of chard. Red, white, green, chard chard chard. It fell to me to figure out a solution, and the only way I found to make chard tolerable was to boil it to within an inch of its life in a large vat of bean soup. But we got tired of soup and ended up giving all the chard to a friend's pet rabbits. The bunnies got sick. Chard, apparently, isn't good for them. Fuck chard.

Guavas are just disgusting, as is guava-flavored anything.

Whole crabs. Lump crabmeat is okay, if kinda bland; I'd much rather shrimp. But eating crabs whole? Forget that. Battering away at the poor critter's exoskeleton for hours on end, getting shards of chitin under your fingernails, wearing a stupid bib, all to extract a very few pallid shreds of bland, sodden meat? I will stick with surf'n'turf, thanks.

Anything at all from Jack in the Box (or, as my Algerian ex-boyfriend referred to it, "Jacques dans la boite".) Is it me or does everything that place makes taste like it's been lying in the sun for a few hours?

Raisins. Hate 'em. But I keep cooking with them, because they SEEM like a good idea. Raisins in carrot salad, raisins in bread pudding, raisins in couscous. I like the idea of raisins, but I wind up picking them all out even when I was the one who decided to use them in the first place. Golden raisins are even worse than regular raisins. The only time I can ever enjoy raisins is when they are embedded in a cinnamon-raisin bagel, but other than that raisins just generally suck. (I have been told that some people put raisins in brownies. These people should be sent very, very far away where they can't hoodwink the rest of us.)

[lisarea]

Dammit. I used to have a picture. It was by Chank Diesel, I think, and it said something like "New Math: Turnips = Shit"

But I can't find it. So "turnips = shit" will have to suffice. I don't even want to TALK about turnips. Or rutabagas.

[pzmyers]

I once ate whole crabs at the Maryland shore with a group of invertebrate biologists. It was wonderful. Tracking down muscle insertions on apodemes, tracing nerves back to the ganglia, and then eating them. Similarly, eating Peking duck with neuroscientists was entertaining. And hanging out at a marine station, with divers scooping up all kinds of strange molluscs and echinoderms and crustaceans and whatever other phyla were available and tossing them on a barbecue...mmmm.

I eat anything. I'm allergic to nothing. One of those formative memories that may have predisposed me to biology was my poor grandmother going out to the local slaughterhouse and returning with a bucket of, umm, leftover bits, and that was what she'd stew up. I suspect I've eaten just about every organ there is.

I even love rutabagas and turnips.

Oh, wait...I do have one food phobia. To teach me a lesson about not eating everything I find in front of my face, my mother once let me chow down on a mouthful of monosodium glutamate that I'd found in a jar in the kitchen. Never again. My umami receptors were zapped, and even now msg is one of those flavors I find highly aversive.

[pescifish]

Jack in the Box has the only good brewed black tea iced tea of all the drive-thrus. And it's open 24 hours. Doesn't matter to me what else they serve! The women at the drive through I go to after work at 1a offered to make me one of their new pannido (sp?) sandwiches for free -- it was pretty good. Otherwise, I don't think I'd put JitB at the bottom of the fast food list, but it's not at the top for me either.

Papaya is a hideous fruit.

I eat most everything, but there are some things I would just as soon stayed off my plate if I can avoid it. Like avocados. Luckily, everyone else adores them, so I foist any off on other people. I'll eat 'em if I have to, but I don't enjoy them.

I have a very low fishy tolerance. For example, I can't handle a real Caesar salad for the anchovy taste. The only fish I can tolerate is raw tuna (and occasionally tuna salad sandwich -- as long as there isn't really much tuna and there are lots of vegetables). I love tuna sashimi, though. I've managed to build up a tolerance for lobster, but that's probably more the garlic butter talking. Don't even try to convince me to try something "not fishy" -- trust me -- I wish I liked fish and I've tried and tried and tried.

Very sweet things tweek my "ick" response, too.

[Goliath]

Once when I was about 7 or 8 years old, I ate a bunch of scrambled eggs and got horribly ill...to this day, I still don't like eating eggs by themselves (eggs in things are okay though, including omelets).

Apparently, when I was a toddler, I despised ham (I don't now, though). I remember my mom telling me that sometimes she'd wake me up in the morning to find chunks of ham between my gum and bottom lip from the previous night's dinner.

On a only barely related note, when I told a friend of mine this story, he had a dream that I broke into his place and stuffed ham into his mouth while he was asleep...

Anyways, I'm also a bit leery about sushi. A few years ago, I was going xmas shopping, so I picked up some chocolate covered cherries. The SuperTarget that I went to also had a sushi bar, so I picked up some sushimi. I then had myself a meal of cherries and fish!!!

[livius drusus]

The good Rev already mentioned my profound aversion to cilantro, but since I throw metaphors around like hippies throw chard, I'm not sure she made it entirely clear just how much I loathe and despise that bastard weed.

I hate it.
I hate it.
I hate it.
I hate it.

It is a total and complete dealbreaker. As soon as I even catch a whiff of it, all eating stops. It doesn't matter if I was hungry enough to eat my own fist; my stomach acids congeal into a pre-vomitous mass of gigantic proportions.

Fucking cilantro.

Still, just to show that I'm not all about the hate, here's a recipe for lisarea. Just try it. Even if you hate it, I guarantee the ODB and LM will groove all over it.


Oven-Roasted Turnips with Squash and Shallots

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.
Place in a 13x9" baking pan and toss together:

2 lb turnips or rutabagas, peeled and cut into 3/4" chunks (I've only made this with turnips and it fucking kicks ass)
1 small butternut squash (1 1/2 lb), peeled, seeded, and cut into 3/4" chunks
12 to 18 small shallots or pearl onions, peeled (Fuck the pearl onions and go straight for the shallots; they are magical when roasted.)
3 tblsp rendered fat from roasted turkey, pork, beef or olive and vegetable oil (I used olive cause I don't exactly dig on rendered animal fat, but who knows what you've got lying around from previous experience)
1 tblsp melted butter
1 tblsp minced fresh rosemary
1/4 tsp salt
Ground black pepper to taste

Roast, stirring occasionally, until the vegetables are fork-tender (about 1 1/2 hrs).

Season with:
Salt and ground black pepper to taste
Chopped fresh parsley or snipped fresh chives (I went with chives, but flat Italian parsley would be loverly)

Easy as hell and really shockingly good.

[Lauri D]

Originally Posted by pescifish

Papaya is a hideous fruit.

Preach it, sister!

It was totally wasted on me that when we lived in PNG, our house on the hill had a papaya tree growing right outside the kitchen window, so that you could just reach out and grab a ripe fruit in the morning. But DAMN, that shit is nas-tee! With the slimy deer-pellet-seed insides... *shudder*

I eat most everything, but there are some things I would just as soon stayed off my plate if I can avoid it. Like avocados. Luckily, everyone else adores them, so I foist any off on other people. I'll eat 'em if I have to, but I don't enjoy them.

And can I get a HALLELUJAH!!!

My five are: papayas, avocado (except a spicy guacamole), crab meat by itself, liver, and cornish game hens. (On my honeymoon, I ordered a cornish game hen, but when it came I couldn't eat it because I could swear every time I came at it with my fork and knife, it squeaked "Dooon't eeeat meee!"

[Goliath]

I have a (small) category of foods that I call "force field foods"...they're things that smell so horribly repulsive that I can't get my face near enough to eat them.

The only force field foods that I've encountered so far are lutefisk and sauerkraut.

[RevDahlia]

My only force field substance is tequila. I can drink anything, in almost any quantity, and enjoy it, but for some reason the merest whiff of tequila is enough to send me lurching and retching towards the facilities. Even if I'm stone-cold sober.

There exists a thing called almendrado, almond-flavored white tequila, which I will drink the shit out of -- it's like less sweet, less girly, more dangerous, more wallop-packin' amaretto. I've only been able to find it at one dusty liquor store in north Pasadena, California, and I can't justify flying down to SoCal just to buy booze. Thass good shit, though.

[Edit: Hurrah, BevMo carries it! Now where's that credit card... ]

[Dingfod]

Onions are quite repulsive to me. I actually like onion flavor and can tolerate well cooked onions (cooked until the pieces are clear) in foods, but encountering raw or anywhere near raw onion in or on anything will still generate that old "I think I'm going to hurl." feeling. Garlic, on the other hand, I love, raw or cooked, but especially baked whole.

Mushrooms, any variety, are just too wierd texture-wise for me, also hurl-worthy. Finely chopped and well cooked in a soup or stew I can tolerate, but big chunks that I would have to chew, no fucking way, can't do it.

Raisins, if they are really dry and hard, like those in Raisin Bran, are OK, but the big fat juicy ones, forget it. And raisins cooked into anything suck. I've been known to spend 10 minutes picking all the raisins out of a cinnamon roll. Oddly enough, I like prunes and dates.

I will not eat anything that tastes like dirt smells. That eliminates a lot of root or stalky vegetables in my experience.

I cannot stand strawberries. It started with not liking the seeds on the outside of them (again a texture thing, I guess) but over the years my dislike has changed to the point where I don't even like things that are strawberry flavored or even strawberry scented. You want to turn me off, wear strawberry scented cologne and burn strawberry scented candles; it would be like garlic to a vampire.

OK, I know I'm weird.


Warren

[RevDahlia]

Onions are quite repulsive to me. I actually like onion flavor and can tolerate well cooked onions (cooked until the pieces are clear) in foods, but encountering raw or anywhere near raw onion in or on anything will still generate that old "I think I'm going to hurl." feeling.

I love onions, but large quantities of raw onions make me hurl too. I don't dislike them, but if I eat too much -- say, on a cheeseburger, say, like happened two nights ago -- they make me barf. Not because they taste bad, but because they don't agree with me for some reason.

A good way to neutralize raw onions so they don't have that effect is to chop or slice them, then submerge in ice water for at least an hour before you use them.

[Lauri D]

Originally Posted by RevDahlia

My only force field substance is tequila. I can drink anything, in almost any quantity, and enjoy it, but for some reason the merest whiff of tequila is enough to send me lurching and retching towards the facilities. Even if I'm stone-cold sober.

There's a reason they call it ta-kill-ya!

There exists a thing called almendrado, almond-flavored white tequila, which I will drink the shit out of -- it's like less sweet, less girly, more dangerous, more wallop-packin' amaretto. I've only been able to find it at one dusty liquor ...

Yeah, they have it here at the Hi-Times Wine Cellar/liquor emporium. I'll try to find it here and bring ya some!

[RevDahlia]

Originally Posted by Lauri D

Yeah, they have it here at the Hi-Times Wine Cellar/liquor emporium. I'll try to find it here and bring ya some!

WHOOHOO!

And by the way, I'm sho' glad you posted your food phobias because I was actually considering Cornish game hens as a menu item for your visit. Halibut it is!

[Lauri D]

Originally Posted by RevDahlia

WHOOHOO!

And by the way, I'm sho' glad you posted your food phobias because I was actually considering Cornish game hens as a menu item for your visit. Halibut it is!

Can't wait!! I'm already drooling in anticipation..........

[HelenM]

Originally Posted by pescifish

I have a very low fishy tolerance.

Maybe it's that natural aversion we have to eating our own species .

Many years ago I ate a whole bunch of pistachios and since then the smell/taste of them makes me feel nauseous.

Helen

[lisarea]

Originally Posted by pzmyers

Oh, wait...I do have one food phobia. To teach me a lesson about not eating everything I find in front of my face, my mother once let me chow down on a mouthful of monosodium glutamate that I'd found in a jar in the kitchen. Never again. My umami receptors were zapped, and even now msg is one of those flavors I find highly aversive.

Dude. Double dog dare, me and my sister. We each ate a heaping tablespoon full of the shit. To this day, I taste it in everything, which probably explains my unreasonable aversion to pre-spiced foods. Enough people have insinuated or outright said that my MSG aversion is an affectation that I almost started to believe it myself. People. It is so not. It tastes kind of like licking the inside of a tin can. Makes your nose feel all weird and conspicuous.

Worst MSG ever: That shit they started making a few years ago that was pasta sauce designed with extra water or something so you could cook the pasta in the oven. You know what I'm talking about? Someone once made that shit for me, and the combination of the MSG and the overcooked pasta seriously almost killed me. I was in a coma for like three weeks, and it was really touch and go there for a while. And no, it didn't make me stronger. It just made me so that I sometimes suddenly burst out into whole-body shivers and yell IGIGIGIGIGI. I totally have the PTSD of that shit.

Which reminds me: Overcooked pasta. Seriously. I love pasta, but if it's squishy, it literally nauseates me. I can't eat it at all without the gag reflex kicking in, and if I have to out of politeness or something, I will feel queasy for pretty much the rest of the day. For this reason, I figure, I have a really hard time with angel hair, which I figure must have a tiny window for proper cookededness, as well as a lot of Asian types of noodles. And I accidentally just bought like a ten-pound pack of angel hair from Costco, too. I know this has to be psychological, because it's not as though the content of the pasta changes or anything, and besides, even al dente, the outside is still cooked and I can eat it happily with no gagging or barfing. Unless there's MSG, of course.

One other thing: Dry bread gives me the hiccups, and they can last for hours and hours. Like seriously, if I miss a large enough corner of a piece of bread, or if the cream cheese on a bagel is confined to the center and I get a whole bite of bread and nothing else, I'm fucked. And I mean bad hiccups. Like they hurt. But I like dry bread aside from the excruciating hours of painful hiccups that follow.

I will try the turnip recipe, though, probably, unless the pickypants boys veto the idea. They really are pickypants, too. Little Muffin: No mushrooms or onions, EVER. ODB: No raw tomatoes, peas, or green beans, even when I call them "Extreme Fries."

[LadyShea]

I don't like anything that is supposed to taste like some kind of fruit but has no fruit in it. Banana flavored, grape flavored...you know. I like bananas, but banana flavoring doesn't taste remotely like bananas, in fact it tastes like ass. Grape flavored stuff doesn't taste like grapes at all either...I call it purple flavored.

I also am repulsed by sugary cereals and weird kids candies and drinks. Frankie loves all that kinda crap...cereals that change the color of the milk or cause some kind of film to form on the top....drinks with gobs of gelatin floating in it...pop rocks and goo and that cellophane candy/mints that coats your tongue like some kind of poison.

[pescifish]

Originally Posted by Lauri D

...
But DAMN, that shit is nas-tee! With the slimy deer-pellet-seed insides... *shudder*

Exactly!

I have a friend who will appreciate that description and will undoubtedly want to meet you based on that information alone!

Although... she thinks the glorious eggplant is pure evil, so she's somewhat suspect anyway.

[lisarea]

Originally Posted by LadyShea

I don't like anything that is supposed to taste like some kind of fruit but has no fruit in it. Banana flavored, grape flavored...you know. I like bananas, but banana flavoring doesn't taste remotely like bananas, in fact it tastes like ass. Grape flavored stuff doesn't taste like grapes at all either...I call it purple flavored.

I also am repulsed by sugary cereals and weird kids candies and drinks. Frankie loves all that kinda crap...cereals that change the color of the milk or cause some kind of film to form on the top....drinks with gobs of gelatin floating in it...pop rocks and goo and that cellophane candy/mints that coats your tongue like some kind of poison.

Yabbut, the thread title clearly says "FOOD Phobias." That shit ain't food.

Unless you are counting gummy worms. Gummy worms are made primarily of gelatin, a member of the meat group, which is an important part of a healthy diet. So gummy worms are food, see.

[One for Sorrow]

Wow...a lot of papaya haters here. I'm glad I'm not the only one to recognize that vile fruit masquerading as something I might actually want to put in my mouth as the slimy chunk of ass it is. Nasty stuff.

And shrimp. Yuck. Somewhere along the line it the flavor just started to repulse me. Sometimes I get curious, decide to eat one, and then think, "Oh yeah. That's why I hate them."

I'm not a huge fan of anything fishy, and the one time I tried sushi I had the sensation that the smell of the fresh fish section of the supermarket had been condensed, rolled in seaweed and that I was chewing on it. I suppose I'd give it another chance, and I'd probably even try papaya and shrimp again.

I'm certain that I'll never eat rabbit, though. I just love 'em too much now.

[LadyShea]

Originally Posted by lisarea

Yabbut, the thread title clearly says "FOOD Phobias." That shit ain't food.

Unless you are counting gummy worms. Gummy worms are made primarily of gelatin, a member of the meat group, which is an important part of a healthy diet. So gummy worms are food, see.

Hey, sosueme, that shit is sold as edible and contains calories so is in the "food-like-substance" category

[pzmyers]

Originally Posted by One for Sorrow

And shrimp. Yuck. Somewhere along the line it the flavor just started to repulse me. Sometimes I get curious, decide to eat one, and then think, "Oh yeah. That's why I hate them."

I raise Artemia, brine shrimp, for fish food. Every morning I have to siphon off the freshly hatched nauplii, and now and then I get a little mouthful.

I'm beginning to like it.

It's minute live wriggling shrimp in brine. At first, the flavor was a bit overwhelming, but I'm getting used to it. I've been tempted to slurp up a good mouthful and swish it around like a wine connoisseur, but I've resisted so far. I don't want to deprive the fish of their breakfast.

[Beth]

Originally Posted by pzmyers

I raise Artemia, brine shrimp, for fish food. Every morning I have to siphon off the freshly hatched nauplii, and now and then I get a little mouthful.

I'm beginning to like it.

It's minute live wriggling shrimp in brine. At first, the flavor was a bit overwhelming, but I'm getting used to it. I've been tempted to slurp up a good mouthful and swish it around like a wine connoisseur, but I've resisted so far. I don't want to deprive the fish of their breakfast.

Those poor Sea Monkeys!

[JoeP]

You people are weird. I love papaya (and paw-paw). You know you're supposed to get rid of the squishy stuff around the seeds, don't you? And I love avocado. And shrimps (we call them prawns). And sushi. And onions. And tequila. And rabbit. And liver (especially chicken livers, double-especially with a peri-peri sauce).

I hate dessicated coconut. Not because it makes me gag, just because it's unpleasant to eat and the bits stick in my teeth, prolonging the unpleasantness. The "Bounty Bar" chocolate (sold in Britain at least) is the stupidest confectionary item I know ... and the lamingtons that Aussies go wild over are just pointless.

Lisarea, I've never heard of hiccups from dry bread before, but I've also never met anyone with my hiccup reaction: chillis. Now I love spicy food and the hotter the better, but if I get a mouthful of particularly concentrated chilli (chile) I get hiccups that can last for hours. I carry on eating of course, unless kicked out of the restaurant.

[WinAce]

I can be fickle about food. There are some from years back that I hated but now enjoy; and some foods I used to enjoy (like alcohol... ) I'm well-advised not to consume for medical reasons now.

But as for something I can consistently hate with every ounce of my being... Fried. Liver. UGH! How can something from the same animal that gave us steak be so disgusting?! It just doesn't make any sense!

For the moment, unassisted, I can't think of anything else whose mere remembrance disgusts me that much. But I'm sure there are other things...

Originally Posted by One for Sorrow

Wow...a lot of papaya haters here.

Aha, there's one. And for good reason. That thing was horrendous the one and only time I bothered to taste it. The smell alone should have been a dead giveaway that I'd be sorry.

And shrimp. Yuck.

I'm okay with shrimp if properly prepared (read: smothered in so much sweet Chinese sauce the taste is effectively overriden). But yeah, on its own it's pretty nasty, too.

I'm not a huge fan of anything fishy,

I'll keep that in mind for next month.

and the one time I tried sushi I had the sensation that the smell of the fresh fish section of the supermarket had been condensed, rolled in seaweed and that I was chewing on it.

Eww. (I've never tried it.) The fact it's raw makes me wary alone, especially since I read in depth about some nasty ocean-dwelling parasites when researching that creationism spoof I wrote once. It's not like there's a shortage of other great foods to try, instead. And I like my fishies (well, except for a certain... pesky one) grilled or fried to perfection, instead.

I'm certain that I'll never eat rabbit, though.

...Must resist... bad joke... for fear of... being force-fed... fried liver...