I admit it. I am a picky eater; and since getting married, I have expanded my preferences in vegetables to more than corn and plain lettuce. And her introduction of blue cheese to me on our honeymoon is one of the reasons Stacey and I have been married so long. Tonight, we were eating at Panera, which is a chain bake shop and restaurant, and Stacey ordered a bagel with cream cheese, which is, therefore, number one on the list of some things about food I can't explain:
1. Cream Cheese. I love making cheesecakes and eating cheesecake, but spreadable cheese, such as cream cheese or brie or that stuff that comes in little tubs or packages that can be spread on crackers, is not for human consumption, as far as I'm concerned.
2. Hash brown potatoes with ketchup. I eat French fries with ketchup, but even seeing someone putting ketchup on hash browns at breakfast makes me queasy. In fact, as far as I'm concerned, ketchup's sole purpose is a condiment for French fries. I hate ketchup on hot dogs and hamburgers, but can't explain why. Go figure. And if you put ketchup on eggs in my presence, it might be the last thing you do.
3. Peanut butter. It's a texture thing. I eat peanuts and cashew brittle and make great peanut butter cookies. I don't like touching it, either; but I will in an emergency, like if a little kid eats a spoonful and it blocks up his throat, I will stick my finger down his throat and pull the big gob of peanut butter out. I gagged, too, though.
4. Meat. Meat is not stuff that chefs and supermarkets pass off as meat, like liver or brain or other soft muscle of any species or any vegetable matter that is purported to be or taste like or resemble meat.
5. Hot dogs. This is an exception to Number 4, except that they can't be made from turkey or chicken or vegetable matter. Hot dogs are beef or pork and beef, but let's not describe them in more detail than that, but remember the ketchup thing.
6. Vinegar on French fries. I cannot even bring myself to try this abhorrent combination. And thinking about it makes my skin crawl.
7. Sour cream. Think about it. If someone with a wicked imagination and hatred for the human race told you to add a vial of bacteria to cream and eat it when it goes bad, would you do it? Would you pay for it? I was 12. I was in the hospital with a raging infection in my leg, which the doctors wanted to lop off, and which my mother told them to treat with those new-fangled types of penicillin with great success; and the nurse brought me some jello with white stuff dolloped on it. Sour fucking cream! Stacey tells me that it was probably NOT sour cream, but mayonnaise, which brings me to:
8. Mayonnaise Mayonnaise was invented for the ham sandwich, but is also okay in chicken salad and on a Whopper. Not on Jell-o.
9. Hard-boiled eggs This is a smell thing. And a texture thing. And don't try to pass off deviled eggs as anything but hard-boiled eggs. Vile.
I know there are more. Got any food things you can't explain?
Posted by Bill at February 2, 2004 08:32 PMCooked spinach, the most disgusting smelling thing on earth, raw is great on salads and as a sandwich topping instead of lettuce but cook it and dump vinegar on it and it is just vile!
Sushi, ok come on now, who in their right mind sat up one day and thought it would be a great idea to eat raw fish, barf.
Seaweed, its a friggen weed, I don't eat crabgrass either!
Headcheese, man you don't even need to know what it is to not want to eat that!
Any fruit drink that says it is 10% real fruit juice, well what the hell is the rest? Cat juice, do you have Alf working for you?
Fried okra, anything that looks like that after it has been cooked gets thrown out in my kitchen!
Sushi definitely - can never wrap my brain around why people would want to eat raw fish and I agree with you on the cream cheese. Hotdogs definitely need to be beef or pork but luckily no one here has ever come up with the idea of having any other sausage on a hotdog roll.
Posted by: Michelle at February 3, 2004 01:05 AMI'm with you all the way on ketchup and eggs. i hate ketchup anyway. I was at school with a boy who, as a baby was the first one in our area of England to be treated with penicillin. He had a problem with his legs too!
Posted by: Anji at February 3, 2004 07:54 AMAnything slimy. Tomatoes, okra, etc. Tomato sauce is fine, ketchup is fine, I can even take okra in gumbo if it's spicy enough. My grandmother used to cook okra and tomatoes to eat over rice. It's the closest I've ever come to throwing up at the table.
Posted by: TW at February 3, 2004 10:32 AMdude, i thought *I* was a picky eater. but now, i know i'm not.
my big food ick is vegetables. i just can't stand the texture of most veggies. gack!
Posted by: tj at February 3, 2004 10:44 AMThere's this phillipine ketchup-like sauce called Banana sauce - it's red and comes in a ketchup bottle. It's by the Jufran company. Great stuff, and it works on hotdogs. But not eggs. That's for tabasco or crystal hot sauce. I mean, come on.
But sushi - dang, folks, you need to get you some good sushi. I don't know who's idea it was but it is working out very nicely for me.
Posted by: dan at February 3, 2004 03:49 PMi like orange juice, but not oranges. it's a texture thing, which is why i can't take oj w/pulp. gag...
most veggies; brussel sprouts, asparagus, etc. just too bitter. again w/the texture.
i can't stand eggs. they are disgusting no matter how they are prepared. do you know how hard it is to eat breakfast at a restaurant if you don't like eggs? i would say what they remind me of but then i may be responsible for readers not eating eggs anymore either.
there are tons of others, but maybe i'll just steal your blog idea & write about it on mine.
Posted by: mike at February 4, 2004 08:38 AMI want to know which American spread the myth that sushi is raw fish. "Sashimi" is raw fish, and "sushi" refers to the seasoned rice. Sushi can have cooked fish (like broiled eel, my favorite), fake crab (California roll), or no fish product at all (kappa maki, cucumber roll). Also, seaweed contains iodine and other minerals not found in our soil. Because it's a weed, it's a great renewable resource. I see organic dandelion greens at the store...
Posted by: pink lotus at February 4, 2004 02:15 PM~simply stated, sour cream rules.~
Posted by: btezra at February 5, 2004 01:36 AMpink lotus: holy cow! i didn't know that! hmmm. might be worth a try.
Posted by: stacey at February 5, 2004 08:26 AMStacey, I know you'd like seaweed if you tasted it in my miso soup. Mmmm...
Posted by: pink lotus at February 5, 2004 04:23 PMAnything to do with tomatoes will send me in the opposite direction. When I was about 3 or 4 I was served tomato soup at a babysitter's house. I got a bloody nose and it dripped into my soup. I have never eaten it after that. The smell or sight of any kind of tomato sauce makes me very queasy.
I won't eat raisins because a classmate used to eat dead flies off the window sill cause she thought they were raisins.
Parsnips (in the carrot family) have the most suffocating smell when they are being cooked.
Milk grosses me out. Body fluids from other animals = icky.
But - I LOVE ketchup on hashbrowns. Sorry. I even used to put ketchup on my scrambled eggs when I was a kid. I don't really know why. It was gross. Sour cream is good with beef and cream cheese - I could pick up the whole brick and just start knawing around on it.
All in all, I'm am not a picky eater.
Posted by: Tuesday at February 5, 2004 05:20 PMTuesday: i don't think *i'll* ever eat raisins or tomato soup again. ewwwww.
Posted by: stacey at February 6, 2004 03:54 PMlol, sorry.
Posted by: Tuesday at February 10, 2004 12:00 PM