I don’t have a lot of major food aversions or issues, but I do have a short list of food idiosyncrasies…..
1. I abhor raw onions (as anyone who has read my blog very much is well aware) but I adore cooked onions. There is a huge difference in the texture and taste. I did not discover this until my early twenties, however, and spent my childhood and teenage years picking all onions out of every cooked dish. In fact, even after I started eating cooked onions, while we were dating and early in our marriage Philip did all chopping of onions. I am sure that I have confused some restaurant employees at times by ordering burgers and sandwiches without onions but ordering onion rings as a side…..
2. I have major emotional reactions to unpleasant food experiences. Like when an aforementioned raw onion makes it into my food. Or when I don’t clean my leeks well enough and I bite into some grit. This happened exactly once and ever since I have been positively obsessive about rinsing/swishing/re-rinsing my leeks. Or when I bite into gristle in ground/processed meat. This is one of the reasons that I prefer to grind my own meat. Seriously. When these things happen, tears literally well up in my eyes. I don’t dissolve into a full-on tantrum, but sometimes I would like to.
{Grinding my own meat allows me to eliminate the possibility of gristle (and tears).}
3. I have issues with breakfast. For as long as I can remember, I have been a weird breakfast person. Unlike my husband, who eats it almost every day, I hate cereal, at least early in the morning. I can only stomach the texture of oatmeal after 8 a.m. I used to drink a smoothie every day, but I have an overactive bladder (TMI, I realize) and my smoothies were interfering with my ability to do my job. I don’t have time to cook breakfast every day (because I do love a good cooked breakfast-biscuits, gravy, pancakes, etc.). I prefer things like grilled cheese or cheese and crackers or leftover pizza. It can really be a problem when I’m in a hurry to get to work.
{This, of course, would be an example of a breakfast that I like to eat.}
4. I went through about a 15-year period where I did. Not. Eat. Eggs. Period. I was weirded out by the texture for this long period in my life, lasting from 8th-grade until my late twenties. I am totally serious.
{Seriously. Fifteen years.}
5. I still don’t like sausage. Except for breakfast sausage. The guy from Link 41 always asks me when I buy my bacon if I’d like some sausage too. I wouldn’t. I think it’s the spices….I just have never liked sausage. I feel that I need to get over this, though. I’m pretty sure I’m missing out on some good stuff.
{I do love breakfast sausage…}
6. Related to #5, I pretty much hate hot dogs. I never liked them, not even as a child. Philip loves them, and for years he had to wait for my nephews’ birthday parties to get hot dogs. A couple of years ago I randomly decided (and announced) that I was going to give them another try. I can eat them now, and even enjoy them, as long as they’re (a) good (i.e. expensive!) hot dogs; (b) charred on the grill or under the broiler; and (c) topped with all manner of condiments. I also like homemade hot dogs buns….but that’s another blog post.
{Good Dog does indeed make a good dog.}
7. I’ve mentioned it here before, but in my younger days I used to have major food tantrums. When something went wrong with something I was cooking, I would melt down. Completely. This could manifest itself in many different ways, including (but not limited to): crying, throwing kitchen tools (not at anyone, and no sharp objects!), jumping up and down, cursing, throwing food across the room, sweating, screaming. For some reason pancakes were the most tantrum-provoking food in my past. I once had this experience while icing a cake intended for a cake-decorating class. The instructor forgot to tell us to thin our icing, and the icing peeled the top layer of the cake off. Luckily, we were to ice our cake prior to the class, so I was at home. Alone. Several of the above behaviors were displayed. It was ugly. Very ugly. From time to time, food tantrums still threaten, but I can feel them coming on and calm myself down, or I tell Philip and he talks me off the ledge.
8. When I was a child, I ate things like chicken livers and frog legs. That was before I really knew what they were. I think I only tried frog legs once, but I recall liking them. As a “foodie” I feel like I should try some of these unusual foods again, but there’s a mental block and I just can’t.
9. The first time I made biscuits, they were like little hockey pucks. I rolled them too thin. Because they were so thin and I baked them for the recommended time, they were also hard. We called them biscuit cookies. Of course, now I am a biscuit-maker extraordinaire (at least in my own mind). This story always makes me laugh.
{Don’t roll those biscuits too thin!}
10. I don’t care for chocolate ice cream. Oh, I’ll eat it. And I do like it if it’s homemade. It’s pretty much the only flavor Philip ever orders when we go somewhere, but I would never order it out. To me, storebought chocolate ice cream has an off-putting flavor and the aftertaste makes me want to cry (see #2).
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