There’s a place in my world for most foods, even unpopular items such as anchovies. But not Lima beans. My dad and I had a stand-off over Lima beans once when I was six-years-old or so. He made me sit at the table until I ate the portion that had been doled out to me. I held out for at least an hour, but finally I swallowed them one by one like pills to free myself from the dinner table.
I still hate Lima beans. I also hate pickles and pickled things of any type, including sauerkraut. I actually lost weight on vacation once because I spent time in Germany, and they pickle every goddamned thing.
What food do you hate the most? Open thread!
Major Major Major Major
Capers.
Pogonip
I hate onions and mayonnaise, and if you go to a restaurant it’s hard to get away from either.
Don’t care for pickled cucumbers, either, but I like most other pickles.
Lima beans are just barely edible.
Rekster
Abalone
TXkid
Anything from a can labeled “Chef Boyardee”. Couldn’t stand it as a kid. Refuse to eat it as an adult. Do they still make that shit?
Baud
Uneaten.
trollhattan
Kale must be returned to the lava pool at Mt. Doom, whence it came.
More generally, the stinky cheeses. I don’t get it.
BTW, today’s doodle is for every budget-strapped college student and formerly budget-strapped college student.
Yatsuno
Green peppers and mayo. I can find no culinary justification for the existence of either.
Swiftfox
Liver and liverwurst. Followed closely by cilantro.
NonyNony
I love lima beans!
There aren’t many foods that I dislike (as my waistline will attest). Never understood the love that some folks have for Twinkies – they’re pretty nasty stuff IMO. Oh – and those awful Chicken and Waffles potato chips that Lays makes (made?). Just awful.
Iowa Old Lady
@trollhattan: I don’t get kale. Everyone claims it’s great and then has to go to all this effort to make it edible.
Culture of Truth
Anchovies
Botsplainer
Calf liver and/or pig liver.
The smell of it cooking makes me gag.
Bill on Capitol Hill
Lima beans are awesome!
raven
The girl bought turnips and brussel sprouts so I added new spuds and carrots and roasted them. I don’t much care for it but I made it.
BGinCHI
The only food I hate is Coors.
Otherwise it is a love affair with all things interesting and crafted and homemade.
Betty, you are missing out on well-made sauerkraut. Yummy.
gogol's wife
I hate lima beans too.
I don’t like lobster, but I’m not sure if it’s my least favorite food. Octopus is up there.
scav
water. chestnuts. I’ve some sort of freakish bloodhound’s nasal cells mutated into ultraviolet-detecting tongue cells ability to distinguish the bluuueeuushudder. Many insist they’re nearly tasteless
ETA we can work up swaps. I’ll sign up for the anchovies and capers, rather like kale so long as I get it uncooked and only really need to put certain dried fruits and brains on the swap table otherwise. And Apricots, any form.
Punchy
Wont eat raw tomatoes, olives, or jalapenoes. Mexy restys hate me.
Waldo
Anything on Andrew Zimmern’s grocery list.
FridayNext
Liver-n-onions.
And my mom loves liver and onions. We had the same standoff over liver when I was a kid.
@Botsplainer: got there first. and the smell. Seriously. When my mom cooked it, the stench wafted all the way to school and I knew it was coming from my house.
raven
@NonyNony: My bride has a spiritual relationship with fresh butter beans and maters. She loves them so much I can make them nearly every night during the season and she’s happy as a clam.
BGinCHI
Mayo haters? Get off my fucking lawn.
For those who, rightly, love this princely condiment, you will know who makes the best:
Duke’s (Richmond, VA)
Sadly not available in the midwest….
Roger Moore
@NonyNony:
Yeah, the really heavily processed foods can get really nasty. My big personal dislike along those lines is mass produced bread. Wonder and its ilk are just awful.
bemused
I’m totally with you on lima beans and pickled anything. Can’t even bear the smell of pickled anything.
Gin & Tonic
@Iowa Old Lady: I make a good chourico/kale/white bean soup. The kale provides a nice textural balance.
There are plenty of foodstuffs that I wouldn’t miss if they went extinct, but very few that I find really revolting. But Chinese preserved plums make the short list.
Neddy Merrill
Gonads, especially with Lima beans. Also, too, brains.
gogol's wife
And that picture of the spam and limas is really making my stomach turn. What a flavor combo, not to mention how it looks.
jl
Lima beans can be inedible slop for delicious. Depends on how you cook them.
For me there is one hard rule: out of the can and heated = inedible.
I simply cannot eat liver or kidney or tripe.
Josie
Liver. I had a similar experience to your lima bean story, but it happened more than once. My mother thought liver was good for you, so we had it fairly often. I had to put butter on it to get it down and even then I was close to gagging. I swore I would never make my kids eat anything and I didn’t. They are all grown and healthy and eat a good variety of foods.
Pee Cee
I’m fine with lima beans. I’m even fine with Spam.
But not together.
And put me down in the “liver is disgusting” camp…
gogol's wife
My mother’s fried beef liver or chicken livers were sublime. But she’s no longer with us, and I never eat them now, for some reason.
Amir Khalid
Petai grosses me out. So do fermented (i.e. partly putrefied) fish sauces like budu and cencalok. I think I once saw Joe Rogan make American contestants on Fear Factor try cencalok. I’m perfectly okay with belacan, though.
jl
@jl:
Meant to type: ‘Lima beans can be inedible slop or delicious.’
Messages that I cannot edit my own comment, and disappearing comment incidents have been increasing lately, at least from my end.
gene108
Mango pickle is the king of all pickles..yummy…
Chinese hot mustard…gah…the stuff is good for clearing sinuses but otherwise awful…
Gin & Tonic
@raven: A fresh tomato in August, warm from the afternoon sun, is close to ironclad proof that there is a God.
dedc79
Even the faintest scent of broccoli soup is enough to make me start to dry heave.
Most grilled vegetable sandwiches (and I say this is as someone whose diet is mostly vegetarian). Particularly ones that are cold and oily with big slabs of flavorless and tough eggplant.
raven
@jl:
Well I was buffaloed in Buffalo
And I was entertained in Houston
New York, yew nork, you got to choose one
Cause it’s a tripe face boogie
Going to boogie my sneakers away –
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WprmCj42aC0
Roger Moore
@Amir Khalid:
Which side do you take in the durian dispute?
Mike E
@BGinCHI: Heh, we’re awash in Duke’s (& Dookies) but my store brand is cheaper and just as good…now Miracle Whip, I’m gonna cut somebody!!1! Boo!
gene108
@dedc79:
Agree 100%
eemom
Anything made with sesame oil. eeeeyeeeeew
jl
@Amir Khalid: Those fermented fish and shrimps sauces and miscellaneous gunks can be great or horrific, depending on how they are used, from my experience.
Some Filipino dishes seem designed to bring out the worst aspect of the fermented fish sauce or shrimp paste, and I pass on those.
Which reminds me of another no-go: Balut, and all its SE Asian equivalents.
jl
@Roger Moore:
Durian RULES!!!!
Edit: I was waiting for durian to come up on this thread.
BGinCHI
@gogol’s wife: I love liver. The best, if you can get it, is rabbit. Chicken is great too as long as it’s a good chicken and not some freak from a factory.
Amir Khalid
While we’re talking about food, some related news.
Jay C
Betty, I think you’ve nailed it with the lima beans: virtually the only veg I can’t abide: and I even like brussels sprouts!
raven
@Gin & Tonic: My bride liked this pic so much she had it framed for her office.
BGinCHI
@Mike E: Fuck Miracle Whip.
/figuratively
Ps. Send me some Duke’s or the puppy gets it.
Elie
I like or will eat almost anything. I like food. Mostly, its icky when poorly prepared, I find. Betty, I bet if you mashed up and seasoned those lima beans and mixed with seasoned pasta and toasted bread crumbs and prosciutto, you would like them. That is how fava beans are treated by Italians and they aren’t too different from Lima beans.
The one thing I gag on is sea urchin. The flavor isn’t that bad but the texture is gritty and weird… I can skip it.
As I said, most food can be made to be tasty with the right treatment…
Betty Cracker
@BGinCHI: My sister and I argue about Dukes vs Hellmann’s all the time. You would be on my sister’s side.
Germy Shoemangler
Mike Myers quote: “My theory is that all of Scottish cuisine is based on a dare.”
Elizabelle
Love, love, love lima beans, and I like well prepared liver and onions. LOL to the kid who realized “it’s coming from inside the house!”
Not fond of gamy cheeses: strong feta or some goat cheeses. I do like Blue Cheese, so go figure. Very mild feta (as in, just about cream cheese) is OK.
Have to think a bit on other not favored foods, since there aren’t too many, and they’re generally easy to avoid …
(Happy we got off the Hillary thread!)
raven
I don’t dig potato chips
And I can’t take torts
Got to tripe my guacamole baby
It’s quackers and tripe my sauce
aimai
I have eaten a bunch of weird things, including a dish made from chopped chicken bones and feathers (not as bad as it sounds) but I would draw the line at the incubated baby chicks-in-eggs that the Fillipinos eat, somehow. I also dislike very yellow mustard, the cheap kind. Also some kinds of fermented soybean pastes and shrimp/fish pastes but not all.
Amir Khalid
@Roger Moore:
I used to love’em. Then, when I was about ten, I overindulged and got sick. I’ve been a bit careful with fresh durian fruit ever since. But I still enjoy eating it cooked in desserts.
MomSense
Tongue–ew it’s a texture thing.
Miki
Le Sueur Canned Peas. Gawd they’re awful.
I won that stand off w/my dear departed Dad.
Laertes
Shrimp. For god’s sake. It smells awful and tastes like the inside of a whale’s butthole.
Gin & Tonic
@Elie: If uni is gritty, then somebody has done something very seriously wrong.
srv
Liberals even hate food, news at 11.
I don’t hate any foods, but never really liked peanut butter.
BGinCHI
@Betty Cracker: You mean the right side. Noted.
Germy Shoemangler
I am a meat eater, but I am also a food hypocrite… meaning I don’t want to be reminded that I’m eating meat. I cannot tolerate chicken feet, beef tongue, calf brain, cow face (or head) pigs feet.
I remember a line from “All In The Family” someone offers Archie some ethnic food: a tongue sandwich. His reply: “I’m not eating anything that came out of an animal’s mouth! Edith, go fix me some eggs!”
Hungry Joe
Eggplant. And what I hate even more than the stuff itself is people’s reaction to my saying I hate it: “Oh, you just haven’t tried it [blank] way” and “I’ll bet you’ve eaten it without realizing it and loved it” and “Next time you come over I’ll fix it for you and change your mind” and “How long has it been since you’ve tried it?”
A friend once said people will back off if I just say I’m allergic to it. That works when my wife doesn’t rat me out. She thinks I should try it again. Because I might like it. Grrrrrr …
Elie
@BGinCHI:
I totally agree with you! Mayo is wonderful. Did y’all know if you put just a small teaspoon of mayo in your just made (homemade) vinegrette, it keeps it from separating the oil and vinegar, and doesn’t interfere with the appearance or flavor of the vinegrette. In terms of other uses, its a great hair conditioner, pre shampoo for dry hair ….(maybe too much information :-))
aimai
Oh, I’d like to give a shout out to Andouillette: to my eternal shame I urged my husband to order it in a restaurant in Paris thinking it would be like Andouille sausage. Oh.No.It.Wasn’t. It was like having a bowl of sausage shaped sewage delivered to the table.
Stella B
I had some blood sausage once. It kept trying to reverse course.
Kiwi fruit are nasty.
Mayonnaise has a strong resemblance to mucus.
Lima beans are fine.
Germy Shoemangler
@Laertes: You’re a braver man than I am if you can identify that smell. :)
Elie
@aimai:
I join you on the duck embryo thing —eeeeck!
SatanicPanic
Green tea. Fuck green tea. I hate it. It’s like drinking depression and on the odd occasions I have been persuaded to try it, my day is irrevocably ruined. I hate green tea.
Mike E
@BGinCHI: I’ll make sure burns brings you some when he comes to do yer taxes! Ask him why the Dallas Cowboys showed up for senior night…and why Christie didn’t.
philpm
Betty, I’m with you on the sauerkraut, and I’m half German. Never could stand the smell, let alone the taste.
Others for me are cauliflower, oysters, and eggplant.
Elie
@Gin & Tonic:
Its got a weird texture — maybe gritty doesn’t quite describe it, but its “porous”? something…
SatanicPanic
@Hungry Joe: I hate orange juice (mimosas I can stand…). My mom probably put some out for me every morning until I was in high school and finally asked “why do you keep putting these out? I’ve never once drank it” I remember her response being something along the lines of “oh, I never noticed”.
Betty Cracker
@Laertes: I love shrimp, but they are the cockroach of the seas….
jl
Sad to see so much hate on eggplant because it is often prepared badly.
duck-billed placelot
Slimy foods of any kind. It took a long time as an adult for me to learn that mushrooms are not necessarily a slimy food, as long as they don’t come from a can or on a cheap pizza. I still deseed tomatoes and gag a little when I do it.
I’m like @Germy Shoemangler in that I don’t want to be reminded I’m eating animals, and I won’t eat octupus or cuttlefish. Too weird to get so excited about them diving and then munch on their little corpses.
Pee Cee
@Hungry Joe:
Seems to be a love-hate food. Those who love it simply can’t fathom why others would find that particular mix of flavor and texture thoroughly disgusting.
And while we’re on the subject of disgusting texture – boiled okra: No, I wouldn’t like warm snot for dinner, but thanks anyway.
Amir Khalid
@Germy Shoemangler:
I don’t get why you Westerners are so disgusted by chicken feet. They’re not any grosser than pig’s trotters are to a pork eater. And they are washed before cooking, you know.
jeffreyw
In Viet Nam I once opened a can of ham ‘ limas (more often termed ham ‘n motherfuckers) and found only a glob of fat and some salty broth. I remember complaining that the motherfuckers were missing and they had taken the damn ham with them.
KG
Bananas. The smell alone will make me gag. When I was a kid, one day I decided I wasn’t going to eat fruits or most vegitables (exceptions were made for potatoes corn and peas and very reluctantly green beans, but otherwise, nope – though sauces and a lot of soups were ok). My mom decided to engage in creative punishments and tried to make me eat a banana or apple as punishment. They turned brown and I won. I’ve gotten better since about a lot of veggies and some fruits, I’m still pretty sure that a banana will make me puke
Hungry Joe
@SatanicPanic: How long has it been since you’ve tried it?
You just haven’t had good, fresh orange juice.
Try it again. You might like it.
jeffreyw
testing… motherfucker testing…
bemused
@philpm:
Raw cauliflower is meh, never eat it. Roasted cauliflower is great and we have that often.
Karmus
Liver. Blech. Also okra (and thus, most gumbo) and crawfish are not to my liking.
The presence of water chestnuts has ruined many an otherwise-appetizing dish for me.
I love limas, or nearly any other legume. I was from childhood allergic to peanuts, but I’ve mostly gotten over that allergy (never life-threatening). However my very mild allergy to sea crustacea has intensified, ruining lobster and shrimp for me.
Speaking of allergies, I had a bad reaction to a tiny piece of Brazil nut once when I was a kid. I haven’t ventured to try them again.
Hungry Joe
@Pee Cee: Re Okra: How long has it been since you’ve tried it?
You just haven’t had good, fresh okra.
Try it again. You might like it.
jeffreyw
in moderation for some salty language, alas
Cheap Jim, formerly Cheap Jim
After several attempts, I have given up trying to make lentils not taste like decayed flatulence. there are other legumes, and I just eat them instead.
Amir Khalid
@Stella B:
What kind of blood sausage? English black pudding? German Blutwurst? Or some other concoction of congealed pig’s blood I have mercifully not heard of?
Hungry Joe
@KG: Re bananas: How long has it been since you’ve tried one?
You just haven’t had a good, fresh banana.
Try it again. You might like it.
(This is fun. I feel like I’m getting even for all the eggplant pushing I’ve suffered.)
jeffreyw
In Viet Nam I once opened a can of ham ‘ limas (more often termed ham ‘n motherfuckers) and found only a glob of fat and some salty broth. I remember complaining that the motherfuckers were missing and they had taken the damn ham with them.
SatanicPanic
@Hungry Joe: I like screwdrivers and mimosas but not orange juice… have you tried adding alcohol to your eggplant?
Elie
@Betty Cracker:
Well so are crabs and lobsters (I call them “sea bugs”) — Love them to pieces and suck all their little nooks and cranies — ahem, with appropriate butter sauce …
Karmus
@Betty Cracker:
This, yep. Although I don’t love them. I used to like them. Never the mud bugs, though. I have eaten them, years ago, and now I almost gag remembering it.
Elie
@SatanicPanic:
LOL — what could it hurt?
Elizabelle
@aimai:
You win the thread. Gag.
Pee Cee
@SatanicPanic:
Why not just dispense with the eggplant and have the alcohol instead?
Germy Shoemangler
@Amir Khalid: I’m sure they taste fine, it’s the way they look. I won’t eat pigs feet either. It’s too much of a reminder that I’m eating something that used to walk around. As I said, I’m a food hypocrite.
KG
@Hungry Joe: you’re missing the point: the smell is enough to make me sick. Like “I have to leave the room until you finish that”. Trying one isn’t going to work because I can’t get past the smell.
Amir Khalid
@Betty Cracker:
Which do you like better, shrimp or prawns?
Elie
@Cheap Jim, formerly Cheap Jim:
Frankly, its the texture with lentils for me… like gloppy buggers. Also, many do not season them well at all… nothing worse than unseasoned snotty lentils
Gin & Tonic
@Amir Khalid: You probably haven’t tried the Eastern European “kyshka” or “kishka”, which mixes the blood with, generally, buckwheat. The word “kyshka” is actually the word for intestine in Russian/Ukrainian/Belarusian, as well as for the dish.
SatanicPanic
@Pee Cee: Sure, that’s great too, but I’m trying to help out Hungry Joe with his dislike of eggplant
Elmo
Wow, you guys. There’s nothing I hate so much that I won’t eat it. Nothing.
Most of my food dislikes have more to do with texture than taste, but I don’t care for strongly fishy tastes like oysters and mussels. I don’t much like salmon. But of course I’ll eat it if it’s put in front of me!
Betty Cracker
@Elie: There’s something about shrimps’ busy little legs and antennae that are very roach-like. One time I had to clean a 50-gallon drum of them (my dad was / is a fisherman), and I had lots of time to think about it. I’ll still eat ’em — shrimp is the fruit of the sea!
Hungry Joe
@KG: No, I didn’t miss the point — I was trying to be funny. Which apparently I wasn’t. Still, you should give okra another try. You might like it.
Still not funny, right?
Mike E
I was genuinely surprised to like the only banana and mayo sandwich I had many years ago… expectation really does color reality.
MattF
Nobody’s mentioned cilantro. To me, a non-food flavor. Also, pretty generally, any canned vegetable.
ETA: Except tomatoes!
Amir Khalid
@Gin & Tonic:
If it’s made with pig’s blood, I will probably never try it.
Germy Shoemangler
@Betty Cracker: I love shrimp, but after watching this I may have trouble in the future:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUe78awZMT0
Elie
@Elmo:
I hear you… other than the prohibitive balut (duck embryo), which I don’t think I could put in my mouth, I can swing with a lot of stuff, though some I might have to work with a little.
tazj
@Hungry Joe: I have a sister who says the same thing to me about eggplant. “You just haven’t had it prepared the right way or maybe it just was a large bitter one.” She also tries to argue with me over my refusal to eat fruitcake at Christmas, “But, I use really expensive ingredients not like other fruitcakes.” No, I just really don’t care for fruitcake, but I don’t hate it like I hate eggplant or lima beans.
I really hate lima beans or any kind of lentil. Which is really bad because they are very healthy for you, and I think I would have better luck at becoming a vegetarian.
My parents would make me sit at the dinner table if I refused to eat certain things but I was such a picky eater and so stubborn I could usually out sit them. I soon learned that in a family of seven kids it was just easier to put the detested food in my napkin than to have to fight over it.
Hungry Joe
@SatanicPanic: A W.C.Fields story: Someone handed him a drink — a screwdriver. He took a sip, then demanded, “Who put orange juice in my orange juice?”
Violet
Liver. My body rejects it. Comes right back up.
mkd
Different strokes, folks. Husband loves peaches in any fashion but I reject them because 1) as a child in a low income, many kiddo household, they came from cans disgustingly sweet and 2) even as an adult, the fuzz on fruit thing wigs me out, even peeled I sense that lurking presence of the fuzz, so peaches and kiwis etc are a no go. Husband’s daughter of German and Norwegian ancestry despises all things cabbage, cooked or un, and/ or saurkraut, which means no saurkraut and pork at our family New Years day dinner, which is a travesty for me and her father. (We keep our own stash back at our house). Once made coleslaw for a family picnic and her young daughters came into the house and cried to their Pap, “what is that awful smell??” I feel sorry for these peculiarities.;) Husband, OTOH, cannot abide curry or coconut in any form, which leaves me sifting through the cookie recipes carefully, and no curry dishes at dinner -as I am English in ancestry this is a wholesale rejection of my identity. Ours is a marriage of egg shell walking (or eating as the case may be)
xenos
Had traditional choucroute garni for lunch yesterday, with the kimmel seeds and the peppercorns and the sausages… close to a religious experience for me.
What won’t I eat? Maybe Catford. Ate milk bones on a dare once, and it was not too bad.
Timurid
Any squash other than pumpkin or butternut. Zucchini and yellow squash… especially boiled… have no flavor and an awful, spongy texture. It’s like eating foam rubber. There’s no point in serving it as a main dish… the only way I can tolerate it is when it’s prepared like tofu… that is, heavily seasoned or used as a neutral base for other flavors/ingredients.
Gin & Tonic
@Amir Khalid: Your loss, of course.
The recipe listed here calls for pig’s blood, pork fat, bacon and pork meat as the first four ingredients, so I’m guessing that’s a stumbling block. I’m also guessing there aren’t very many Polish delis in KL to buy ready-made.
dexwood
Jell-o. Fucking hate the stuff. Once, while hospitalized and restricted to a liquid diet, they kept bringing me Jell-o which I refused to eat. Kept requesting they stop bringing it. The last time they brought it, I threw it against a wall. A very satisfying splat and Jello-o trail resulted. As I said, that was the last time they brought it to me.
rk
Olives. They taste like rotting wood, alcohol of any kind (makes me gag), Feta cheese (smells like throw up)
gene108
@jl:
I couldn’t stand eggplant growing up the way my mom prepared it.
Then I saw cooking shows and other ways to make it and I tried different ways to prepare and I can eat it now. I’m not an eggplant lover, but the way it’s made makes a difference.
Belafon
When i was five, my parents put brussels sprouts on my plate. They said I got up screaming, ran to a corner, and refused to return to the table until they proved to me they were removed from my plate.
mai naem mobile
Okra. Disgusting slimy stuff. Also, bittermelon.
Amir Khalid
@Gin & Tonic:
I suppose I’d be willing to try that stuff once someone has figured out how to make pigs halal.
AliceBlue
That picture looks like it came from a book called “The Gallery of Regrettable Food” that I got for Christmas one year. It’s pictures and recipes from 50’s and 60’s cookbooks with hilarious commentary. Here’s a typical drink recipe:
SHERRY CREAM: To 1 can condensed cream-of-chicken soup, diluted as label directs, add 1/4 cup sherry. Heat and serve with a sprinkling of chives.
Elie
@Betty Cracker:
No, I get the similarities. That said, them, the other sea bugs and other related crustaceans don’t slow me up one jot. I could also probably do real bugs if they were roasted and appropriately seasoned. I can tolerate some slime and gamy flavor but seasoning is everything. I love jellyfish that I have at Chinese restaurants. It is not slimy, but crunchy and very delicious with vinegar sauce and cucumbers….
Germy Shoemangler
@Hungry Joe: I heard the story differently. He always had a thermos on the movie set, filled with vodka. His contract forbade him to imbibe during filming, so he told everyone it was orange juice.
One day his director played a prank on him, and switched him to a thermos full of actual orange juice. He spat it out and yelled “Who put orange juice in my orange juice??”
Cacti
Pretty much anything that features animal entrails, skin, or feet in an identifiable form.
scav
@mai naem mobile: The really knobbly bittermelon or the smoother chinese (?) version (I’m assuming karela). For some reason, I really want to attempt those — almost for stage presence alone. How astringent are they?
Mike in NC
Hate green peas in any form. If I ever order fried rice, I pick them out.
Germy Shoemangler
There is a scene in “Oldboy” (the original release) where the actor eats a live octopus. It wriggles while he eats it.
The actor actually did it. No movie magic involved.
I’ll eat fried calamari, but that’s the extent of it.
PurpleGirl
I grew up in a meat-and-potatoes house. My father wanted steak, hamburger, etc., with corn, peas or carrots as the vegetable. On Sundays we’d sometimes have roast beef, brisket or roast chicken. Tomato went with sandwiches (baloney, ham); no cheese. There was a lot I never tried because my mother didn’t cook it. I remember friends by the food they introduced me to. College brought me Chinese and Mexican food. One boyfriend introduced me to Greek. Shrimp, tuna came through other friends.
As a child, I didn’t/couldn’t eat cooked cheese. One aunt tried to force me to eat lasagne and I became nauseated. Until my late teens I didn’t eat piazza. Another my Aunt to force on me was grape leaves; the ones she prepared were so oily I could swallow the concoction.
So there aren’t things I hate but things I prefer not to eat based on method of preparation or smell.
I do like sweetbreads (yes, I know what they are). The smell of tripe, OTOH, is beyond description.
Betty Cracker
@Hungry Joe: He is also alleged to have said, “Who is the rascal who stole the cork from my lunch?” Or so I read on a cork once.
Shana
Milk. Took years to realize I’m just lactose-intolerant. It just wasn’t a thing in the mid to late 60s. My mother would give me a glass of orange juice and a glass of milk at breakfast for years and it made me nauseaus. I figured that the OJ was curdling the milk which was why I didn’t like it. Live and learn.
wrb
I like Spam and I like limas.
Looks like dinner!
Amir Khalid
@Germy Shoemangler:
There’s an episode of The X-Files where Scully is offered a jar of live insects to snack from. When they shot the scene, Gillian Anderson picked out an insect and ate it for reals.
mai naem mobile
@scav: The knobbly darker green karela. You have to cook them with sugar or molasses – something sweet and you still don’t get rid of the bitter taste. You can do a dryish curry with onions.
Cacti
@Shana:
In my case, I didn’t become lactose intolerant until I was in my teens. I guess something about adolescence made my body stop producing the milk digesting enzyme.
So I still love the taste of milk, cream, and butter, but all of them do terrible things to me. Butter is probably the worst of the 3.
But how are you supposed to eat crab legs without drawn butter? First world problems, I know.
Josie
@aimai: That sounds similar to the Mexican dishes tripas and menudo, neither of which I am fond of. I do, however, like barbacoa, which is the meat from the cow’s head cooked until it shreds.
piratedan
cooked spinach….although I hear that it’s great as a construction filler.
wrb
Hates:
Cilantro
Tripe (In Europe, I usually try to order the dish with the most weird stuff in it- I remember an amazing dish with gizzards in a town south of Bescacon
-, but tripe… I can’t
scav
@mai naem mobile: I’m still somehow tempted. I’ve chewed on kola and like curries so . . . . they are just so pricklyknobby vegetablehedgehoggy . . .
KG
@Hungry Joe: actually really like fried okra. Which probably has as much to do with the fried as anything. Saw your parenthetical comment after I posted
Amir Khalid
There’s a Chinese or Japanese dish I’ve heard tell of that sounds gruesome. It involves cutting the flesh off a live fish at the table, in front of the diners, and then serving it raw with condiments. I hope it’s an urban legend.
Germy Shoemangler
@Amir Khalid: She’s great! I’ve always been a fan. And insects are actually a good protein source, but there is the “ICK!” factor unfortunately. Farm-raised crickets are good mashed up into a meal with spices.
Svensker
@aimai:
Had the same thing — thought it would be like New Orleans andouille. Heh. Gag. Just the smell.
jonas
@AliceBlue: That’s by Jim Lileks, a wingnutty former columnist for the Minneapolis Strib. Won’t read his politics, but the food website is pretty frickin’ hilarious. He is a good writer.
Svensker
@scav:
Bittermelon/karela tastes like poisoned crunchy aluminum.
jonas
I used to not eat a lot of the stuff people here are whining about, but then I grew up and learned that if things like eggplant, zucchini, and squid are cooked right, it’s usually really good.
Except for liver and hard-boiled eggs. Also once at a dim sum place, I tried those deep fried chicken feet. Those were wrong on so many levels.
Pogonip
Does anyone remember Cup-A-Soup? That stuff was really gross. I believe it was made by the Lipton company. Oddly enough, their regular chicken noodle in the big packet wasn’t bad as long as you either diluted it more than the directions said or put in something else, leftover vegs or meat. Made strictly according to directions it would leave you thirsty the rest of the day.
I lived on that for the first couple of days after I had my tonsils out. The hot salt water was much more soothing than ice cream.
Pee Cee
@Amir Khalid:
Sounds a little like this: http://www.chinapost.com.tw/taiwan/114508.htm
PurpleGirl
@Cacti: Well, these days you could get a drug that you take before hand to handle the dairy product. I have a friend who can’t have dairy but for certain things, she will take this drug and it’s okay to eat. But she doesn’t do it too often. I think it’s prescription but I’m not sure.
gelfling545
Family dinner conversation a couple of Sundays ago included a passage about how lima beans were never intended to be a food for humans. My son in law whose mother had apparently made succotash a mainstay of the family diet regaled us with tales of being kept at the table for hours (probably less that one but seemed like years, I guess) until he had eaten his lima beans. Naturally, last Sunday I made succotash (cranberry beans & corn with minced onion, minced celery, a bit of olive oil & a dash of hot sauce). He loved it. Proof, yet again, that lima beans are a menace to civilization and people should be exposed to the more tasty beans.
Roger Moore
@Amir Khalid:
Not an urban legend. I’ve actually seen the somewhat similar “dancing shrimp”, which involve shrimp killed so recently that they’re still wiggling when they reach the table. I guess any food that’s so fresh it’s still moving under its own power would probably go on my “do not eat” list.
Germy Shoemangler
@Pogonip: Yes I remember cup-a-soup! A week’s worth of sodium. And it’s still being sold. Probably not the original formula, though.
Off topic, but why is there no pork cat food? Our cat goes nuts if she sees us eating ham or pork, why don’t the cat food companies offer “hammy flavor” or “pork yum” to cats? I can understand them not marketing mouse heads, because it’s not palatable to humans.
Eric U.
I liked lima beans when i was a kid. Takes all kinds.
Abo gato
Our household is a pretty much eat anything place. Husband however draws the line at liver which I do like. I made some homemade spam last year and it was good, but I doubt I’d eat the stuff in the can. Okra is awesome if you roast them whole drizzled with olive oil. No snot. Lima beans are oddly one of our son’s favorites. Eggplant also rocks when roasted. We ate percebes in Madrid last year and they tasted just like the sea. Wonderful. All the food in Spain is good with me.
Villago Delenda Est
Betty, you and I must be related somehow, because I LOATHE lima beans.
kindness
My Ma used to buy Velveta for us. Wonder Bread too. I liked it. I no longer like it but back then I thought it was great stuff.
Mike E
@Germy Shoemangler: ‘Survivorman’ Les Stroud did a stint in the Outback where he ate better (& more) than nearly every other episode…yabbies (crayfish) and witchetty worms (moth grubs) made him full and happy. Well, full for him is a relative term since he’s staving off starvation the whole series.
trollhattan
@aimai:
For the love of gawd what (other than the utter lack of actual food) would possess anybody to eat feathers and bone fragments? Luckily, once one considers exactly how bad it sounds there’s plenty of bad left over to work with.
How about dryer-lint calzone?
DivF
I’m surprised nobody has mentioned natto.
Tinare
Lima Beans and Liver are about the only foods I absolutely will not eat. I’ve never tried Haggis though, and I have a feeling that could make the list.
scav
@Svensker: Astringent I can handle, and possibly just maybe poisoned crunchy aluminum, especially when delivered by pimply hedgehog cucumber mutant, but not not if it’s like the siren warning shriek of a metal fork on a TV Dinner metal thingy. No.
Amir Khalid
@Germy Shoemangler:
Maybe pork is too expensive to make pet food with.
Citizen_X
Chinese-style bean pies. That’s about the only thing I don’t like.
ETA: Duke’s mayo is awesome.
trollhattan
@Tinare:
IMHO one simply acknowledges haggis exists and moves along without ever seeking it. I understand a Robbie Burns supper is a possible reason to end the embargo, but have never been thus invited.
Just One More Canuck
I’m with you on pickles, Betty. My wife’s family is German and the smell of rotkohl (pickled red cabbage) and the cucumber salad they make makes my daughter and I gag
Mike E
@trollhattan: Haggis is mostly grains…aside from the organs and membrane.
PurpleGirl
@scav: “TV dinners” don’t come in metal trays anymore. Almost all processed frozen dinners come in plastic trays.
David in NY
I had a friend who wouldn’t eat anything green. When he was a kid, his father said he couldn’t leave the table until he ate his (green) vegetable, and sometime after midnight his father gave up and sent him to bed. And when I knew him he was about 20 and still didn’t eat anything green.
So parents — don’t pick fights you can’t win. In fact, don’t pick fights, especially about food. Think about it — nobody forces a grownup to eat food she can’t stand; it would be bizarre if they tried. Why would we treat kids worse than we treat grownups?
[And anyway as they get older kids’ tastes change anyway — squash made me want to barf when I was a kid, and now I like it, go figure.]
Randy P
@jonas: I’ve had the chicken foot dim sum. It was interesting. I wouldn’t go out of my way to order them again, but if I was out for dim sum I would have them.
Agree about lima beans. Yuck.
Hate liver, all forms of liver. My parents were fond of something called braunschweiger, which I think is the same as liverwurst, which was just awful.
Somebody mentioned tripe. I don’t normally eat it, but I really love the Vietnamese soup called pho, and when I am in a pho place I always go for the one with all the weird cow parts that I would never eat in any other dish, like “tripe” and “soft tendon”.
We were in Munich about a year ago. At a little cafe there was an item called “Wurst salad” on the menu. I asked the proprietress in my pidgin German if that was a green salad with wurst on it. No, she replied, it’s “[answer I couldn’t understand]”. I decided what the heck, it’s wurst, let’s see what comes.
What came was this huge pile of wurst sliced up and mixed with cabbage. Must have been six sausages on that plate. Now that’s good eating!
If I spent much time in Bavaria I would gain 100 pounds in no time. It hits all the things I love most but that are really bad for me: sausages, potatoes, wonderful beer. And let’s not even mention desserts like “eiscaffee” and “strudel”. And I love the pickled stuff. Only thing I haven’t figured out is what “quark” is and what you do with it. It seems to be a variant of ricotta cheese, typically in a big bowl on the buffet table.
WaterGirl
@Germy Shoemangler: My dog eats “pork & peas” dry dog food because he’s allergic to so many other things.
Edit: yes, he can’t even eat the classic foods for pets with allergies -he’s allergic to both lamb and rice.
Roger Moore
@Amir Khalid:
I think this is it. As I understand it, most pet food is made from older animals that were never raised for human food. Chicken is retired laying hens, “lamb” is actually from wool or milk sheep, beef is from milk cows, etc. Since we raise pigs only for human consumption, we slaughter them when they’re still young, and we don’t have enough left over animals that are considered unfit for human food to make them a sensible source of pet food.
beltane
There is no bad food, there is only badly prepared food. Most RealAmerican processed crap falls into the badly prepared category, with Pop Tarts being an exception to this rule.
Anne Laurie
Like you, BettyC, I went on a hunger strike at the age of six against my “inedible” food — which happened to be “fish”. But I did it during a family vacation to coastal Connecticut, and my father (who loved seafood) decided that I would not eat until I ate at least a mouthful of the vile stuff. Twenty-four hours later, I passed out during a tourist tour of some boat, landed in the water, and had to be fished out by a Coast Guardsman. For the rest of the vacation, I ate macaroni & cheese while my aggravated dad let me (& everyone within earshot) know exactly what I was missing…
Over the next dozen years (till I left for college in the midwest), I’d be bribed or coerced into “just tasting” almost every variety of saltwater sea life — from shark to elvers. When all else fails — say, I’m stuck at a seafood restaurant for a business luncheon — I’ll eat scallops, clam chowder, or tuna salad. None of which are particularly strongly flavored, all of which can be disguised by butter/cream/mayonnaise.
My particular UGH food is shrimp. One little sea-cockroach can spoil an entire pot of wonton soup or batch of spring rolls for me, because they’re so strongly flavored. Thank goddess, over the last forty years, the proliferation of seafood allergies has meant that even hole-in-the-wall Chinese restaurants have stopped using leftover shrimp in their dumpling stuffings!
trollhattan
@Mike E:
“Sheeps lights” I kanna do, no matter how much oatmeal it’s spattered amongst.
Heliopause
Disgusted to the point of literal nausea: eggs.
Strong loathing: coffee, mayonnaise, anything based on sour cream or yogurt, anything with lots of vinegar, pineapple.
Hated as a kid but am barely tolerant of now: tomato.
Plus a fairly lengthy list of things I don’t much care for or can’t eat for digestive reasons.
My poor mother.
David in NY
@Miki: Why would anyone choose to eat canned peas? Frozen are actually palatable (though perhaps a tiny bit different than fresh, but only a little).
trollhattan
@David in NY:
Have a nephew who will still not eat vegetable one, and perhaps fruit as well, and is now college-age. I suspect he doesn’t need to sit on the can more than twice a week.
beltane
I’ve eaten tripe in Latin restaurants that absolutely delicious. However, I can also imagine it being disgusting in the wrong hands. The same can be said for lots of things.
Scamp Dog
@Amir Khalid: I’m not disgusted by them, it’s just that there’s next to nothing on it, and that little bit is difficult to get to. What’s the point, exactly?
terry
The most disgusting food on earth is canned asparagus. Followed by canned peas.
Hungry Joe
@David in NY: Good advice. Once when my daughter was little I was telling her she had to finish the peas on her plate when it occurred to me that when I became a father I was not suddenly endowed with the gift of knowing exactly how much food a child should eat. It wasn’t as if I’d measured the peas, or COUNTED them, and correlated the figure to her age and weight — I’d just put some on her plate and told her to eat them. After that I (pretty much) backed off.
Roger Moore
@Tinare:
If you don’t like liver, you’re not going to like haggis, since liver is an important ingredient. I had it at a very Scottish wedding reception, and it was fine provided you like liver.
JaneE
I dislike lima beans, and hard boiled eggs, but the only food I cannot hold down is a cooked beet. Raw, I can tolerate in small doses, like a salad garnish, but cooked will come back up. I don’t know if it is psychological, or what, but about every 20 years I will try one again, usually to be polite to the cook, and I haven’t managed to keep one down yet. There are too many other things I do enjoy to waste time on the few I don’t.
Anne Laurie
@Roger Moore:
My old man taught me “If you can slide the entire loaf under a door without damaging it, it’s not worth eating.”
trollhattan
@JaneE:
Won’t suggest “try again” but the beets around when I was a kid always tasted like the dirt they were grown in, thus were loathed, while today they’re a completely changed item–mild and sometimes amazingly sweet. I especially like the yellow varieties.
snetzky
Pork brains.
Randy P
@Amir Khalid: I’m a very dedicated pork eater but I’ve never had pig feet, nor do I intend to. However as I said above, I’ve had chicken feet and they were OK, but the experience was distinctly odd.
Why? I don’t know. I had the same reaction to frog legs, which were quite delicious but were very hard to eat since they look so much like what they are. Perhaps that’s what it is, we want our food disguised. My wife detests the kind of barbecues where you see a whole pig, face and all. But then she’s not fond of pork, period.
I’m a pretty adventurous eater, but when I was eating a Salvadoran beef soup called “mondongo” and the waiter informed me that the starchy “vegetable” was actually a hoof, I found I couldn’t finish it.
And yet, and yet… in Maryland, there is a very popular dish called “soft crab”. It is the Maryland blue crab just after molting its shell, You eat the entire crab, legs and all. The experience is very much like eating a large insect. But EVERYBODY loves it.
Maybe there’s a sociological paper in this aversion somewhere.
scav
@PurpleGirl: !! Have they made the theoretically easier second step to putting something resembling actual food in the little plastic compartments yet? Have the green beans attained something other than that olive green watery rubber consistency? Somehow I doubt it — that’s scheduled long after the hover cars with unicorn horns, galactic Aquarian peace and lion-lamb dating app future.
Anne Laurie
@Amir Khalid: Ugh, garum! Thai restaurants are problematic for me — here in the US they seem to put ‘fish sauce’ in everything, including the dishes labelled vegetarian & vegan. My tolerance for spicy foods have degraded considerably after forty years of living with a super-taster, but I can still taste the ugh-fish-flavor even under the Thai chilis, thanksbutnothanks!
(And, yes, I can eat worcester sauce — at least the US commercial brands, which don’t contain enough anchovy to trip my taste buds.)
Gemina13
I was a really sickly toddler–born prematurely, then developed an umbilical hernia and pneumonia at 18 months, followed by a UTI six months after that. My brothers fed me sweets and fast food to try to fatten me up, but when I choked on Jell-O (a piece that was tough and rubbery), I decided to stop eating food. My mother panicked and bought jars of Gerber’s Baby Slop to feed me so I wouldn’t starve.
The first jar she opened was peaches, and my lifelong love of peaches arose from what was in that little jar. I’m not sure what was going into Gerber’s in the ’70s, but the peaches tasted like sweet summer in a glass.
And then Mom opened up the jar with pureed liver, and tried to get me to swallow a spoonful. I vomited the minute the smell hit my nose. Mercifully, she never tried to make me try it again.
I did start eating again, but there are some foods I can’t stomach: nuts (too gritty to swallow); any organ meat; any fat, gristle, or connective tissue: brains (tried pig brains once, and they tasted like damp shoe liners); okra; Jell-O; and sharp or moldy (blue) cheeses. And definitely not live *anything.* I remember watching a show on PBS that featured diners devouring live fish; my brother, sitting beside me, muttered, “Shows you how depraved we are as a species when we eat another creature alive, not because we’re starving or don’t have the tools to cook it, but for a culinary thrill.”
Hungry Joe
The World of Food is unimaginably different from the way it was when I was growing up in the Midwest in the ’50s and SoCal in the ’60s. When we moved to San Diego County none of us would touch Mexican food — we’d never seen it before; it was too strange — and there was at most a small handful of Chinese restaurants (featuring chicken chow mein and moo goo gai pan!) in the whole county. That was pretty much it for “exotic” food. Even pizza joints were fairly rare, except maybe in Little Italy. Most of the veggies we ate were canned or frozen. It was a wasteland, I tell you, and we didn’t even know it.
Major Major Major Major
@Germy Shoemangler: I presume the thread’s dead, baby, but I must correct you. That’s a preparation of a recently killed octopus where the I believe vinegar sauce is sufficient to activate ion channels in its muscles that cause it to writhe.
ETA: Wow, we’re still at it haha
Bill Arnold
@Abo gato:
Last (and first) trip to Spain, a hotel had a big wheel of cheese with bacon in it. I wondered if it was inspired by the Expulsion/Inquisition – eat this cheese to prove that you are not a Jew or Muslim.
Spouse and I both refuse to eat octopus or squid, though they taste OK.
I won’t eat anything slimy. Also, no meat, though this is philosophical. Personal rule is nothing killed for food that has a nervous system that could support consciousness; mammals or birds is current shortlist.
There are several most-disgusting-foods-in-the-world lists online for those who believe that they would eat anything. (They are probably wrong.)
PIGL
@Botsplainer: one thing upon which we can agree.
Major Major Major Major
@Major Major Major Major: I must correct myself. The preparation I’m referring to is used to mimic a live octopus, which some consider a delicacy; according to promotional materials, an actual live octopus was used in the filming. Four, actually.
I’ve had the ‘fake’ version, it’s… deeply unsettling.
scav
@Major Major Major Major: It’s no doubt the vinegar in an otherwise dead thread. Obviously.
SFAW
@Amir Khalid:
Nothin’ wrong with Blutwurst. Certainly better than that crap the Frogs peddle.
Gemina13
Mom was a good cook, but she liked simple, meat-and-potatoes meals. I love new, exotic recipes, and I will try anything once as long as it doesn’t make me gag or choke. However, I will not eat raw tomatoes (even the sun-ripened, fresh off the vine specimens). As George Carlin said, they look like they’re in the larval stage, and they taste bitter. Seed and cook the motherfuckers, and then I’ll eat them.
SFAW
@Major Major Major Major:
Thread dead? It’s two bleedin’ hours old! Is this ADD/ADHD Central or something?
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
I’ll speak up for the picky eaters of the world — since I verge on being a supertaster, there are a lot of things on the bitter end of the scale that I just can’t stand. Especially cruciferous veggies like broccoli and cauliflower.
And now that I’ve found out that I’m sensitive to FODMAPs, I feel even more justified in avoiding them, because most of the cruciferous veggies are also high in FODMAPs.
rk
@trollhattan:
I know a teen who has not eaten anything other than peanut butter jelly sandwiches (white bread only), milk and an assortment of juices all his life. I don’t know how he survives, but he does. Parents have completely given up on trying to get him to eat anything else.
Germy Shoemangler
@Major Major Major Major: I believe they said a prayer for the octopus. And rightly so.
I remember seeing “The Faces Of Death” back in the ’80s, and there is a sequence where diners consume monkey brains, freshly killed and warm. The monkey’s head is kept in a vise, the skull is sawed open.
When I saw it I said “no monkey for me!”
Major Major Major Major
@SFAW: Open threads usually die with whatever the next thread is, unless I suppose they’re as captivating as this one…
Anne Laurie
@Amir Khalid:
Tell you a (not) secret, most of us dedicated Western meat eaters are lazy & don’t really care to work that hard for the edible bits. Thus, both fried chicken (eaten out of hand, no utensils) & chicken ‘nuggets’ or ‘tenders’. I don’t particularly care for poultry, but I’ll eat it in Chinese restaurants, where the cook has reduced the bird bits into chewable components that I don’t have to dissect at the table!
Germy Shoemangler
@rk: I remember the kliban cartoon: “Robert lived in Vermont, where he ate only the heads off chocolate bunnies”
http://www.gocomics.com/kliban/2012/03/30
Major Major Major Major
@Germy Shoemangler: Technically they said prayers for the octopodes.
This is my favorite fun fact. That’s the technically proper plural of octopus. Pronounced awk-TOP-uh-dees.
My Classical education is very rarely useful, I jump at these opportunities…
Bystander
Soft shell crabs have the tissue differentiation of a cockroach. Ick.
Just had Italian style chicken livers at Lydia Bastianich’s restaurant in NYC. (Fortunato Nicotra is the chef.). Heaven. Sauteed livers and a pate…I could make that dinner. But, luckily, we followed up with venison.
I also happen to like kale but Jim Gaffigan does a hilarious take.
Germy Shoemangler
@Major Major Major Major: And all this time I thought it was octopussies
I saw footage of one of them escaping a glass chamber. Displayed an unsettling degree of intelligence.
Just One More Canuck
@Germy Shoemangler: the culinary equivalent of “hold my beer and watch this”
Germy Shoemangler
@Bystander: Whatever happened to Lydia’s legal troubles? There was a big story about her keeping an employee from Italy without paying her. I assume it was settled out of court.
Svensker
See, lima beans are tricky. If they are cooked badly, they are little bullets that pull all the moisture out of your mouth — like my mom used to make. But if you cook them low and slow in plenty of water with enough salt, then drain when they’re soft and silky and douse them in good olive oil and lots of fresh ground pepper, they are succulent and luscious. They are good like that plain, but also yummy tossed with some pasta with a shower of fresh cheese, more olive oil and pepper.
Major Major Major Major
@Germy Shoemangler: Oh they’re very smart. They’re lucky I don’t care for their texture. It’s like eating rubber.
I remember this one story about an aquarium where exotic fish kept disappearing at night. Eventually they put up cameras to catch the thief and it turned out there was this octopus that would escape its tank, crawl around, eat an exotic fish, and crawl back.
MelissaM
Not sure of BGinCHI is still reading this, but here in the good ol’ midwest (central IL) we can get Duke’s at the Schnuck’s grocery stores, which is a St. Louis chain. I’ve switched my allegiance from Hellman’s to Duke’s.
PurpleGirl
@Anne Laurie: A former boyfirend told me about the time his then mother in law to be chided him into trying a seafood stew at a Chinese restaurant. What he remembered from his childhood was that seafood made his throat/mouth itch and it didn’t taste good. His parents, smartly and luckily, never forced him to continue trying seafood. It turned out that he was strongly allergic to any seafood. At that Chinese restaurant with his future MIL, he went into anaphylactic shock, had to be taken a near-by ER. Was later told by the doctor NEVER to try seafood again as he wouldn’t even have the time to get even an Epi pen dose of medicine or get to an ER.
Just One More Canuck
@KG: my father in law is like that – hates bananas. One day he opened his big mouth and went “Ewww” when my 3 year old was eating one – she loved them up until that moment but since Grampa doesn’t like them she decided she didn’t either
Citizen Alan
@jl:
Try slowcooking them. I use canned lima beans as part of my vegetable stew crock pot recipe and they taste perfectly fine. I also have a lima beans au gratin recipe that works great with canned lima beans. I think you have to get the core temperature high enough to get the unpleasant crunchiness of canned limas out.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Major Major Major Major:
It’s only the correct plural if you’re a Latin speaker. Since it’s a Greek word, the correct plural in English is “octopuses.” (Greek “octopus” to Latin “oktopous” is how people get to “octopodes,” sez Wikipedia — they’re pluralizing the Latin translation of a Greek word, not the actual Greek word.)
However, all right-thinking people now agree that “octopi” was always incorrect.
Lectriclady
The only thing that spam/Lima bean picture is missing is a kale/beet side salad.
elspi
What the hell is wrong with you people. How is it that nobody has said beets, the nickelback of vegetables.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Major Major Major Major:
Sorry, forgot the link:
http://tinyurl.com/3lcwwnq
chopper
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
actually, ‘octopodes’ is the plural of the greek, not the latin.
shelley
In the South, aren’t lima beans called butter beans?
*******
Don’t have a lot of food hates (now if you asked me when I was eight)
Bout the only things I won’t eat is Tilapia (tasteless) and black-eyed peas (boiled celery tastes better.)
Oh, and cilantro
Major Major Major Major
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): @chopper: A Merriam-Webster editor agrees with me, but points out that it’s ridiculously pedantic: http://boingboing.net/2010/07/27/octopuses-octopi-oct.html
Personally I use ‘octopuses’ because, as she notes in that link, you’d better be prepared to give a two minute spiel every time if you use octopodes, and English loan words and neologisms don’t usually get the strong vowel treatment. Goose/geese versus Moose/moose(s), for example.
ETA: Octopi is unquestionably wrong, though. You don’t get to go Greek –> English –> Fake Latin.
jake the antisoshul soshulist
Beets are abominations. Lima beans, however, are delicious.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@chopper:
Again, only if you’re pluralizing via Latin and not Greek adapted to Engish. The Wikipedia article is pretty interesting.
I guess the truly pedantic argument to have here is whether the English word “octopus” is directly from Greek, or if it’s the Latin translation of the Greek word. But I’m not qualified for that level of etymology research.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Major Major Major Major:
Just tell people you’re using the Latin plural. They’ll either be impressed or back away slowly. ?
Major Major Major Major
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): Even in Latin it would be octopodes (tho pronounced awk-toe-PED-ace), if you transliterate “eight-foot,” since it’d be… Third declension I want to say? But the singular wouldn’t be octopus in that case, it’d be octopes.
Kathy
Oh God, Spam and Lima beans are one of the most revolting combos ever!!! The irony is that my kids and hubby love it. If I am out, that is what they have for a treat.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Major Major Major Major:
The Wikipedia article says that if it were a true Latin word, the plural would be “octopedes,” like “centipedes” or “millipedes” since the word is basically 8+foot like “centipede” is 100+foot. The perils of having a polyglot language with words we picked up from all over the place!
Major Major Major Major
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): That’s exactly what I said! ETA: OK I got the ‘e’ wrong, touche.
The Greek would be (transliterated) oktopodes if you want to get pedantic. But loan words don’t get the core vowel inflection treatment (they’re “weak nouns”), so octopuses (or possibly octopusses depending on your interpretation of the long-o-before-s-and-then-another-vowel phonetic rule) is, in the end, the most technically correct (the best kind of correct!).
But the root word plural whichever way you slice it would be octopedes or oktopodes.
Source: BA, Germanic Linguistics; six years of Latin and Greek :)
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Major Major Major Major:
The debate seems to be whether we got the word loaned from Greek or Latin. If it was from Latin, it’s “octopodes.” If we took it straight from Greek, it’s “octopuses.” I think only etymologists care enough to figure that one out, so I stick with “octopuses.”
chopper
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
no, ‘octopodes’ is pluralized from greek. plural masculine of oktopous. octopedes, with an ‘e’, would be from the latin word.
Major Major Major Major
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): If I were me, and I am…
AND I was in charge of grammar and spelling, which I’m not (you know who else tried to standardize spelling in a Germanic language?)…
I’d say it’s octopusses.
ETA: Why would it be octopuses if we took it straight from Greek? Why are you using the English plural in one case and the Latin plural in the other?
Germy Shoemangler
@Major Major Major Major:
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2015/03/octopus-turns-the-tables-on-researchers-by-snatching-their-camera-and-taking-their-picture/
Major Major Major Major
@Germy Shoemangler: Where’s burnsie? I want to know whether the octopus has the copyright for that.
SRW1
I am originally from Sauerkraut Central and I can’t stand that stuff. Also too, the thing it often came with, ie liverwurst. The thought of it makes me gag.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Major Major Major Major:
Because if we took it straight from Greek, we would apply English pluralization rules and add an “es” to the end. If it came via Latin, our weird tacked-on attempt to make English more classy by adopting Latin rules would say we have to use the Latin plural. Because English is jacked up.
Sandia Blanca
LIMA BEANS!!! And my dear Southerner friend who lovingly fixed “butter beans” for me once failed to warn me that they are, in fact, the same thing as the hated limas! Yuck! That’s the last time I ate anything of that ilk.
RSA
@mai naem mobile:
Also not a fan. The taste of okra is fine, but the texture… On a visit to New Orleans, I even tried it on pizza. Still no good.
For taste, bitter greens are my least favorite food. Mustard greens, turnip greens, whatever.
chopper
@Major Major Major Major:
if it’s a matter of saying ‘it’s a loan word, add an -es to it’ then it wouldn’t matter if it’s from the Greek, Latin, French or Sumerian for that matter.
Major Major Major Major
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): No we would do that if it came from *French*. The only Latinate words that we do that for are terms of art. Octopus, to the best of my knowledge, is not a term of art. There was never any comprehensive attempt at orthographic reform, although Dewey (he of the decimal system) did try.
Also the plural of cactus is not cacti, because it’s also Greek, god damn it.
It’s cactuses (or cactusses if I was in charge of things), because it’s a loan word.
:)
ETA: @chopper
lectriclady
@Sandia Blanca: As a life-long hater of lima beans, I was SHOCKED to learn that the canned ‘butter beans’ in my beloved Southwestern Baked Beans are in fact limas…
Major Major Major Major
@chopper: That’s exactly what we do with loan words from everything but Latin (some Latin) and also with every single neologism after like 1600. We stopped inventing strong (inflected) words after Old English, like pre-Chaucer. Again, it’s why we have goose/geese, but not moose/meese.
chopper
@Major Major Major Major:
there’s lots of Latin words ending in -us that we just add -es to when pluralizing. it’s just a stupid thing in English; we pick and choose. because when you’re talking about college apparently ‘alumni’ sounds cooler than ‘campi’.
Major Major Major Major
@chopper: I said “some Latin” :(
At the end of the day I’m a descriptivist but for some reason the octopus thing sets me off.
chopper
@Major Major Major Major:
when I was a kid my dad, a scholar of Latin and Greek, tried to convince me that ‘popeye’ was actually a plural, from ‘popus’.
WereBear
@lectriclady: I LOATHE lima beans.
But my dinner table quarantine was a cheese sandwich. You grill it, I love it. But a squishy wonderbread processed cheese slice sandwich? I sat at the first grade lunch table for the hour of lunch time, and then two more hours before they let me go. When they called my mother in to complain, she just laughed and laughed.
“I told them you wouldn’t eat it. Ever.”
And it was so.
Just Some Fuckhead
The large lima beans, commonly known as “butter beans” have a different texture and flavor than the little green ones commonly served with corn and called “succotash”. They are amazing and a meal all by themselves when prepared properly.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Anne Laurie:
I find tuna very strongly flavored. There ain’t enough mayo on the planet to cover that up.
Back when I was working very long hours and hubby was doing the cooking, he “forgot” that I hate tuna and tried to serve me a tuna casserole without telling me that’s what he’d fixed. I stopped after the first bite and suggested that the chicken he’d used was spoiled.
Roger Moore
@chopper:
I had a coworker who wasn’t a native English speaker who always pronounced they “popeyes” in Popeyes Chicken as “pope yes” rather than “pop eyes”. Now I can’t see their sign without making a joke that they’re a Catholic front group.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Major Major Major Major:
I notice you did not try to dispute my statement that English is jacked up. Case closed. ;-)
Major Major Major Major
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): At least it’s not Chinese, we have more than syntax :)
Not that that makes it any easier to learn…
Ol'Froth
Liver, but only as an entree. I like it as a spread or a sausage.
Just Some Fuckhead
Pearl onions need to be eradicated from the ecosystem.
Every couple of years I buy some tinned sardines and try to eat them because I’m convinced they should be awesome but they are always hideous. I’m just going to keep trying.
I bought some tinned smoked oysters on a whim a few weeks ago and haven’t worked up the courage to try them. I love oysters but I’m afraid the whole “tinned and sold in the dollar store” thing is going to make them awful.
chopper
@Just Some Fuckhead:
i see you’ve tried hormel’s ‘potted meat product’.
Don K
@SatanicPanic:
When I lived in Japan I had lots of green tea. Some of it was sublime, some tasted like fresh-brewed grass clippings.
I suppose about the only food I’ve tried that I really can’t stand now is Miracle Whip. When I was a kid I hated beets, carrots, and liver (which my mom loved and made fairly often). The only way i could get liver down was to douse it with lots and lots of ketchup and worcestershire. I always loved pickles, sauerkraut, brussels sprouts, and limas..Carrots had to be made with butter and brown sugar to make them more-or-less edible. There was nothing that could be done for beets. For the longest time pizza made me retch. I suppose it was because I came down with measles one day after we had pizza for dinner, and my poor 7-year-old mind connected the two events.
SFAW
I’m sure the whole Latin/Greek/fake-plural-taken-from-a-dead-or-maybe-not-dead-language debate is all very interesting, especially to people who don’t have a life outside of this joint.
But what I want to know is: what is the plural in Esperanto? Or Aramaic? Or even Tagalog? And what about Ig-pay Atin-lay?
David in NY
@Hungry Joe: The change in “American” food is almost entirely due to the loosening of immigration restrictions from places like China in the 1960’s. The “Chinese” food you were eating in the ’50’s and early ’60’s was invented by the Chinese immigrants before 1920 or so. They didn’t have much access to Chinese ingredients and after about 1929 there was an immigration quota of 200/year for all of China. A few years after that law was changed in the ’60’s, food quickly got better as immigrants spread out through the country.
Tell that to the teabaggers.
Anne Laurie
@Gin & Tonic: Kishkes were a staple at the best Jewish delis when I was growing up in the Bronx. And the line ‘Kick ‘im in the kishkes, they don’t like that!’ was a staple in Yiddish humor of the period, as filtered through Mad Magazine & Uncle Miltie. Ergo, all us little Irish & Italian Catholic savages were convinced that ‘kishke’ was Yiddish for ‘gonad’…
lectriclady
@Just Some Fuckhead: This is a good read about tinned sardines. Changed my mind. http://www.davidlebovitz.com/2015/02/rodel-sardines-french/
Major Major Major Major
@chopper: alumnus/alumni meaning a college graduate is a lot older than campus/campi meaning anything other than ‘field.’ These older inflections get entrenched in the language, and for everything else we just add s.
Don’t even get me started about graffiti.
Anne Laurie
@Amir Khalid: I guarantee, the Yiddish kishkes I grew up eating were made with beef blood, not pig. (They can also be made with goat/sheep blood, but in those days, even lamb was only available for a few weeks every spring around Passover/Easter.)
There was a custom among the blue-collar Catholic housewives of that period to use kosher butchers & delis, because we firmly believed that kosher slaughter practices were ‘more sanitary’ and meat from those sources therefore safer & tastier. I’ve heard that the Latino & Vietnamese immigrants who’ve since taken over the neighborhood I grow up in now shop at the local halal butchers, for the same reason!
Ruckus
Food to hate? Lima beans, brussel sprouts, liver, although I used to eat liverwurst sandwiches about once a year, animal organs, anything that used to be part of a face of an animal, coffee, love the smell, can’t get it past my lips.
lectriclady
@Ruckus: Interesting. I love the taste of coffee, but cannot stand the smell of the unbrewed grounds. When I was a car-sick child, I had to barf in empty coffee cans…
Ruckus
@WereBear:
Stationed two months at Long Beach Naval Station. For about a month I was a barracks master at arms and worked the noon to midnight shift. Every night we’d get a box lunch, white bread/”cheese” with mayo sandwich, a twinkie, a hard boiled egg and an apple. If you are hungry enough you’ll eat it. There were nights I wasn’t hungry enough.
Anne Laurie
@Germy Shoemangler:
A veterinarian told me it’s because all the sodium in ham is very bad for cats.
This was in the context of using ‘kitty ice cream’ — aka, strained baby-food meat glop — to tempt a sick cat to eat. The little jars of chicken, turkey, even beef were okay, but no ham.
Anne Laurie
@DivF:
Heck, even the Japanese don’t eat natto any more. There’s a trope in Japanese anime where the elderly grandparents/weird food-faddist guardian tries to force kids to eat natto, with predictable results.
Ruckus
@Hungry Joe:
Supermarket in OH, standing in line behind a woman with a bunch of turnips. The clerk didn’t know what they were and neither did the lady buying them. They were pretty astounded that a guy would know what they were and more impressed, how to cook them. Of course when I put my avocados and artichokes on the belt they really had no clue. This was in 2004.
jharp
I like anchovies and Lima beans a lot.
As a matter of fact I just took a big position on some anchovies. Love them on salads.
Anne Laurie
@WaterGirl:
Allergic-pet flavor-of-the-moment seems to be venison, usually labelled as ‘farmed’.
Back when we last had a dog who was being allergy-tested, the flavor-of-the-moment was salmon, ugh. The smell of the kibble would set me gagging, much less the canned variety.
Pogonip
@Roger Moore: Damn, we’re busted! We were going to convert the world, one drumstick at a time!
Southern Beale
I saw a Hardee’s commercial this morning where they’re selling a bacon-Velveeta patty melt and just the thought of all that fat and grease and goop made me want to vomit.
Anne Laurie
@Bill Arnold:
Cheese & bacon are both reliable methods of preserving high-fat foods from spoilage. In Spain’s climate, I’d think that putting the two together must’ve started shortly after cows & pigs were introduced to the ecosystem.
And I’m sure that all those cheese & bacon quiches were designed as a way to stretch leftovers from last year’s harvest, when combined with fresh eggs from the omnipresent chickens.
Ruckus
Once attended a Chinese wedding/reception and was told that to not be rude you had to eat at least a portion of everything presented. Twenty yrs later my ex would still not tell me what I ate for fear I’d be pissed at eating it. I’m sure there were parts of animals that I wouldn’t willingly eat but everything tasted just fine.
Don K
@Roger Moore:
Had dancing octopus (the tentacles of baby octopi cut off while they’re still alive and brought wriggling to the table) in Korea once. With a bit of hot sauce they were fantastic!
Tom
Nobody has mentioned scrapple – pig anus and cornmeal – starts yellow turns green when cooked
weavrmom
Love those tiny baby lima beans–so sweet! Cilantro ruins everything it touches. Also hate caraway, licorice, oysters, clams, limberger cheese, natto, strong fish sauces.
Love any pickle! I always keep a jar of fresh red onions sliced into rice vinegar to eat with everything, and make super-easy white (non-spicy) kimchi, which is sort of like Korean sauerkraut. Any pickle, anywhere!.
jonas
@Ruckus: I’ve noticed this too — checkout clerks (esp. the younger ones) don’t know kale from spinach, or cilantro from parsley. One had never seen brussel sprouts before.
danielx
Brussels sprouts. Couldn’t stand them as a child, still can’t, they make me gag. I went through the same thing as Ms. Cracker with my folks; they finally gave in after sitting there for two hours watching me not eat the damned Brussels sprouts and recognized that in this instance my willpower exceeded theirs. Family finally arrived at a compromise, everybody picked one food item they didn’t have to eat. For my sister it was cooked carrots; she’d pick them all out of a serving of mixed vegetables. Mom – bananas. Which was what finally allowed compromise in that she could not stand bananas and everybody else liked them. Pop – liver. Which was okay because nobody else could stand it either. He liked all the weird shit though; anchovies, sardines, braunschweiger, head cheese…like that.
Only time I ever saw him quail was when mom accidentally brought home a can of Spam and he turned bright red and then white; almost physically ill. Turned out one time he was on New Guinea and a Japanese bomb hit a ration dump a few hundred yards from his unit and he got to watch rats, roaches and critters he’d never seen before coming out of the jungle to eat first fresh and then rotten Spam (on New Guinea food rots in about five minutes) for the next couple of weeks. Could not so much as look at a can of it after that without it bringing up some very unpleasant memories…
Death Panel Truck
I fucking hate cole slaw. And Brussels sprouts. I can’t stand the smell, and they taste even worse.
I hated asparagus as a kid, but now I can’t get enough of it – steamed, grilled, pickled. Love it, love it, love it.
NotMax
Very late to thread, but what the hey.
1) Balut
2) Zucchini
3) Tequila
maurinsky
Beans. I look at them, and my brain thinks “bug”.
I used to hate pickled things, but now I love pickled things. I’d probably eat pickled beans, if they exist.
The absolute worst thing I’ve ever ingested is not a food, but I had to take a tablespoon once a week, after church. Cod Liver Oil. So I’m pretty sure I would hate cod livers.
michael talley
@raven: Tripe Face………Boogie!
mainmata
@Amir Khalid: Durian has minute amounts of potassium cyanide so if you were to eat a huge amount (impossible) you could poison yourself but substantial amounts can create a mildly hallucinagenic experience. Well documented. Tigers also really like durians so when they are ripe and you are in a forest where durian trees exist, watch where you go. :)