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"I wanted to be The Girl Who Is Not Afraid To Order Tripe And In Fact It Makes Her Even Cooler And All The More Sexy Because She Enjoys It. Alas, it was not meant to be." Carol at French Laundry at Home
Hear, hear!* I don't know about you, but this sort of rationale is what made me a foodie. I was a fairly picky eater growing up. I wasn't so bad that I'd eat PB&J for every meal, but if they weren't like the usual meat-potato-veggie triumvirate, or something else I'd eat normally, I'd get testy. If you were at the Mexican restaurant about 25-years ago where a little blonde girl went nuts because her beef was shaved instead of ground, that was me.
But then I got older, moved to the big city, and shed many of my food inhibitions. I hated it when my friends gazed at me in disappointment whenever I wouldn't try anything. I couldn't say no when someone slaved over a hot stove to bring me a meal full of food I didn't like. Soon, eating became an adventure -- discovering new tastes, learning about the foods, making meals fresh and fun.
Still, there's food I recoil at. I finally got over my distaste for mushrooms, but I still can't bring myself to eat calamari. I've always had a ban on foods I couldn't look at in their full or prepared form. This might sound weird, since I find cute animals desperately tasty, but there's just something wrong with slipping something into your mouth when the mere sight of it gives you the willies.
While I keep challenging myself and try to say "never" as little as possible, there are foods on that list. After Anthony Bourdain traveled to Montreal, eyeballs were added with indelible ink, and I think now I can safely add tripe as well. Carol's account of cooked tripe tickled my gag reflexes, but it also made me laugh, a lot, because I get it. It isn't just that quote above, but the desire to like everything. It's great to be able to eat and enjoy whatever is on your plate, but we have to face the facts: We all have at least one food Achilles Heel.
What is/are yours?
*Edited thanks to Kiwi.
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5-16-2008 @10:57AM Paul said... Canned green beans. yech. Especially when put into that awful green bean casserole.
I know that's probably not what you were looking for, but I hate those.
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5-16-2008 @11:02AM Julie said... Hi Monika, I am one of those girls who eats just about everything. I grew up eating tripe, snails, sweetbreads just to name a few. My family has always had very adventurous palates and the only rule that they gave me is that I could not say I didn't like something until I at least tried it once. I usually ended up liking everything except kidneys (could not handle the urine smell). I do draw the line at putting things in my mouth that are still alive which seems to be quite trendy in China and japan.
http://noshtalgia.blogspot.com/2006/12/offal-truth.html
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5-31-2008 @1:25PM LordJezo said... I am currently on a quest for bull penis at my local asian supermarkets so I think my limits are pretty far out there.
Problem is not that I can't find it but that it's always sold out and I need to get it special ordered.
Wow.
(I am completely serious about this)
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5-16-2008 @11:34AM GL said... I'll try anything once, but there are some things a person just doesn't jive with. It's personal. I don't want to aquire a taste for things (as an adult). Lutefisk, for example. It's awful. I don't need to reach a state where my body doesn't reject it on smell. There's plenty of other food that goes down without gagging.
For the record, I think menudo isn't half bad.
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5-16-2008 @11:52AM Mikebmassey said... - Sea urchin
- Sweetbreads
- Never tried "brain", but I can't imagine I would ever would.
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5-16-2008 @1:33PM Divine Bird Jenny said... I can't eat eggplant without gagging. I know it's because years ago, my mom put the same dish in front of me for three days and I still wouldn't eat it. To this day, I hate hate hate eggplant. The only time I can manage it is if it's buried in a sauce or something--partly because it's not bad if I don't know it's there.
Oh, and yeah--eyeballs, tripe, liver, all the internal organs? Off-limits. No way no how.
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5-16-2008 @1:26PM jsr said... Well i used to try anything abroad. For just eating bisteck and fried potatos i may stay at home. But i must confess that sometimes there are things i wont try anymore (like frog legs). Sometimes its hard, like i order raw mussels in belgium, or liber brochetes on a greek restaurant at holland, but this way you may discover wondefull new tastes (like grilled octopus on greece).
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5-16-2008 @12:25PM Palonek said... You can eat just about anything as long as there is a proper balance. And at the end of the day, the amount of food eaten does matter. The more healthy foods you cosume vs the bad foods, then you should maintain good health and weight... http://palonek-edward.ca/
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5-16-2008 @12:31PM Candida said... Bugs. Anything with insects. There are a ton of other things I won't eat, either; like internal organs and such but I could never eat something with a bug in it. Ugggh. I have a hard enough time with crayfish.
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5-16-2008 @1:23PM Penn said... I would really have to think hard before eating things that are currently alive, or actively harmful.
Aside from that, I'm willing to at least try almost anything. I was raised to have at least a bite of everything served, and it's stuck... and I have found as an adult that there are things I don't mind at all that I could barely stomach as a child.
Generally, I figure what's the harm in at least tasting something?
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5-16-2008 @1:31PM Kiwi Carlisle said... I draw the line at durian. It always tastes of rotting garbage to me, which I suspect is a biochemical problem. I lack whichever enzyme allows other people to taste the sweetness that lurks under durian's famously hideous odor.
I also can't stomach sweetbreads. I really don't want to eat anything's pancreas.
That should be "hear, hear", not "here, here", by the way.
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5-16-2008 @1:33PM Monika said... Thanks, Kiwi. What an embarrassing typo!
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5-16-2008 @2:16PM kevjohn said... There's a difference between not eating something and not ORDERING it. I'd eat a lot of things that I would never order, especially if I were the one paying the bill. Sometimes when you get the chance to eat something you don't have much of a choice in the selection. The NCAA Final Four party I went to that had Cheez Whiz on crackers as its only snack selection for example. I ate the hell out of that because I was starving. But I'd never ORDER it if I had other options. Let's see, do I go with the rib eye or the cheez whiz on crackers? hmmm....
Ain't semantics fun? :)
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5-16-2008 @4:00PM LlamaFarmer said... I cannot bring myself to eat or even taste biscuits and gravy. I will typically try any food once, but this will be on my never-ever list (right next to liver). I am not sure why I have such a disdain for this dish - I guess I just have to go with it was just the way my taste buds were made.
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5-16-2008 @6:32PM badfrog said... Hate canned vegetables. Really hate liver of any kind, duck calf beef chicken foie gras whatever. Will eat most other organ meats, brain heart tongue etc. Won't eat lutefisk again even if I am drunk and my Russian friends encourage me. Will never try insects but love snails seafood barnacles octopus cuttlefish periwinkles. Love durian. I have also eaten peyote magic mushrooms morning glory seeds (yuck) and choked down half a can of nutmeg (double yuck, and did't eat nutmeg again for 20 years even on eggnog. Have eaten snake horse sea turtle and sea turtle eggs while it was still unendangered alligator.
I work with Chinese Traditional Medicine. Gecko cordyceps caterpillar fungus sex organs of many animals and other organs of many animals (crude organic steroids). I drank earthworm tea. That was very bad. Don't believe those stories about fast food restaurants serving ground earthworms instead of ground beef. Everyone would immediately notice. bitterbitterbitter. Crocodile gall bladder. Snow frog ovaries. Bird nest soup. Bitter melon. Tree ears. Lion head mushroom. Dried jellyfish salad. Giant puffball.
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5-17-2008 @12:08AM KF said... Liver and Onions is off my plate because with the enzymes I have (some of us have them, some of us don't) it just tastes incredibly bitter and sharp and, further, I just can't get behind eating a waste filtering organ. I'm also not going to try brains or sweetbreads. Or testicles.
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5-17-2008 @6:57AM Da Vid said... CILANTRO --- Nature's soapdish.
IT tastes like soap.
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5-17-2008 @10:46AM Gobo said... I've eaten everything from frog's legs (meh) to sea urchin (a grey jelly that tasted of low tide), and I make a point of trying things twice, just in case. I've tried natto twice, and it was nasty both times!
But I can't do eyeballs, and my stomach turns at eating insects, though I hear they can be very tasty.
@DaVid, I'm convinced that cilantro is one of those food items that tastes completely different depending on whether you have the enzyme/gene to eat it. For me, it's a delicious, clean, bright flavor that I love, and tastes nothing like soap at all.
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5-17-2008 @2:26PM Lzbeth said... May I recommend reading the introduction to "The Man Who Ate Everything" by Jeffrey Steingarten. He writes a fascinating explanation of all the food phobias he used to have, how he overcame them, and the ridiculousness of food phobias taken to the extreme. I haven't been the same since reading it. I didn't think of myself overly picky before hand, but now I am determined to be more open.
At the moment, I just can't stand tumeric, which makes curries very tricky. Thai curries without it is as close as I can get. Not to mention ginger in anything other than a simple ginger ale or gingerbread cookie.
And along the same lines of previous entries, most internal organs are frightening, though Haggis is lovely (when done right). My Ukrainian family always loves Headcheese but I can't bring myself to eat it. And for some reason most tomato sauces, especially marinara or cabbage roll sauce. Though now I am determined to try them again, maybe it's all in the prepartion?
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5-18-2008 @3:29AM STH said... I have a thing about spongy, slimy texture, so I rarely eat eggplant (except as baba ganouj), tofu, or gelatin. And it's not only the texture of liver that's disgusting--it's also the smell. Occasionally I cook it for my cats, but only if the weather's nice enough to open all the windows and turn on the fan.
And I don't quite get why people would force themselves to eat things that disgust them. If you're a very picky eater and you're trying to expand your horizons, sure, but the rest of us? For example, the idea of eating brains is disgusting to me (and possibly dangerous--see mad cow disease and related neurological illnesses) and there are so many wonderful things to eat in the world, so why would I force myself to try to choke it down?
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