"gross foods" news and stories

From 500 Snacks: Bright Ideas for Entertaining (1941), Culinary Arts Institute

I'm interrupting the semi-regularly scheduled Midnight Sausage series to share molded food images and recipes from my personal collection of early-to-mid 20th century cookbooks. There will be aspic. There will be mousse. There will be various gelatins. All will be semi-solid and of debatable degrees of edibility.

Please feel free to shimmy and shake your way to the comments section to share your very own magical, masticable molds of yore.

Previously - Corned Tongue in Aspic

A while, back, I wrote a post on emotionally-based food aversions -- both my own (tuna noodle casserole), and those of loved ones (scrambled eggs, mayonnaise, garlic). Little did I know this was going to open up Pandora's icebox. More than 75,000 people weighed in on our "What food hits your yuck button?" poll, and the comments thread is at the time of this writing, 1668 strong and counting. It seems that folks have just been looking for a place to spill their long-stewing food loathings, so we've counted down the top 20, weighting them for poll votes, number of mentions in comments, and level of vitriol incurred.

Want to keep the conversation flowing? See the initial post, or hurl forth in the comments below.

AOL Food: America's Most Hated Foods

The post that started it all: Guilty Displeasures

My husband and I have similar tastes in many things like music, decor, 19th century English literature, mayonnaise brands, etc. It makes for pretty smooth sailing day to day, but there are a few notable exceptions -- namely that if given a jar and a fork, I'll gobble down marinated herring like a rabid porpoise, and the very sight of cured fish sends him swimming as far upstream as he can get.

In the interest of marital accord, I hold off my pesce-centric binges for times when he's out of town or at his office on a weekend, and I was very amused to learn that other friends of mine make the same sort of bargains with their partners. One friend has a similar anchovy pact with her husband, another's wife goes into a broccoli rabe munching frenzy when he's away for a day or two, and my very own grandfather acquiesced to my grandmother's wishes that he only eat Limburger outside of the house. His compromise? He set up a cheese-eating outpost in their backyard.

Do any of you have culinary agreements with a partner, family member or roommate due to their repulsion or yours? Are there any foods that trump the bonds of love or friendship? Share 'em in the comments below.

More on Guilty Displeasures

"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.