Why ask you to pay attention when your brain can't stand the cost?

[venta]

So, tell me about foods you don't like.

What do you mean when you say "I don't like <food>"? Let's leave aside for the moment allergies, intolerances, things that bring on funny tummies, and so on, and think just about preferences.

If asked what I don't like, my standard answer is "mushy peas". I think that's the sum total of things I really dislike so much that I couldn't, if presented with them in someone else's house, eat them to be polite. As a child, I was only allowed to dislike foods if I disliked them consistently and had definitely tried them - my chosen thing to dislike (which I was then allowed to skip at meals) was peas. Yes, I know peas are supposed to be the child-friendly vegetable. I loved cabbage. I was a perverse child[*].

These days, I have more or less made my peace with garden peas. They belong in second-tier dislikes with parsnips and venison which I will eat if given, but would never choose.

I have a third tier of things which I don't eat but don't really dislike, for example carrots. I just don't really get carrots, and since I discovered that I was sufficiently grown up to pretty much avoid a vegetable if I don't like it, I've barely bothered with them. I mean, I'll chop them up in soup, or put them in recipes that call for them, but sliced and boiled with a roast? Bah. Forget it. Glazed and roasted? A bit better, but still rather... carroty. Why would you when you could have roasted sweet potato instead?

Of late I've been buying carrots a little more often, because they're useful for making bento side-dishes. Carrots keep a reasonably long time, are cheap, are colourful and - I've discovered - can often be made not to taste like carrots. Carrot kinpira tastes mostly of sesame, and I cook it quite often.

Yesterday, I improvised a salad of grated carrot, goji berries, pumpkin seeds, walnut pieces and lime juice which turned out surprisingly nice. I didn't really expect carrot and lime juice to get on with each other to the extent they did - I think the salad may also become a regular visitor to my lunchbox in the summer. (If it sounds glamorous, then you should bear in mind that all the non-carroty foods came out of a badly-past-its-use-by Graze box. I don't keep goji berries about as standard. And in the future, I'd advise against the walnuts because they made it a little bitter overall.)

In attempt to stop bombarding you with lunch pictures, I'm planning to keep most bento-stuff on my flickr dribble (it's not a stream yet). So if you like food or photos of food, look there.

But I digress. If you say "I don't like <food>", what do you mean? Do you really, violently detest it? Do you merely not care for it that much? Do you distinguish between things you dislike but could eat if politeness required, and things you dislike so much you don't feel you could? If someone is cooking for you, do you mention dislikes to them?

One of my friends persistently foxes me with the phrase "I have to be in the mood for <food>". I can kind of understand that, for example, on a freezing cold winter day you might not be in the mood for a light salad, but she says things like "I have to be in the mood for tomatoes". I've never really properly grasped what she means by this, and thus never have any idea whether it's ok to feed her tomatoes.

[*] I'm still perverse. Just bigger.

Comments

[lanfykins.livejournal.com]

When I tell someone 'I don't like x', I mean 'I can't eat it even to be polite, and trust me, I can taste it whatever you put it in'. Things that I just wouldn't choose to eat I keep quiet about, because catering to people's different food requirements is hard enough as it is.

One of the things about carrots, by the way, is that they taste completely different raw from the way they do cooked. I wouldn't choose to eat cooked carrots, although I will put them on my plate if they are presented to me. Raw carrots, however, I virtually lived on as a child, and regarded as delicious.

[venta.livejournal.com]

I recently heard an anecdote from (I think) waylay, whereby she'd told someone she didn't eat x, and they served her a meal with x in it. Which she ate, to be polite. Afterwards, they triumphantly told her that she must like x after all... and apparently didn't believe that she could taste it, since she hadn't mentioned it.

Raw carrots are much more actively unpleasant than cooked carrots, which are merely 'bleh'. That's why I was a little surprised by how the magic lime juice made them nice :)

[marjory.livejournal.com]

The very idea of peas makes me heave. I will, hypocritically, eat wasabi peas, so I think it's a matter of texture. I think it may also be because of the grim thought association with those ghastly freezer bags of watery mixed vegetables that used to get trotted out when I was a child. As an adult, I have made my peace with carrots and have always liked sweetcorn, but I have a visceral loathing of peas down to wincing each time I type the word. The horrors get frigging everywhere.

See also baked beans. It's the too sweet sauce and the sloppiness and the gross way that the bean skins sometimes come separate which makes me shudder.

I've never quite worked out how to politely let someone know I don't like something. If I'm asked, I will mention my aversion to the p-word. If not, and they show up, I can make a good fist of appearing vaguely normal and appreciative whilst blanking the little green buggers. I'm generally the least fussy person ever when it comes to food and know how much effort it can take to plan and cook meals. Mitch's Dad, OTOH, only likes sweets, meat, fish and potatoes and feeding him is, yes, well, um. I recognise his look of virtuous concentration when he's trying to blank any of the exotic vegetables or pasta which we mercilessly serve alongside (but not touching) those meals!

[lnr]

There are one or two things I'm not a huge fan of and would pass up if given the choice, but very very few things I'd go so far as to say I don't like, and I don't think there's anything I can't eat. I'm such an unfussy eater I can't usually *remember* the things I'm not very fond of except when actually presented with them.

Mike doesn't eat bananas or mushrooms at all - to the extent it's worth mentioning when people are cooking for him. Even picking the mushrooms out isn't always enough, as they leave a mushroomy taste behind. He would much rather avoid strong cheeses (mostly blue ones) but they're usually much more optional. He isn't a big fan of courgette, aubergine or baby sweetcorn but can pick them out of things.

If someone is cooking for me I sometimes say "I eat anything" and sometimes "I eat everything" - which is similar but gives an idea of my enthusiasm :)

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

There's not much I don't eat. I have an aversion to 'gribbly things' - prawns, crab etc and I won't eat them - it's partly a textural thing and partly, well, they have exoskeletons and too many legs and that's just weird.

Taste-wise, I don't like cucumber or celery. I will use celery in cooking but absolutely cannot abide it raw as it smells and tastes terrible.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Actually, since you mention it - I also eat wasabi peas with gusto.

Which is weird, since I don't tend to bother with wasabi much when eating sushi/sashimi, either. I had an unfortunate experience with some overly wasabi'd sushi (ie it was built int, I didn't add it) a few years ago and my sinuses have advised me to avoid the stuff every since.

But wasabi peas? Bring 'em on.

[venta.livejournal.com]

I usually say "I eat everything except mushy peas", which is kind of superfluous since most people then look aghast and promise they had no intention of serving mushy peas. I have experimented with saying "I eat everything", but found people looking at me rather disbelievingly. I'm not sure I can think of more things to add to the list (peas, parsnips, venison, possibly carrots) above, only one of which I really won't eat, so I don't think I'm too fussy :)

I didn't eat mushrooms for years, not because I disliked them but because they made me really violently ill when I was little. Even a stew-with-the-mushrooms-picked-out was very bad news. I'm not sure quite when I realised they were ok - when I went to Germany (aged about 12) I remember checking I could say "Ich bin allergegisch bei Pilzen", but by the time I was at university I considered them perfectly safe (and yummy :).

[venta.livejournal.com]

I do actually like raw celery - but even more than carrots it is something which is very different raw or cooked.

[marjory.livejournal.com]

Wasabi is fearsome stuff which I don't like either.

I was trying to explain the wasabi pea-eating technique to my Mum viz. never letting the outsides touch your tongue until you've chewed unless you want to have the effect of clearing your eustachion tubes with dynamite. Yes, we have deep conversations. She went out and bought some, borked the technique and... lucky she never had a will in the first place! Poor woman.

Anyway, those don't survive for long in our house.

[the-alchemist.livejournal.com]

When I say I don't like tomato ketchup or overcooked rice, I mean that eating it is likely to make me throw up a little bit, and being near it or smelling it or thinking too hard about it might have the same effect.

I don't tend to say I don't like other things. There's a category of things which I have an immediate 'ick' reaction to, which I can control by telling myself very firmly that the flavour/texture is just new and interesting, not necessarily nasty. This includes natto, raw egg, and some kind of horseradish thing that got served to me as part of the same very expensive meal as the raw egg (as a rule I like horseradish). I think I originally had that reaction to, for example, blue cheese, but after eating it a few times the 'ick' reaction went away, so if I wanted to make a habit out of eating natto, I assume I would also get used to it quite quickly.

[lanfykins.livejournal.com]

Ooh, wasabi. Bring on the wasabi. More wasabi.

...I also know the eye-watering horror of the Wasabi Moment where you've fumbled the technique, though. I find the trick is just to avoid putting anything wasabi on the rear of your tongue before any of it's been worked off, or it goes straight up your sinuses. So my technique is to enthusiastically suck the wasabi taste off the outsides at the front of my tongue.

After half a bag of Whitworth's Wasabi Beans, I realised that the front of my tongue wasn't so much with the tasting things anymore. It took about a week for it to recover from the burning.

I would say I never did that again, but I totally did, because, well, WASABI...

[venta.livejournal.com]

Hmm. Thinks. I'm pretty sure I have a bag of wasabi sunflower seeds somewhere. Must locate them.

[erming.livejournal.com]

There are a lot of things I don't eat but that is mostly because of allergies - I used to eat most of them (and love them) they just don't love me (and since I cut them out of my diet my asthma and hayfever have virtually gone away and my skin looks a lot better than the chronically visible eczema I used to have).

I've recently made my peace with courgettes, which as a child I remember were always bitter.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Hmm.. overcooked rice is a tricky one! I mean, I don't imagine there are many occasions where someone deliberately sets out to overcook rice for you, so it's harder to be certain of avoiding it.

I wonder how many people stop at the 'ick' reaction and never bother to try to overcome it/don't even try it to see if it tastes nice. I'm still surprised by the number of adults who say "I don't like x" but admit to having never tried x, I think I expect that to be something people grow out of.

[erming.livejournal.com]

The other one I didn't like was prawns, but I think that was because of poor cooking - they had the consistency of rubber.

I've subsequently found out I was allergic to them all along (by a blood test) so cutting them out of my diet was a good thing.

[erming.livejournal.com]

It is worse to find you are allergic to something and cut it out of your diet.

Because then you have to deal with a continual stream of "But you used to eat this, I've seen you".

[quisalan.livejournal.com]

Ditto on pretty much everything above here!

The only food I would say I dislike is offal. Bad experiences with liver turned my stomach as a child and the thought of it makes me queasy and I really can taste it/identify the texture. Things I personally wouldn't choose to buy/cook I just don't mention, after all, someone often can make things much nicer because they like them and know how to cook them.

The only food that I would bring up apart from offal would be muscles because they make me violently throw up even when hidden in other meals, but that comes up under your intolerances.

And carrots are yummy. Especially raw. And dipped in humous... mmmm....

[venta.livejournal.com]

And carrots are yummy. Especially raw. And dipped in humous

Of course! That's because it makes them taste of humous, instead of carrot :)

[venta.livejournal.com]

Rule #1 of the world: absolutely no one is permitted to change anything about themselves, ever :)

[bopeepsheep.livejournal.com]

I can't bear raw carrots, no matter how they are presented, but I will cook with carrots and eat them happily at any meal. :)

I used to eat raw peas from the garden, right out of the pod, but that's the only time I have ever voluntarily eaten them. Cooked, they fall into the "yes, I can taste them even when heavily disguised" bracket for me (I do grit my teeth and bear it when they show up in pre-cooked food if I absolutely cannot pick them out, but mostly I will pick them out). I last ate half a forkful about 18m ago to demonstrate to smallclanger that trying something every now and then to see if you really dislike it or were just being picky (as he is still in that phase) and yup, confirmed 38+ years of disliking cooked peas.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Actually yes, raw peas are nicer than cooked.

I do firmly believe that I should re-try things every so often, and I don't even have a small child to set a good example for. The weird one is peanut butter, which I forgot in my list above. The logic goes like this: I like peanuts. I like peanut butter biscuits. I like the Thai chicken dish my mum makes with peanut butter in it. I like Reese's peanut butter cups.

I must like peanut butter, right?

About every 18months I convince myself that I must just have been mistaken, try some peanut butter and remember that no, it really is beyond vile.

The Reese's cups are the oddest one, because I don't even like Reese's chocolate. And the peanut butter in them is ridiculously over-sweetened, and I don't usually like very sweet things.

[bopeepsheep.livejournal.com]

If I discount things I have an actual physical reaction/response to, I'm not half as picky as certain people think I am. ;-)

I just plain don't like peas (see comment above), raw carrots, olives [which is weird, given a) heritage and b) love of olive oil, and I did go through a phase of liking them in my 20s], and mushrooms. I have a revulsion to offal which turns out is probably based in a sensible response to what happens when I eat it (TMI), and have similarly avoided pork* for years. I'm allergic to pineapple, and reactive to a fair few other things, so on the face of it I just look like a very picky eater. :(

*Gammon, bacon, and sausages are all ok though. It turns out I like the taste of properly cooked roast pork after all, but I still can't actually eat it without side-effects.

[venta.livejournal.com]

I think one of the things that contributes to an illusion of pickiness is the varied nature of things someone can't/doesn't eat.

So if you say "I'm a vegetarian who's allergic to dairy and coconut", that cuts out massive quantities of foods but sounds reasonable. If you say "I can't eat roast pork, or pineapple, or mushrooms, or olives, or offal... " then it sounds more picky even if the list is actually considerably less restrictive.

[bopeepsheep.livejournal.com]

I think it's exacerbated by Certain People's unfailing ability to provide Nightmare Meals: duck liver starter, followed by pork and mushroom casserole with peas, followed by pineapple rings and glace cherries... :)

There are tons of things I do eat, including some things other people consider strange or inedible. But yeah, it is such an unconnected list it just sounds 'picky'.

[the-alchemist.livejournal.com]

Most people I know can't [reliably] cook rice unless it's either brown rice or easy cook, so I say I only like those kinds. Though I feel I'm basically a horrible person for having this requirement in addition to the whole vgf thing.