I need these. Need. Them.
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This is a good point, and itâs also worth noting that ALL kids are somewhat âsuper tastersâ compared to adults; itâs been shown that their tastebuds are much more sensitive, especially the bitter-detecting ones. Foods adults have no problems with (liver, coffee, eggs, celery) are terribly nasty for a lot of kids. Unfortunately, that means that it can take awhile for them to try foods again after bad experiences when they were small. I know that it took me until college before I tried liver & onions again, and loved it. But as a kid, it was like eating nails.
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I just dislike it because itâs like trying to eat packaging. Or a tree branch.
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A lot of âpickinessâ can come from really awful experiences you never get over, like yours. My dad canât eat licorice after getting sick from it as a kid; it took me years to appreciate the flavor of peaches again after some cheap peach schnapps made me badly sick in college. I still associate cherry flavor with illness and cough syrup. And Iâm still weirdly iffy about bananas, too, because I can still vividly remember a kid in 5th grade trying to eat a whole banana in one bite on a dare, then throwing it up next to me. 30 years later, and I can still remember the smell of banana vomit when I eat the things.
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Businesses should have the following sign:
Rule #1. The customer is always right.
Rule #2. Management reserves the sole right to decide who our customer is.
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My dad still occasionally ribs me by commenting in mock-disbelief about something Iâm eating - âyou eat BRUSSELS SPROUTS? The picky kid?â I coolly point out that 1) at 42 maybe I should be exempt from being teased about stuff that happened over half my life ago, 2) my sister is STILL picky, 3) I still donât eat the (disgusting) things I most hated as a kid, and 4) HE doesnât eat brussels sprouts or asparagus or whatever it is heâs hassling me over.
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Mine too! But another thing happens when you grow up: you sometimes realize that the foods you hated as a kid were awful because they were made awful.
I grew up thinking of brussels sprouts as nasty little squishy things that tasted like bitter sulfur, because my mom just thawed frozen veggies. 20 yrs later, I was served crisp roasted brussels sprouts, and it blew my mind. Same with asparagus: it was always just blanched and served with some margarine. Now I know how to cook them.
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There are some people who wonât read that sign, or even the sign for the restaurant. I was in an Indian vegetarian place in the Bay area (Mountain View, IIRC). The sign outside had the words âIndian vegetarian restaurantâ on it. I saw a woman walk in and declare that she was on Atkins (the meat-laden diet that was a big fad a few years ago) and couldnât have any carbs. Rather than discuss the nutritional properties of various types of carbs, the owner wisely showed her the door.
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Honestly if she really had coeliac then she probably was lactose intolerant. Its one of the symptoms of coeliac. Something about the early damage to the small intestine also knocking out the parts that process lactose.
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I donât really have any reason to disbelieve that she genuinely couldnât eat wheat or dairy, but since she had so many bizarre completely self-imposed rules about her food, it was hard to take any health claims seriously.
I would be suspect of any food issue she had. Some people use that stuff as a shield for other issues. Like eating disorders.
At the same time, there are people who second-guess other peopleâs health needs, which can get in the way of eating foods which match their health needs and donât make them sick, or get in the way of getting formulations of generic drugs which match their health needs and donât trigger vomiting.
Yes, there are those people. There are also people (including several Iâve lived with) who are consistently such over-the-top hypochondriacs or hysterics that any allergy or health claim they make is instantly suspect; people who constantly make health claims for attention that always end up to be lies. Itâs those kind of people (to get to the original topic) who drive restaurant owners nuts, because they mask being picky by hiding behind fake allergies.
Same thing for me. For years I thought I didnât like lentils, turns out I just didnât like they way my mum served them.
Same with me - see previous comment.
Reading a history of Home Economics a couple of years ago shed a great deal of light on how the women in my family (Midwest, white, middle class, college-educated, many of them Home Ec teachers) learned to absolutely slaughter vegetables and anything even faintly âethnic.â
I take great pride in the fact that now my mother phones ME to ask how to make asparagus. My uncle confessed last Christmas that he had tried and failed to replicate my brussels sprouts - âYou just halved them and put them in olive oil and then baked them, right?â âWell, uh⌠what temperature did you put them at?â âOh, about 325, right?â âEr, noooooooâŚâ
We had a little conversation about the joys of ROASTING. (Never mind that 450 is apparently what he was cooking his pork loin at, poor dried out little thingâŚ)
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Oh, lord, the professor I had in grad school (for psychology, basically) l who, invariably, went out with us to restaurants at conferences, where she requested âspinach sauteed with a little garlicâ and nothing else. Every. Single. Damn. Time. (Yes, she was insulin-dependent diabetic. She was also clearly eating disordered as fuck, and although the program I was in heavily emphasized exploring our own personal issues, plus our in-group issues with one another and the faculty, we NEVER went there with her.) (Now consider that I am engaged in the uphill battle of trying to get mental health professionals to look at their own disordered beliefs about eating, weight, and fat people in order to increase their cultural competence at working with larger-bodied people and get them to use Health at Every Size(r) instead of pretending they can cure the âobesity epidemic.â)
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I used to cut my peas into quarters and dip them in tomato sauce to disguise the taste. God, I was an annoying kid.
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That is amazing. Mushy sprouts and dry loin are the worst, but I guess if they were served together it could be passed off as an art installation.
As an aside loin cured with Prague powder, salt, and rosemary is divine. Braised or confitted of course.
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Meh, who can be bothered. Either cover it with noodles and cream-o-mushroom soup, or drop it into a jello.
#DINNER: IT IS DONE
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I like the cut of your jib, sir.
