Love It or Hate It?

Well, yesterday's post seemed to have a rather polarizing effect on readers as they expressed either revulsion or delight at the recipe for Chicken and Waffles. So I thought I'd pull this little idea out of drafts and use it today.

According to this article these are the top 10 polarizing foods. I'll add my take on it and you may feel free to offer yours.

White Chocolate
Just to eat a chunk of it doesn't really do it for me but if it's in combination with something else (especially if wrapped around some lovely dark chocolate truffle filling) it has its merits.

Cilantro
I learned it's an acceptable substitute for one of the main seasonings (which I have yet to find here in Pennsylvania) required in Trini cooking so I am all about the cilantro. Plus it's a must have for salsa.

Eggplant
Not a fan of this really. I have had some eggplant parmesan that was good but it has to be done just right.

Coconut
I absolutely despise coconut in chocolate or anything sweet like cream pies or ice cream. That said, a cold, green nut cracked open on a hot day in the tropics is a might refreshing drink and I like scooping out the jelly afterwards. I also like things made with coconut milk like hot Thai food. Basically if it goes with savory things I like it, sweet things it's gross.

Tomato
Love it. There is nothing like a home grown, fully ripe tomato sliced up and sprinkled with some black pepper...Mmmmm...slurp. Isaac find them completely revolting though (but he likes tomato sauce and marinara as long as it isn't chunky). I also know another person who won't eat them because he likens them to human flesh. How he knows what human flesh tastes like (beyond, ya know, licking someone) I really don't want to know.

Anchovies
I absolutely do not want them on pizza or even in any kind of discernible form but I do realize a proper Caesar salad requires their incorporation and I like that. Also, they are in Worcestershire sauce, which I also use. A little of these goes a long way. I only want a trace of them.

Black Licorice
Blech! Barforama! There is no context in which I like this, it's the first officially negatively polarizing food on this list as far as I am concerned. Ptooey!

Stinky Cheeses
I have come to realize different people regard different cheeses as stinky or not. I love me some good Swiss cheese. I have a pal who calls it stinky feet cheese. It never struck me as stinky. I draw the line at cheese with veins of mold running through it. Yeah, if you want to say I lack refinement that's ok by me. How in the name of all that's delicious did someone ever decide moldy cheese made in a cave full of bat shit was the height of taste? Gagalicious.

Mayonnaise
Vile, revolting congealed globs of snail trails and snot. The slime factor is just too much. I'll pass. Miracle whip isn't any better in my book. Excuse me, I need to go shave my tongue just thinking about all of this.

Bell Peppers
Love em. Raw or roasted they are good.

Beets
This is another thing I can take or leave depending upon the context. I've had them in salads and liked them. I've had them boiled beyond recognition and lived to tell the tale but would never crave them. In Pennsylvania German cooking you can find such a creature as Red Beet Eggs. The eggs are pickled along with red beets so they turn a very pretty magenta but you loose me at the point where you've pickled the eggs at all. The addition of red beets doesn't sell me any more on the concept. Oh and while we are at it....

I hate hard boiled egg yolks. Bleck. It's like eating a tray of damp chalk dust. When I was a kid my mother used to pack a hard boiled egg and a teeny weeny Morton salt shaker in my lunch for school. Every single day I ate the white very happily and threw the yolk away. All the while I envied Guy DeStefano who got Pop Tarts in his lunch. Oh, and for the record, I like the runny yolks in fried eggs, I like scrambled eggs, etc. It's just the horrid texture of a hard boiled egg yolk. If you think mixing them with mayo and mustard to make deviled eggs is going to help, you're out of your mind. Ptooey... I gotta go shave my tongue again.


I'd also add squash and okra to the list.
Personally, I love squash. Love it. Love it. There's a nice restaurant here that in the winter makes a squash cannelloni I love. When Dad took me to Philadelphia a few months ago I ordered this acorn squash roasted with apple cider that was to die for. I make stewed squash and dump it over rice and I am a very happy girl. I also make a butternut soup Diana and I fight to the death over. My Dad, on the other hand, the man who brags about the bizarre foods he has eaten on business trips to China, will not touch squash. He can drink snake blood but squash makes him gag. Go figure.

Finally, I am no fan of okra. Once again, there is the slime factor going on, and there is a certain odd aromatic quality to it that I can only deal with in limited doses. I discovered this in Trinidad because it's a component of callaloo, which is widely regarded as the national dish. Callaloo is like meatloaf in that everyone on the island makes it but everyone has their own twist on it. I found I really disliked callaloo made by the folks with a heavy hand for the okra but if the cook went easy on the okra I liked it. If it was like my friend Petal made, with some pigtail in it...mmmmm, bring it on.

And since we are talking Okra, which is a southern staple let's talk grits. I am one yankee who happens to like grits. I can't say as I have ever made them myself but I do enjoy them when I venture into Dixie. Cheese grits or grits with brown sugar and butter. It's all good. Actually, I'd even eat plain grits even though it looks like a bowl of wall paper paste and doesn't taste like much more than that. In case you're wondering, no, I was not one of those kids who ate paste in kindergarten. I thought Artie Meyers was out of his mind when he did that.