Wednesday, May 06, 2009

Food Weirdness

Last week several of you seemed to enjoy the Love it or Hate it post. Way back in January of 2007 I also posted a Fabulously Weird and Entirely Original Food Meme, in case you're interested. Today I'll share some more of my own food related weirdness.

1. When I was a preschooler my parents let me get away with eating nothing but hot dogs and buttered noodles every night for dinner...for...a...YEAR! Now, if you know my parents this is so far outside what would be considered standard operating procedure it's inconceivable. I think it needs to be chalked up to me being the first born and them trying to be modern, liberal parents. It took them a year to realize that perhaps their dear little Lime might wind up with the arteries of an elderly heart patient before she entered kindergarten if they kept tolerating that nonsense. I think I also helped or hurt my own cause (depending upon your perspective) when I decided to stop eating the ENDS of the hot dogs because I didn't like the way they looked all pinched off and puckered. That put them over the edge and ended my hot dog diet.

2. Since I consumed my lifetime allotment of hot dogs before I went to kindergarten I really don't find them very appealing anymore but if I am going to eat one I want it grilled until the skin is black, then put some onions and ketchup on it, maybe some cheese.

3. Although I was expected to eat a wider range of food than hot dogs and buttered noodles I continued to be very picky. At one point my mother told me how when she was a girl she covered whatever food she didn't like in mashed potatoes. I thought that sounded pretty awful but said drowning offending foods in applesauce would be ok with me. Now that's not too bad to most people if you're talking about not liking pork chops or something of that ilk. I didn't like spaghetti when I was small. Yes, I'd have a pile of spaghetti, with sauce on it, covered in applesauce. I didn't like sloppy joes either so I ate the bread alone put the sauced up meat on my plate and dumped applesauce over it. Those are just 2 of the more gruesome food pictures. My mother carried a jar of the stuff wherever we went. Just so we are clear, I no longer smother a plate of food in applesauce but I do still enjoy a bowl of it. My own dear limelets are so spoiled they will only tolerate jarred applesauce if they are sick with some stomach bug. Otherwise they expect warm homemade applesauce.

4. Now we move on to the weirdnesses that have continued in my life. You know I hate mayonnaise, REALLY hate it. I do not ever put it on a sandwich. Some people have tried to convert me to the idea of using mustard or butter on sandwiches instead. No thank you. I like my sandwiches dry, unless I am having a hoagie. (No, they are not subs or heros. I grew up outside of Philadelphia. All sandwiches on long, hard rolls are h-o-a-g-i-e-s. You may call them grinders if they have been toasted in an oven. Otherwise they are hoagies. The required condiments on a hoagie are oil and vinegar.)

My grandparents tried for years to convince me of the merit of mayo, mustard, or butter. Every Sunday after church I'd have lunch with them. We had a ritual I came to regard as just an extension of the church service for them as we had our antiphonal exchange.

Girl, you want some mayonnaise for that sandwich?
No thank you.
Some mustard?
No thank you.
How about some butter?
No thank you, I like my sandwiches dry.
Girl, I don't know HOW on earth you can choke down a dry sandwich.
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost. As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, sandwich without mayo, mustard, or butter.

Then we moved on to the discussion over rice pudding with raisins. I insisted the raisins were dead flies. My grandfather insisted they were dried up boogers. In retrospect, I guess he would know since he was the one who made the rice pudding.

5. Although I find mayo repulsive I do like tuna salad. I just make mine with Italian dressing instead of mayo. I use sour cream for chicken salad. There is no way to redeem egg salad since I despise both mayo AND the yolks of hard boiled eggs. I also think egg salad looks like someone with a really bad sinus infection sneezed on a plate.

Now it's your turn to share some of your food related weirdness with me.

38 comments:

Shadow said...

go with your tastebuds girl. i'm not a mayo fan either, although i do eat it...

Polt said...

Ya know, I was gonna list some of my own quirks, but your description of egg salad made me a bit ill, and I think I need to go find some Pepto now. :)

HUGS....

(M)ary said...

mayo by itself is definitely repulsive. i never use it but like you and tuna salad, there are some dishes where the mayo can be hidden enough that i will tolerate it. i have an Uncle who is really strongly opposed to mayo. he will walk around the pot luck family reunion asking if different dishes have mayo in them.
i thought: hey dude(Uncle Dude,i mean)if you can't see the mayo,don't worry about it!

Maddy said...

I find that 'oddly' reassuring, but I'm sure you know why.

I'm with you on the mayo and all other slime. I also like tuna salad with vinigrette and lemon juice [ a few capers don't go amiss either]

Cheers

Hilary said...

Oh don't do that to my egg salad sandwich!

Chocolate potato chips. I like alternating a salty potato chip with a bite of chocolate... preferably dark. Always have. I just don't buy either one of them very often anymore.

Bijoux said...

I avoid ground beef, but I'll eat tacos if the meat is ground up very fine and strongly seasoned. I don't like ice cream (similar to your hot dog story, I probably ate too much of it as a kid), and I find everything about lemon meringue pie disgusting!

I'm also not a fan of soups/stews that have a lot of ingredients. I just don't like my foods mixed up that much.

Ananda girl said...

Peanut butter and miracle whip sandwiches. Any peanut butter will do, but only miracle whip... no mayo.
Yum. "Death on balloon bread." (I do not eat it anymore.)

Desmond Jones said...

My brother ate peanut butter sandwiches to the point of loathing them. . .

I've never much liked hot dogs (smothered in onions and deli brown mustard, tho, if I must), but I have a major jones on hamburgers (I would gladly pay you Tuesday, and all that) - ketchup & mayo (sorry; actually, I've given up the mayo), lettuce, onion, tomato & dill pickles. Oh, yeah. . .

Molly home-cans applesauce that is just so far superior to anything from a store shelf; I think she put up something like 75 qts last fall. . .

Weird food. . . hmmmmm. . . Molly used to make tabouli with our 'meatless Friday' dinners. On Saturday AM, I'd eat the leftovers, mixed with cottage cheese; is that weird enough for ya?

G-Man said...

Michelle....?
You are definately jacked up!!
Every sandwich I eat has butter on BOTH sides of the bread!!
I do believe that the hot dog overload as a child damaged your taste buds FOREVER!!
Try a BLT with no lettuce, and peanut butter and Miracle Whip!!!
YUMMY.....:-)

furiousBall said...

you like bacon tho right? i don't trust anyone that doesn't like bacon. come to think of it, my gf is a vegetarian... that whore

lime said...

shadow, i do. i do

polt, sorry if i turned your stomach.

mary, i don't like mayo but i am not quite as crazed as your uncle

maddy, i thought you might. ah, capers, good idea.

hilary, my apologies. and yes, choc covered chips can be yummy.

cocotte, since we've been eating venison for years and i vastly prefer it to beef, i find i am far less tolerant of the tallowy taste of ground beef myself.

ananda, ok, you have avenged polt and hilary now

desmond, the tabouleh could be good. as one from Pa dutch country i like cottage cheese and apple butter together. how's that grab ya?

gman, i don't HATE butter on a sandwich like i HATE mayo, i just don't prefer it that way. PB and mayo....GAG!

furiousball, mmmmm, bacon.....just had a plate of crazy cheese fries topped with bacon last night. and my favorite potato salad is made with hot bacon dressing (since i hate mayo, ya know)

Kat said...

I hate cooked veggies, but love them all raw. I can't eat cooked corn, but I LOVE corn on the cob. I don't know why. I'm very odd.

Also, I don't like it when my food touches on my plate but I DO eat a bite of steak and potatoes together. Hmmm.

Also, when I'm eating M&Ms or something like that I usually have to eat them in even numbers. Two at a time and the two have to be the same color.

Maybe I should seek help. ;)

S said...

Girl, that hot dog and noodles thing and the applesauce......wierdddddddddd! Very wierd!

I only have mayo once a year with egg salad and deviled eggs, around Easter because LR doesnt eat the eggs, she just dyes them, finds them, and then abandons them in the fridge. So every April I eat my years allotment of eggs, and mayo, that is the only way to do both.

Ok now I will share my horror of seafood with you. When I was a little kid 5-8 years old, we lived in Alaska. I went to 1-3rd grade on Kodiak Island, where seafood was a staple food item.
If we wanted fresh veggies or fruit we were out of luck, but there were plenty of gigantic king crabs, salmon, shrimp, halibuts, and we had it almost every night.

One night my dad came home with a huge clear plastic bag (33 gallons) full of shrimps starting wildly out at us from the bag. He plopped the bag on the table and said, "here's dinner!" My sister and brother and mom proceeded to shell each and every shrimp while I ran unstair screaming from that bag of little monsters.

Ever since then, I am scarred for life. I hate seafood, it hates me. If I get brave and eat it, I am rewarded with dysentery. I just cannot do it, and millions of times I have relived that clear 33 gallon bag of little pink monsters staring out at me..."help meeee! Save ussss! Pleasssseeee, we dont want to be eaten! Set us freeeee!"

OMG word veri: chinga :O

Desmond Jones said...

Mmmmmm. . . Actually, these days, my favorite Saturday AM breakfast is cottage cheese, mixed with diced apples and chopped walnuts, and covered with cinnamon. Which ain't so very different, eh?

And I'm sorry, but S above has just got me ROFL. Reminded me of the time I ate at a friend's house, who lived out in the country, and his dad ran a very small-time dairy operation. We were having steaks for dinner, and my friend's little sister asked, mid-bite, "Is this Lulubelle?" Which gave me the least bit of a pause, having never before in my life eaten anything that I thought might've had a name. . .

Anonymous said...

I am so boring, Lime. The only thing [foodwise] I will not put in my mouth is fat of any description [except really crisp crackling] and hot dogs.

In spring we have a dish called aioli, which consists of steamed white fish, preferably cod, surrounded by tiny new veg.carrots, new potaoes, young broccoli etc...the Aioli is of course garlic mayonaise...lordy my mouth is watering.

Fred said...

My favorite dish at lunch is tuna, eggs, mayonnaise, onions, and celery all mixed together.

Not so weird is my second favorite which is plum tomatoes, feta cheese, onions, and olive oil.

Anonymous said...

I cannot eat raw broccoli, I just can't. I love me some ranch but the thought of putting ranch on Broccoli is disgusting too. But I will eat steamed broccoli with mayo :) I guess our taste buds are a little different! Oh and Halo would LOVE to smother all things in mashed potatoes and gravy! ;)

Craver Vii said...

Have you ever tried Chicago hot dogs? Vienna beef, NO ketchup, poppy seed bun... it's a treat I love to eat! Sadly, it's been years since I've had one.

You're so funny. I was raised to eat everything off of my plate. Our home was intolerant of any food criticism. I hated green pepper on Mom's home-made pizza, but she always made it that way, and I always (gag) ate it. The memory is sour, but today, I like gp on the za... go figure!

As a small child, whenever I ate broccoli, I imagined that they were trees and I was a giant.

Craver Vii said...

Peanut butter is a favorite of mine, but Dudes... pb & mayo? That sounds like an abomination.

Have you ever tried an Elvis sandwich? Peanut butter, bananas and bacon on buttery grilled bread. Some people grill the bread in the bacon grease. Mmmmm... it tastes delicious, but if you sit quiet enough, you can actually hear your arteries clogging up after that!!!

Logophile said...

Limp broccoli and squishy melon are disgusting and banana is foul.
Other than that, I'm pretty flexible at this point.
I don't love regular oatmeal but steel cut works for me.
Most of my issues are texture related
BUT
I have no weirdness
:p

GAB said...

When I was younger my mom took me to the doctor and told him the only thing I would eat was macaroni with butter and milk. I over hear the doctor tell her then let her eat all of that she wants. So I started to demand that all the time till my mom made me cook it for my self. I still eat it once in awhile but not all the time like before. I DONT LIKE MAYO but I will use Mirical whip. I hate the yokes but can tolerate them in deviled eggs and egg salad sandwhiches. I dislike liver and my mom used to tell me add onions. I now HATE ONIONS as much as Liver.
I dont think Im as weird as my hubby who will eat a mashed potato sandwhich. Or puts ketchup all over eggs and hash browns. he will also eat a mirical whip sandwhich with just mirical whip nothing more. I do not like french fries but will eat them if there is BBQ sauce. My kids eat some of the things we did sometimes just adding their own veriation of what they like with it.

lime said...

kat, i do love corn on the cob and if it's really fresh i'll even eat THAT raw. i sort my m&m's the same way ;)

s, i can picture that scene very well and i can well imagine why it scarred you for life! what a hoot though. lol @ word veri!

desmond, your breakfast sounds delicious. i have in fact eaten things i knew the names of...poor wilbur...

moannie, everything sounded fantastic until you mentioned mayo.

fred, your second choice sounds yummy, the first...not so much, but if you like it great.

solitaire, now that i am grown i can see the joy of mashed spuds and gravy as a vehicle for other things

craver, i never had a chicago hot dog. i think every kid enjoys broccoli as trees. as for the elvis sammich i'd have to pass on the grounds that i am deathly allergic to bananas (true, that's nto me being picky or snarky, it's a medical fact)

logo, i am with you on the texture thing

gab, i hate liver as much as i hate mayo. i do love ketchup on hash browns though..mmmmmm

Anonymous said...

Our youngest was a consume it all (except meat) before she turned 6. Shrooms - no problem. Veggies - np. Snacks were raisins and little trees (broccoli) and were her food of choice. Then 1st grade happened and she developed the perverse taste for hot dogs and other mystery meat products. Thankfully she has mended her ways.

EmBee said...

When I was little, my grandma used to serve a salad every night with dinner, (well probably not EVERY night but EVERY dinner I can remember had this particular salad sitting just above and off to the left of the plate and fork.) The salad consisted of a lettuce bib with a pear half on top, than an ice cream scoop of cottage cheese on top of that, crowned with a maraschino cherry. While I detested cottage cheese, my grandmother thought it an important part of any diet so she gave it to me mixed with applesauce. It's STILL the only way I'll eat cottage cheese but I remember that concoction from my childhood with great fondness.

Oh, and my sandwich today consisted of a honey-wheat tortilla, smoked turkey breast, provolone, lettuce, tomato and a crowning glory of guacamole!... OLE! Guacamole trumps mayo EVERY time.
:-)

ExtraO said...

I used to be very anti-condiments of any kind but I don't know... something happened and I realized they make sandwiches taste so much better.

for a different kind of girl said...

I just gave my son buttered noodles for supper last night because some nights I just get too dang tired to deal with the food battles that can be waged at dinner. Then, when he wished for ice cream later in the night, I denied it.

I used to eat peanut butter and Miracle Whip sandwiches, but I haven't done so in years, so I don't know if I'd still be able to stomach it, and in a similar vein, we used to eat red Jello with Miracle Whip on top like whipped cream, but again, I've not had it in years. That doesn't mean my love for Miracle Whip has waned much, though!

Ananda girl said...

One of my current favorite sandwiches is a mustard and dill pickle sandwich. Miracle Whip and just tomato is excellent too.

But honestly folk... it has to be peanut butter and MiracleWhip... never mayo! That's a gagger!

misticblu said...

LOL! Thank goodness i don't plan on eating egg salad again until next Easter. :)

~Dragonfly~* said...

Don't know why... but it is my latest craving... I just made up a salad the other night... just chopped it all up and threw it together and I'm tellin' ya... it tastes awesome... so refreshing...

Watermelon + cucumbers + tomatoes!!

The sugar in the watermelon cuts the acidity in the tomatoes and brings out the flavor of the cucumbers and makes them sweet!!!

Commander Zaius said...

I also think egg salad looks like someone with a really bad sinus infection sneezed on a plate.

My wife does as well, although it has been a comfort food for me since I was a kid. Two egg salad sandwiches and a can of tomato soup can correct the worst of days.

As far as mayo by itself is concerned I guess if you and your ever get down my way banana sandwiches smothered in mayo is out of the question? Its an old favorite of my families although I admit I never acquired the taste.

Anonymous said...

Butter on a sandwich? That's disgusting. I may have to do a food weirdness post sometime, because too many to list here.

Jazz said...

Nothing is more disgusting than butter on a sandwich.

And the only way to make a hotdog edible is to smother it in mustard (the bright yellow kind) an onions. The only way to make them good is to have veggie dogs.

Anonymous said...

dry sandwich...no can do...

Cazzie!!! said...

Wow, I bet alot of kids out there would love to have hot dogs and noodles every day.
My four kids eat anything and everything that I make them, so for that I think I am blessed.
When I was little, my younger sister (now 33yrs old) would eat sauce sandwiches every day at school. My little brother would not eat vegetables, so my mum would make veggie soup and strain it giving him the broth to dip his bread in, he would get goodness from the broth. To this day he still will not eat vegetables :(
My kids, they like their sandwiches dry, like you, and like me. Tomorrow I will be making sandwiches for the kids for school, they will have salami and fetta cheese on the bread, no butter, mayo or mustard, lol.
You were/are not alone :)

lime said...

seamus, oh the influence of less nutritionally minded folks can be so frustrating, can't it?

embee, i remember having to make that very concoction in home ec class!

dawn, if that's what floats your boat it's all good

fadkog, i just cannot wrap my mind about this PB and miracle whip concept...yeesh!

ananda, you too with the PB and MW???

misticblu, sorry if i ruined it for you

dragonfly, ya know, that sounds not half bad.

beach bum, if egg salad and tomato soup makes you happy, i'd make it for you. as already mentioned i won't partake in anything with bananas though since they tend to induce anaphylactic shock and i like not being dead.

citizen, i can't wait to see yours.

jazz, butter on a sandwich doesn't disgust me, i could tolerate it. i just wouldn't choose it if i had an option.

coopernicus, feel free t slather yours with the condiment of choice. i'll take mine dry though.

cazzie, i am glad i am not the only lover of dry sandwiches!

Jocelyn said...

Dear Sister:

Guess who else reviles mayonnaise? And can hardly choke down a hot dog now?

But you lost me on the tuna salad.

Cheesy said...

I've been known to top a hot dog in my days... sorry that's what came to mind......

:o)

airplanejayne said...

I only have the one: NO FOOD TOUCHING!!!!

-which you already knew.

Oh -- but I used to not eat the ends of hot dogs either -- because they reminded me of belly-buttons.

weird?