Lynn put up a list of the "10 most unloved foods":

Liver
Blue (or bleu) cheese
Eggplant
Okra
Sardines
Lima beans
Brussels Sprouts
Grits
Hard boiled eggs
Beets

I can understand how most of those are not-well-loved in general (Even though I like beets, at least as long as they're prepared in particular ways). Hard-boiled eggs puzzles me a little bit, but maybe hard-boiled eggs are so often prepared badly (either overcooked, or the yolk gets that weird gray-green coating on it) that people are turned off of them. (I like hard-boiled eggs; they make a convenient snack, and they're a good addition to a salad).

Some of those others - Brussels sprouts, liver, beets, limas - might be things people were FORCED to eat as a kid, and swore they'd never eat as an adult. (My parents were not big on the "forcing" to eat. They would suggest my brother or I "try" a couple bites of a new food but didn't press the issue if we didn't want to. And if they were having something one of us hated, we were welcome to go in the kitchen and make ourselves a peanut butter sandwich, or just eat the dishes served that we DID like).

Most things on that list are things I don't eat, or at least don't eat regularly. I don't think I've ever eaten liver or sardines. (I think I'd find sardines far too salty, and I'd be put off by the bones). And the one time I ate eggplant (in moussaka) I got really sick afterward, which makes me wonder if I have a food intolerance to eggplant like I do to carrots and celery.

I avoid blue cheese because I'm allergic to the very fungus used to produce it (I got really sick after consuming miso, which is made with another fungus to which I am allergic, so I figure it's smartest to avoid them).

And I won't touch Brussels sprouts. I'm sorry. I can't get past the smell. Maybe if they were roasted rather than boiled, but I have just too many memories of being pressed to eat "just two bites" and not being able to get them down.

The rest of the things on that list I'm OK with. Okra, I prefer in its pickled form, and if fried okra is a side dish option I'll typically pick something else, but I'm not violently opposed to it.

So maybe I need to make a list of my 10 foods I dislike the most:

1. Broccoli and all its kin (with the exception of red cabbage and cabbage salad and sauerkraut). I know, I know, these are really really good for you. And the healthists will probably tell me if I get cancer it's my own dang fault because I didn't stuff down tons of the stuff. But I cannot get past the smell. I've tried it on occasions and I just can't do it.

2. Asparagus. I know, this one is strange, but I just don't like it.

3. Mussels, oysters, whole clams: Did too many dissections in college. I find myself thinking of the gonads and livers and such inside the unfortunate little creatures and I just can't eat them. ("Clam strips," on the other hand, I can eat: it's just a single muscle out of the clam)

4. Green and red bell peppers. I think this is actually a food intolerance issue - every time I've eaten them in something I've gotten bad indigestion.

5. Mangoes. They taste like turpentine to me. Apparently they do to some people. (There are also people who hate cilantro because it tastes soapy to them. I'm not one of those but I'm not a fan of coating things with so much cilantro that it's all you taste)

6. Organ meats. Again, I think it's the ick factor here. I know, sweetbreads are probably delicious but really?the thymus of a calf?

7. Mustard. Again, I think this is something that upsets my stomach. I'm weird about it though: once in a while I will eat honey-mustard dressing on stuff, and I put the dry mustard in devilled eggs. But I don't like the mustard-on-a-sandwich thing.

8. Cucumber pickles. I like almost every other pickled vegetable, but for some reason, I don't like the "most common and original" pickle.

9. Coffee. I know, it's what America runs on. I know most people love it. But I just don't care for the taste, and it does weird things to me. I don't mind the way it smells, though.

10. Beer and other alcoholic beverages. Even before I figured out that wine gave me migraines, I never drank more than a half of a glass at a time - and that was being polite, and trying to look like a "grown up" at grown-up parties. Fermented drinks taste like something died in them to me. (And it wasn't just that people served me cheap wine....it was good wine they served, it's just my taste buds don't tolerate it). I've never drunk beer - can't get past the way it smells. (Yes, I know, that's funny, considering my two main heritages are Irish and German.)

I think I also need to make another list, of foods I hated as a child, but now like as an adult. I was a tremendously picky eater as a kid (though not as bad as one of my cousins, who, for about 2 years, would only eat pancakes, or peanut butter sandwiches, or grilled-cheese sandwiches). But I'm a lot better now as an adult, probably because as you mature, your tastes change:

1. Beans (like from dried beans). I would not touch these as a child, but now I always have a few cans on the shelf for those times when I don't have a chance to get to the grocery, or when I decide I want bean soup. And I really like the "fat free" refried beans (How they can call them "fat free" and "refried," don't ask me)

2. Sweet potatoes

3. Beets.  Never eaten them "straight," but I do like them as Harvard beets or pickled beets. One of these days I'm going to try them cold, cut up, in a salad, because I've read that's good.

4. Salad. Yup, wouldn't eat it as a kid. Salad of ANY kind. I was the little kid who always asked to substitute cottage cheese or applesauce at the restaurant

5. Mashed potatoes. Yeah, for some strange reason I didn't like these - and lots of kids are "supposed" to.

6. Tea. That was our pediatrician's home-remedy for upset stomach - weak, cool tea. I couldn't stand tea as a kid. (I also disliked most sodas...and another of his recommendations was 7-up to settle stomachs but I didn't like it.)

7. Most Asian food and most Mexican (or Tex-Mex) food. I didn't like spicy. I didn't like things being mixed together, like in a stir-fry.

8. Egg salad. I used to think it was made out of leftover scrambled eggs and that grossed me out for some reason.

9. When I was really small, nuts. I got to like them when I was a bit older, but my brother NEVER liked them, so I grew up eating brownies and chocolate-chip cookies without nuts in them.

10. Tomatoes or tomato sauce, at least for a while: for some reason, for a few years as a kid, I had a real aversion to tomato sauce. When we'd go out for Italian food, I'd ask for spaghetti with just butter and parmesan cheese on it. (Perhaps it was not for simple reasons of frugality that my family didn't eat out often when I was a kid, I see that now).  Yes, there was a period of my childhood when I wouldn't eat pizza. I don't understand that now.  

I ran into one of our students who is now working on a Master's. He commented that he's taking a graduate-level stats class and that it's "easy" because of what he learned in Biostatistics from me. And he thanked me for the preparation I gave him.

I'm going to remember that the next time I get down on myself because a student complains that that class is "too hard." A lot of times doing stuff that's "hard" means that stuff in the future is easier, or you're able to do things in the future better because of that past preparation.

I don't know; maybe I'm a little perverse but I enjoyed many of my "hard" classes as a student because they presented a challenge, and I felt like I had really achieved something if I managed to earn an A.


****

If I can manage to finish grading these exams (I didn't, yesterday afternoon - a "heated discussion" broke out next door to me and it distressed me sufficiently that I bugged out early), I think I'm still going to allow myself a bit of a "mental health day" this afternoon. I feel much better today, though I'm not sure it's entirely due to not having to breathe wet moldy soil yesterday. (I do still need to do those two samples, but I'm thinking Monday would be a good day to work on them).

What I did with what extra time I had (I didn't leave campus until 2:45, an hour and forty five minutes later than I originally planned), was get the first batch of soil for the raised beds.

Yeah. They're gonna take a lot of soil. Four, forty pound bags of "topsoil", mixed with two fifty-pound bags of "play sand" and amended with four, "1.5 cubic foot" bags of organic mulchy stuff didn't even fill the first bed. I'm thinking it'll take three rounds of that to fully fill the garden. (It's wet today so I don't think I'll do the second round today. Maybe Saturday, after the trash-off).

I'm mentally putting this expense in the budget column for "therapy" rather than for "having cheaper food." Just so you know. (And yes, done right, gardening can be a form of therapy.)

Besides, it makes me feel good that I can lift and carry fifty pound bags of sand.

****

I made an off-the-shelf dinner last night. I like being able to do this occasionally: realizing I don't have anything really left over or planned-ahead, being able to go to my pantry and make dinner without having to go (dahn dahn DAHN) to the grocery store (or worse, the wal-mart) at the end of the day when everyone else is there.

I did stewed tomatoes. Opened up a can of "petite diced" tomatoes, seasoned them with some Penzeys' "Sandwich Sprinkle" (which, despite the name, is a good all-purpose seasoning, with a kind of vaguely-Italian herbs flavor). I didn't have any white bread, and usually I make stewed tomatoes with white bread, but the thought of even running out to the Braum's for a loaf of their (admittedly spongy) white bread was more than I felt like doing. But I had wheat bread.

First of all: I tend to have very distinct and rigid preferences for "what bread goes with what." I am actually kind of like the average five-year-old in that aspect. (Well, maybe not. I wouldn't throw a screaming tantrum if served the 'wrong' kind, but I'd be distinctly discomfited). Grilled cheese is made on white bread. Egg salad sandwiches have to be on white bread. Peanut butter is acceptable on either, but best on some kind of wholegrain bread. Turkey has to be on white, ham on whole wheat, roast beef is best on marble but failing that, the bread should be white. Pizza must have white-flour crust. And don't serve me those gritty, "good for you" whole-wheat pasta noodles. (I know, they've improved them. But I remember having some when they first came out and being really put off by them, and every time I saw an ad claiming that "your family won't tell the difference" I thought, "Oh, don't pee on my leg and tell me it's raining.")

So, I had always only made the scalloped/stewed tomatoes (I guess strictly speaking the addition of bread makes them scalloped; stewed is just plain tomatoes) with white bread. But going out to get some: meeeeeeeeeeh.

So I used the whole wheat - I toasted it first, and buttered it a little, and tore it up into bits.

And at the end, I put some mozzarella on top to melt.

And you know? I think I like the whole wheat bread better in this. It holds up a little better (sometimes the white bread kind of dissolved and got gross), and it does have more flavor.

A supposedly fun food I'll never eat again...

My car is in the shop. (This was a planned in-the-shop day; the brakes needed some work - it's a nearly 10 year old car and this is the first brake work it's needed). BUT. Sometimes I've found that leaving the car there tends to slow down the progress of work (as opposed to me sitting fuming in the waiting room).

I was told it would be done by noon. Nope! "We need a few more hours"

Of course, I did not bring a lunch. (And I do not have a loaner car. I live in a small town and none of the mechanics here have twigged to the concept of loaner cars, which would be really nice). And I am in my office building. And no one else is here. And the cafeteria is closed for break. And the nearest food-purveyor is about a half mile down a busy street with no sidewalks.

So, I hit up the vending machine. My lunch was NOT nutritious but at least I tried. A little sleeve of peanuts, a snack cake (yeah, yeah, I know. But when you're stuck with no food access until MAYBE 5 pm...) and a packet of beef jerky. I got the last snack cake and the last packet of jerky. There is almost nothing left in the machine.

I had never tried beef jerky before. Never in my life. It was one of those foods that kind of scared me as a child. But I figured, how bad can it be? And the package trumpets right on the package that it has "PROTEIN!!!"

Um, yeah. It has protein. So does leather. So do wichetty grubs. So does Bovine Serum Albumin.

Beef jerky...it's interesting. I did not know they could make cow so hard and chewy. And this was teriyaki flavor (my apologies to the Japanese for this flavor being used in this way) so my overall impression was: "Oh...my. Salt." I do not like highly salted things. I'm usually the one who doesn't add salt at table.

I know beef jerky is highly touted on those high-protein diets and all, but it's just not for me. I suppose it was nourishing, one can say that (And wasn't that really the original purpose of jerky/pemmican? Not so much to be a preferred food, but to be the thing that kept you from starving when you were trapped in the soddie by a blizzard and were having to melt snow for drinking water and had nothing else to eat?). But really not something I need to eat again in my life, at least not by choice.

Chris Baldwin (the guy who draws Little Dee) has really been on a roll lately (at least as far as me relating to the strip is concerned.)

In today's strip, Blake is attempting to do something I used to be able to do. Back in grad school - when I took more time for lunch and when I was more worried about pesticides in fruit - I used to carry a little pocket knife and peel my apples. And I always tried to do it in one long spiral.

My officemates always had comments about that.

One, who was a bit older than me, claimed that there was an episode of the Andy Griffith show where a "city slicker" type couldn't understand the slow pace of Mayberry, where people would take the time to peel an apple in one long strip. Apparently, by the end of the episode, he was in tune enough with the town to want to sit on the general-store porch and try to peel apples in one long strip.

And another office mate who knew a bit about folklore brought up the old (Pennsylvania Dutch?) custom where if an unmarried girl (sigh...chronologically I still qualified as a "girl" in those days) could peel an apple in one long strip, she then could throw the strip backwards over her shoulder and supposedly the letter it appeared to form on the floor was the initial of the man she'd eventually marry.

Well, I concluded that I'd either wind up not marrying (probably a safe bet at this point), or my future husband would be someone who had changed his name to an unpronounceable symbol à la Prince.

As I said, I don't peel apples any more. Either I buy organic apples, or I buy conventionally-farmed apples and figure that I'm probably exposed to worse in the labs where I work.

Interestingly enough...

I commented about paneer yesterday in regards to that "omnivore's 100" list?

Angry Chicken has a how-to. It looks very easy.

The only problem is, I have no source for low-heat pasteurized whole milk (or raw milk, which might be better, but the idea of which kind of squicks me out). So unless I find the health-food stores have some kind of low-heat pasteurized stuff, no paneer for me.

Lynn referred to this, and dragonknitter actually did it, so here's my version.

The Omnivore's Hundred is a list of foods the gastronomic Andrew Wheeler thinks everyone should try at least once in their lives. (on his website he has wikipedia links for the unfamiliar things, if you don't know what they are).

The rules of the meme: bold those you have tried, strikethrough those you wouldn't eat on a bet.

And because I can't resist, I'll have to add comments here and there.


1. Venison Venison sausage is delicious; roast venison is OK. I might not be so likely to eat it now, though, what with the concerns about Chronic Wasting Disease. (Same with elk.)

2. Nettle tea

3. Huevos rancheros (I'd eat it on a bet, but it's not something I've ever felt moved to order in a restaurant. That's too much stuff too early in the morning for my digestion)

4. Steak tartare (only if I knew the cow it came from and the chef who prepared it.)

5. Crocodile

6. Black pudding (Sorry, the thought of congealed blood turns my stomach)

7. Cheese fondue. Mmmm, cheese!

8. Carp

9. Borscht(I plan to try this this fall, given the fact that I now like certain beet dishes)

10. Baba ghanoush

11. Calamari Mmmm, squid! I knew someone who used this as a "test food" - if he could take a woman out on a date, order calimari, and she didn't recoil in horror when she found out what it was, he considered that to be a promising sign.

12. Pho

13. PB&J sandwich Though I prefer plain peanut butter.

14. Aloo gobi (Probably not; cauliflower and I are not friends)

15. Hot dog from a street cart

16. Epoisses Yes, it's cheese, but it's supposedly pungent, so no.

17. Black truffle Fungus allergies.

18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes Migraines from alcohol.

19. Steamed pork buns. Years ago, at a Chinese buffet.

20. Pistachio ice cream (Sounds good to me.)

21. Heirloom tomatoes Yes, please.

22. Fresh wild berries

23. Foie gras (I'd eat it maybe once, but it doesn't seem like something I'd like.)

24. Rice and beans

25. Brawn, or head cheese No, because I know how it's prepared.

26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper Issues with hot foods.

27. Dulce de leche

28. Oysters. No: issues with raw-ness, and also, after dissecting a clam in college biology, I think of all the little livers and gonads and things inside the unfortunate critters.

29. Baklava. I regret that there is no Greek Orthodox church near me now; the one in Akron used to do weekly "gyros lunches" (good homemade gyros for cheap) and they had wonderful pastries at Christmastime.

30. Bagna cauda

31. Wasabi peas I've eaten them but wouldn't again.)

32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl

33. Salted lassi (I might. It does not contain anything known to be repulsive to me)

34. Sauerkraut My mom made our own when I was a child. I like red cabbage
better but sauerkraut is OK by me.

35. Root beer float

36. Cognac with a fat cigar No alcohol, and definitely no tobacco.

37. Clotted cream tea

38. Vodka jelly (sounds repulsive...is this like a jello shot?)

39. Gumbo

40. Oxtail

41. Curried goat

42. Whole insects. No. I can't. Sorry. I know I'm being very mono-cultural here but I just can't do it.

43. Phaal "Hottest form of curry"? I don't think I could take it.

44. Goat’s milk Not something I'd want again. It makes good fudge though.

45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth £60/$120 or more. The alcohol thing, again.

46. Fugu. Something that could kill me if prepared wrong? I won't eat poke salad either.

47. Chicken tikka masala

48. Eel

49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut Never hot n fresh, though.

50. Sea urchin (Mmmmmmaybe. I don't know)

51. Prickly pear. And they make lovely jelly.

52. Umeboshi

53. Abalone

54. Paneer (Fresh cheese? Sounds OK by me)

55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal (I'd eat it on a bet but it's not something I'd ever really want).

56. Spaetzle Mmmm, yes. I've even MADE spaetzle.

57. Dirty gin martini

58. Beer above 8% ABV

59. Poutine (Actually, I'd kind of like to try it. Once.)

60. Carob chips They are really not as bad as some people make them out to be. The secret is not to try to pretend they are chocolate but to appreciate them as a flavor in their own right.

61. S’mores Mmmmm. Yes please.

62. Sweetbreads. There's a poem about these, I think by Ogden Nash. I have no desire to eat the thymus of a calf.

63. Kaolin (I've taken Kaopectate so I guess you could technically say "yes" to this for me, but it's not something I'd eat intentionally.)

64. Currywurst

65. Durian . It's supposed to smell terrible. I don't think I could get past the smell.

66. Frogs’ legs. Yes indeedy. When I interviewed for my current job, they took me out to dinner at this steakhouse. One of the men - now one of my colleagues - ordered these to pass around. I figured, "Well, I might as well show them I'm game" and tried one. They're really not something I would ever eat again.

67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake

68. Haggis. Sorry, even with my Scots heritage, I can't do that.

69. Fried plantain

70. Chitterlings, or andouillette. No. Knowing where it comes from makes it impossible for me to eat it.

71. Gazpacho

72. Caviar and blini

73. Louche absinthe

74. Gjetost, or brunost )Not yet, but I would love to try some. I've just never seen it for sale.)

75. Roadkill (probably not, though I do know people who have "salvaged" deer that got hit and most of it was still OK.)

76. Baijiu (Sounds like "white lightnin'" but with a prettier name.)

77. Hostess Fruit Pie. Yes, alas.

78. Snail. "Visceral mass." No thank you.

79. Lapsang souchong

80. Bellini (Oh, heck. That one sounds good enough that I'd probably be willing to risk the migraine.)

81. Tom yum (Nothing in that sounds like it would offend me, I've just never had the chance to try it.)

82. Eggs Benedict

83. Pocky

84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant

85. Kobe beef

86. Hare

87. Goulash

88. Flowers Candied violets.

89. Horse (I am striking this out because I would not eat it willingly. If it were "eat horse or starve," OK. But not willingly. I read too many "horse books" as a child to be comfortable with eating ol' Sugarfoot.)

90. Criollo chocolate

91. Spam

92. Soft shell crab

93. Rose harissa Probably too hot for me.

94. Catfish. Meh. Not a fan.

95. Mole poblano

96. Bagel and lox

97. Lobster Thermidor

98. Polenta

99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee

100. Snake (Yeah, I'd try it. Probably tastes like chicken.)

Yes, I am extremely picky and there are many things I would never even consider trying. But I'm actually surprised by the number of things on that list I HAVE eaten.