Tofu.

I really did not like tofu as a child. The famous Chinese food everyone knew, Mapo tofu, hated it. Didn’t like it in soup either. I refuse to eat tofu. People said it doesn’t taste like anything, that’s so not true. It tastes like beans. And I don’t like it.

I know it’s kind of a big deal that me being Chinese, I don’t like tofu. But my family didn’t really like tofu either, so growing up it didn’t seem like a problem.

I avoid tofu all the way until I was in my early 20s after I moved to the US.

And then I discovered Korean tofu stew.

I LOVED IT. Tofu didn’t taste like tofu, they’re really soft and flavorful, perfect to go with steamy rice… Just generally amazing.

I learned to make those myself (with pre-packaged tofu stew seasoning). And I make it all the time.

From there, I started to eat more tofu in other dishes. Now I really like all kinds of tofu, firm, soft, tofu skin, tofu noodle… tofu is great!

Red steak.

As a child, I always wanted by steaks well done, because I thought everything should taste like a hamburger and red meat frightened me. Thankfully, I’ve grown out of that, although it saddens me to know that there are still grown-ass men who are scared of a little pink in their steak.

I’ll admit, though, that I don’t go past medium rare, although I also don’t often go to steakhouses where they can cook it properly. Never order a rare steak at a Waffle House, guys.

I had/have several least favorite meals. Mother was a Child of the Depression and never forgot what it was like to be hungry. Father was also a CotD, but his grandfather was a butcher and he didn’t experience hunger the way Mother did.

If food was put on the plate, one was required to eat it. Period. No wiggle room.

I had a terrible time with fish. When fish was put on the plate, I had to eat it, but soon thereafter I would run to the bathroom and let it out. Unfortunately, this was not an excuse and when I got back to the table there was another piece of fish on the plate. Years later I learned that I was allergic to fish, but I never told Mother because it still wouldn’t be an excuse. Oddly, I am fine with lobster and shrimp.

There were various other things I really hated. Liver. Ugh. Not a fan. Tongue. Another problem food. Generally when body parts of various animals were on the menu, it would take hours for me to finish dinner. And Mother stayed at the table to make sure I didn’t pull some weasel deal, like wrapping the food in a napkin to dispose of later.

I never forced my children to eat any particular food, but they certainly had their unfavorite meals. They hated sausage and cabbage, which I really loved. Even today the mention of s & c is enough for both of them to show their “Ugh” faces.

Oranges.

There was just something about that sweet citrusy tang that I couldn’t stand as a kid. Lemons and limes and grapefruits were all good, but oranges just put me off.

I love them now, though; the sweet citrusy tang is absolutely delectable.

Conversely, I used to love Cheez-Its as a kid, but I can’t stand how they taste now.

They just taste like burned crackers to me.

Liver and onions.

I am grimacing now thinking about it.

I don’t care how lovely and rich the gravy or how beautifully the onions are carmelized it is just a horrific dish. I got a part time job in high school so that, among other things, I would be able to buy something else for dinner as soon as my mother said— liver for dinner. Ugh.

My daughter asked me that same question— what food do I hate. When I told her she immediately wanted to try it. We went to a restaurant and she ordered it, cut it and took a fair sized bite. I watched her chew, then stop. She opened her paper napkin and deposited the bite in the napkin. Then she opened another napkin and wiped off her tongue!!! Until then I had kept a straight face. But the tongue wiping was too much. “Pretty darn gross, huh,” I teased her.

We had a good laugh— and something else for dinner!!!

Mashed potatoes!!

It was Thanksgiving, I was roughly 9 years old, and my mother knew I hated mashed potatoes. The taste, ugh, and most importantly the texture. She made my plate, which was odd because I had been getting my own food for a few years, at that point. I watched her put a big helping of mashed potatoes onto my plate. I was instantly disgusted.

I tried to warn her that if I ate them, I would surely vomit. It didn't matter, and she forced me to take a bite. I tried to argue, but was also not wanting my butt beat, so I took a small bite. That was all it took for me to gag, and then get sick, at the dinner table.

Of course, that made everyone else feel sick, too. My mom snatched me up by my arm, and dragged me to the bathroom. Instead of cleaning me up, she bent me over and whooped me. My grandmother's house was not very big, so everyone in the family heard my wails. Not one person tried to stop it, or dared to get involved.

To this day, I feel sick when I recall this situation…and I still refuse to eat mashed potatoes.

When I was 7, my second-grade class had a “Fruit Party.” My teacher, Mrs. Truman (yes, I still remember her name), brought in a bunch of different “fruits,” in which she designated one per table. The goal was that by the end, we would all make one full circle and have tried all the different fruits.

We were all excited to try the same things we knew and loved already, like strawberries and mangoes, however there was one that I was apprehensive about. It baffled and disgusted me because of the outer shell and texture, and even the colors! How could it be brown on the outside and green on the inside? And who would eat that? Which fruit was it? The avocado.

Mrs. Truman had gone on and on about how good it was and that I should give it a try. Because of her effort, I took a bite of green and once I felt the soft texture of the avocado, I immediately gagged. I. Was. Not. Ready. For. That. I ended up throwing up a bit of the avocado in a trash can Mrs. Truman retrieved for me. It wasn’t as “good” or “yummy” as Mrs. Truman described it and I definitely wasn’t ready for the soft texture.

From that moment until about the end of 2016, beginning of 2017, I hadn’t had one bit of avocado - I didn’t even eat guacamole! (*gasp*). It wasn’t until I studied abroad in South Africa that I tried avocado again and fell in love with it. It’s kind of hard of escape Avocado in South Africa. My intro back to Avocado was served on a thin crust pizza with sausage and feta cheese. Since then, I have been a proud avocado fiend.

I chose to answer this because I think it will be therapeutic for me to write this out.

I have a few secrets that I’ve never told anyone because I can’t deal with the emotions; I can’t even label them. This is one, although I’m sure it’s a minor thing to most of you.

In this instance, the food was marinated mushrooms. I have a hard time even thinking about them.

My dad’s family were Italian immigrants, and he went to an Italian specialty food shop for things that were considered “ethnic” and not sold at a regular grocery store. Dad would come home with all manner of weird stuff: stinky olives, pickled pig’s feet, smoked oysters, and marinated mushrooms.

(ETA: I have no idea if marinated mushrooms are Italian. Dad was in WW2, and lived in both Germany and Paris after the war, so he may have picked up tastes for certain foods there.)

My mom was disgusted by all of it. She was raised in Virginia, and had no problem eating that putrid salted ham with the mold growing on it, but not Dad’s special snacks.

I was disgusted by pickled pig’s feet; Dad gave me a pass on that; more for him! He did insist I try everything else. To my mom’s ire, I loved the Greek olives; especially the ones stuffed with garlic cloves. And smoked oysters are still a treat I indulge in 40+ years later, I adore them. I also loved marinated mushrooms.

The last time I ate them, I was 15, nearly 16. Dad came home one Saturday with his cache of goodies. I was hungry at the moment, and I grabbed the jar of marinated mushrooms, played a little game of “keep away” with Dad, then devoured the whole jar.

The next morning, I was puking my guts out into the toilet. I swear I thought my socks would emerge. I held the porcelain throne and sweated through an hour of the dry heaves.

My dad saw my predicament, and he laughed. He told me it served me right for eating “his” mushrooms, “that would teach me.” Ha, ha, Dad.

I think that was in 1976 or ‘77. Dad passed in 2009. Every year, he reminded me of the “poetic justice” of me becoming violently ill when I “stole his mushrooms.” Each year, I tried to laugh, but my face would turn red and hot. I would feel the tingling sensation down my arms like I am now; one of my responses to stress. I always said “Yeah, right, ha, ha, Dad.”

I could never tell either of my parents the rest of the story.

My parents never, ever told me anything about sex. It’s like it just wasn’t a thing. But, I was in high school with a bunch of cute boys and raging hormones all around. The captain of our football team, two grades ahead of me and 17, took a shine to me, and I was besotted. I was an instant celebrity because he had long golden hair, was so hot, and the captain of the football team! (!!!!)

As you are probably guessing, he started pressuring me for sex. He told me he loved me, and needed sex. I turned to the other girls who were dating popular guys. They were all on birth control pills because they didn’t trust the guys to show up with condoms. I learned that you didn’t need your parent’s consent at age 15. So I made myself an appointment with a doctor and got a prescription for the pill. I didn’t want a baby, or to lose my “standing” by rejecting the advances of a popular boy. Yes, our culture was fucked up at that time, maybe it’s better now, I don’t know.

The real story of the mushrooms was that I had seen my OB/GYN that week and got my first package of pills. I took the first on Saturday.

Birth control pills of the sort that I was on in 1976–77 had high doses of estrogen, which mimic a pregnancy. The side effect on taking them for the first time was intense morning sickness. I had been warned about this. I had waited until the weekend because I didn’t want to throw up at school.

The mushrooms didn’t cause my extreme digestive distress; birth control pills did.

I didn’t dare to ever confess this to my dad. He would have been so ashamed of me. He was everything to me, and I wanted to be his “good little girl” forever. (Good little girls don’t have sex with teenage boyfriends, especially at age 15.)

My mom eventually found the pills in my purse. She screamed at me and called me every name she could think of, threw my purse at me, and didn’t speak to me for days. I didn’t know if she told Dad (I guess she did) but nothing was ever said about it. Dad never knew the connection to my secret social life, and it was torment for me every time “the mushroom story” came up.

NB: “Jeswald” is an anglicization of Gesualdo, as in: Carlo Gesualdo - Wikipedia and Prince of Darkness. I guess I’m a Princess of Darkness?

Durian.

Hated it as a kid, due to the pungent smell. I’ve tried it once as a kid and remembered vomiting afterwards.

So naturally I rejected anything durian. But early last year, a family friend gave us some durian ice cream as gifts, and my wife kinda talked (*forced) me into trying it. Can’t say that I loved it, but I don’t reject it like I used to.

Then comes the story where I tried the actual durian. I don’t remember how the argument began, but my wife said something a long the line “you’re so cheap that you never buy me a durian”, and I replied “fine! I’ll get you one tomorrow”. Then I saw my wife’s face lit up with an evil smirk 😏.

I thought to myself, how expensive can a fruit be, boy was I wrong. When I pick up the 2kg fruit, there was no price tags on it. So when I got to the counter and handed the fruit to the cashier, she announced $102AUD. Yep, I literally stood there my with jaws dropped, whilst remembering the sinister smirk on my wife’s face the night before. well played hun, well played.

How do I feel about it now? I’d better enjoy every single bite.

Split pea soup. I was a VERY fussy eater as a kid — the type who wanted his raw vegetables sliced correctly and separated on his place next to a plain piece of cooked meat.

One night my father decided that I should at least TRY the split pea soup my mother had spent hours on with our family’s very limited budget (postal worker dad in pre-union days, while mom typed address labels on a big old Underwood at home)

I refused.

He insisted.

We actually ended up with him trying to force me, on the floor, to at least taste one spoonful.

That may SOUND a bit abusive, but in retrospect I was really the unreasonable one and accustomed to getting, as a largely single child with an extremely protective grandmom on my mom’s side, pretty much whatever I demanded.

In any event there were no blood nor bruises involved, just some wrestling.

But I *definitely* did NOT want that thick green sludge in my mouth!

Today it’s one of my favorite, filler-upper, cheap, healthy, not hard to make multi-portions of, winter meals with some cubed ham and carrots added in later stages.

• MJM, who’d still prefer chocolate milk…

It is pretty much the opposite. We loved making tuna noodle casserole, you know, with the can of cream of mushroom soup in it? And some genius kid figured out putting crushed up potato chips on top yet. Uh uh, no.

But, to answer your question a bit better, it was butterscotch “morsels,” like chocolate chips, for making cookies. I remember it like it was yesterday. My sisters and I ate a bag while walking by the river. And then we all started to feel not so good. We went home, and I wanted to vomit, but couldn’t. I was in for the duration. It was hot, humid, and barely rainy. I remember it well. I never went near those things again and never will, even if I do like butterscotch. Someone told me they still exist.

I have a couple, one of which I only got round to eating quite recently.

Beetroot: Never liked the look or smell of it as a kid. Refused to try it. Always thought I hated it, but then realised I’d never eaten it. Not once. Had some in a salad a few months ago. It wasn’t bad.

Black pudding: I did actually try this one, but it was against my will. My Step-Father at the time told me it was fried pigs blood. I was reluctant to try it, but he talked me into it. I’d already made up my mind based on what it was, and I hated it. It was about a decade later that I tried it again, when my childish ideas that it must taste bad because of what it was made of had dissipated. Nowadays, I won’t have a cooked breakfast without it. I’m actually prone to the occasional black pudding sandwich with a bit of ketchup. Delicious.

Squid: Step-Father again. He told me that the calamari was actually a bowl of onion rings. I bit into one, realised the difference, then spat it out in horror when he laughingly told me what I’d just eaten. Probably didn’t help that it was badly cooked. Rubbery, chewy mess. Had a holiday to Greece a couple of years ago and ate half my body weight in squid. Real squid. Just slapped on a grill, nothing fancy.

Hello & Namaste !

Idli’s ( Steamed Rice Cakes ) and they look like this ;

Hated Idli's through out my childhood.

On Sundays my mom use to make Idli’s for breakfast . Lots of Idli’s and the same would be served for lunch as well …Gosh ! I haaated them like anything and so did my brother . The sight of it , the smell of it … Grrrr …. I use to literally struggle pushing each of those idli bites through my throat. We had no options but to finish ém. Me n my bro nick named Idli’s as “Neend Ki Goli ” i.e Sleeping Pills. We use to feel so lethargic and sleepy after eating them . One more reason for the hate.

Being a South Indian and having grown up in the North I enjoyed eating North Indian food more . We other wise use to have Roti Sabzi for breakfast every day.

Why did Mom make so much of Idli’s ??

Why were we served Idli’s for lunch ???

On Sundays dad’s friends use to come home and they were huge fans of Idli’s. A minimum of 3 -4 of them, dads friends even colleagues would visit us specially to feast on the Idli’s. Every Sunday without a miss. Mom use to be so busy dishing out fresh batches of Idli’s and serving them and this saga would go on till late afternoon. Mom and dad loved pampering their guests with fresh home made Idli’s and hence no time to make lunch. Boo Hoo !

Sweet memories ! Still laugh when I think ’bout it :))

Today I enjoy making and eating Idli’s ….They are the bessst !

As a child I refused to eat fruits and vegetables. I would only eat spinach and broccoli, and carrots if they were in a soup.

Then at some point, when I was 22 or 23 I reached a weight of 67kg (I’m short, so not a good look). I started going to a dietitian that was popular amongst my friends. She gave me a menu that included loads of fruits and vegetables. I told her “I don’t eat those” so she looked at me dead in the eye and said “well, start…”

I forced myself to eat a salad and I loved it! So I tried other veggies and I loved those too! In the morning I ate berries and yogurt.

now I eat salads most days, and almost always have a veggie side dish.

There was one dish I loved as a child- maybe I was four or five - called “dinuguan,” which in English is blood pudding. I remember I loved eating this with fresh rice. It was soooo yummy. Well, I don’t remember when, but I was still a child, I found out what it was made of - pigs blood, organ meats, spices - and I just couldn’t eat it anymore. The same was said for my sisters and brother. I remember choking trying to get it down my throat and my parents couldn’t understand why all of a sudden we had an aversion to it. They eventually stopped forcing us to eat it. Even as an adult, I can’t bring myself to try it again, but I think one sister has eaten it now.

On a side note, when my father makes it, I take some for my mother-in-law, as she loves it and finds it very similar to Portuguese blood sausage, but I won’t attempt to make it for her.

As a child, I didn’t like pizza.

When I was a kid, every Saturday night I went with my parents and their friends to a pizzeria.
My parents' friends' son, who is my age, loved pizza.
I didn't eat it, I don't even remember the reason. I don't think I didn't like it, I just didn't eat it. I would always order a cutlet.

Once I simply asked my mother to let me taste a slice.

Since then pizza has been one of my favorite foods (of course, how could it not be?).

Growing up, there weren’t THAT many foods that I despised. I never liked tuna. Hated brussel sprouts. But those were like sweet chocolate, compared to liver. The smell of it cooking was bad enough… horrible! But the taste was vile! It left me ill! And the rest of my family LOVED it! Well, I don’t think my little brother did, but he wasn’t as vocal as I was. And the worst part was, I was NOT allowed to get up from the table until I had finished it! There were always ways I was able to get rid of it without eating (all) of it. When no one was looking, I would take a piece of it off my plate, and stuff it in my pants. I tried to hide it in my glass of milk, but my older sister (years earlier) got caught spitting her peas into a glass of tea at the table, so my mother was suspicious, especially if I finished quicker than expected. But I learned to be VERY discreet.

I always promised myself, when I was eighteen, I was NEVER going to eat this garbage again, nor was I going to make MY kids eat it. Well, at 52, I don’t have kids of my own, but I haven’t eaten liver in at least 35 years!

I occasionally have someone telling me, “You just haven’t had liver made right, like *I* do”… No, there is no saving this wretched piece of cow excrement, so don’t even try.

Lima Beans …

These seemingly harmless oblong green vegetables plagued me as a child. They were DRY and tasteless—no butter, no olive oil, no seasoning, no nothing. My mother had no creative way to present them to me, either. There they sat. They sat on my plate and stared at me. They created a disturbance. They created dissension between my mother and father. Wow, a little green bean with so much control! Dad said, “Oh come on, Jane doesn’t like them and should not eat them.” Mom said, Oh come on, Janie needs to learn to eat what is on her plate and she needs to give those lima beans a try.” They argued. I cried. Bottom line? I had to stay at the table until every lima bean was eaten! (There were 8 on my plate.) Two hours later, my dog (ironically named Cookie), came along and relieved me of my task. Victory!

And today? I actually like those darned lima beans!

Cracklin’ cornbread. For those of you who are clueless about “cracklins,” they are simply pork rinds, but not all pork rinds are the light, crispy kind on the potato chip aisle of your grocery store. (Those I like) Some cracklins have extra fat attached and are not crispy. Matter of fact, I thought they tasted more like chewy strips of rubber. My Mama just loved to ruin a good cake of cornbread with those things, and she and my Dad could eat that bread till nothing was left but a plate full of crumbs. I was never forced to eat it, of course, but I never did understand why they loved them so much. You can chew till your jaw bone locks up and they never break down. Just chew them till the flavor is gone, then swallow, I guess? They were nasty…

I ate pretty much anything with joy as a kid. But, when I’ve seen oysters for the first time in my life, I just thought they looked like the worst possible thing and probably taste like cold boogers. It turned out they do. But for some strange reason, they’re still my favorite food now.

Image credit: Mental Floss.

Cold Borsch was something I detested as a kid. The flavor the beets was and still is over-powering for me. I can taste the beets in V8 juice too. But a hot Borsch is more like a stew, so I like it.

Next item would be raw tomatoes and various melons. There is a strong after-flavor in both types of fruit that some people (like myself) can taste, and others cannot. It used to give me an instant gag reflex. (Note: water-melon and any form of cooked tomatoes was no problem for me growing up.) After my mid-40’s I began eating raw tomato first chopped up finely to put on tacos, as well as eating cantaloupe and honey dew melons. They both are a little more palatable to me in small amounts. The after-flavor still is there, but it doesn’t cause me to gag anymore. I have other friends who have experienced the same reaction to both raw tomatoes and to melons.

I was not a particularly picky child, and I’d generally eat whatever my mom gave to me, but I absolutely could not stand butter or margarine as a child.

My parents could give me asparagus, lima beans, peas, broccoli, you name it, and I’d have no problems eating it, but I really struggled to eat anything with butter or margarine in or on it.

My mom was pretty good about trying to not put butter in or on things that I got, but I’m sure it was frustrating for her, especially since I was a scrawny little kid at the lowest percentile for both height and weight, and although I’d eat what was given to me, I did not have a huge appetite.

I was at the lowest percentage because I take after my mom, incidentally, and she’s teeny tiny. But once she did get called in to the school because they were concerned about my size. According to my mom, the meeting essentially went “Hi, I’m Mrs. El. You wanted to meet with me?” And then the school personnel looked at my four foot eleven inch, ninety pound mom for a long moment, and then laughed and explained that the meeting was probably not necessary because they could see that I was tiny because of my mom’s stature, and not because of a health issue or neglect.

While I find that funny, my mom did not find it funny at the time.

This will probably get my Southern card pulled but it was <takes cover> sweet potatoes. Mom said that I caught a stomach bug when I was little and puked sweet potato all over the house. I was young enough, 3 she said, that I don't remember but I didn't eat them until I was 28. It was at our rehearsal dinner and Mom had specified sweet potato casserole for dessert. I had worked over 65 hours in August Georgia/Alabama that week even though I clocked out at 0800 that morning. I spent the whole day getting my honeymoon stuff together and skipped lunch. I had eaten breakfast at 03:30 so I just ate what was put in front of me and lo and behold, they were delicious. I love them now.

It was spam. I would gag and cry and try my best to get it down. I would be instructed that I would sit there until the spam was gone. So I would continue to gag, cry, and try. After I finally got it down I would end up throwing the entire spam up in the toilet. Every time. I never learned to like spam until I was an adult. I do like spam and eat it often, now. But I don’t believe that I learned to like spam or ever would have liked spam by being made to eat it like I was as a child. But this was the belief of parents in that da that children needed to clean their plates and eat even if they hated the meal in front of them.

There were two foods that I didn’t like growing up and those were sardines and anchovies. I am also not fond of cow brains and cow tongues; although, I learned better recipes for the tongue than our mom used. Basically cook the tongue longer at a lower temperature and add Chinese vegetables, sprouts and mushrooms with steamed rice. You trim the tongue before cooking and cut into small pieces. Cook two hours in a stock pot with beef broth and a package of onion and mushroom soup mix. The last part is probably more than what you wanted to know because most people do not like cow tongue. Stay tuned for cooking a cow’s heart recipes. LOL!

Stuffed bell peppers.

They were properly Leave it to Beaver, 1950s style, so food made into a presentation like serving each person their own little pepper stuffed with ground beef and rice. Then my brother would have gleefully made Jello earlier in the day we have for dessert with Cool Whip.

I make a similar dish called prison slop. You reduce the water out of ground or diced beef in a deep pot with peppers and hot chilies, onions. Deglaze with worstishshitsire sauce and mix with cooked rice. Taco-up with cheap white bread. Extra points for holes in it like real prison bread.

Pairs well with Tang, over the sounds of Justin screaming “n- gonna die, n-” out of the crack in his door, makeout-distance from Goldberg’s screaming back “don’t advertise bro!”