OK....This is going to bite me in the butt but I have to do it.
I have 4 grown daughters and consequently, 4 sons in law. (as well as several assorted grandchildren). I am the cook. I provide and prepare when we get together because noone else wants to.
Peeve #1 When I finally get to the dinner table I am met with a big bowl of Kraft mac and cheese that someone made on the sly…
Peeve # 2. When they say " I hate onions!" Duh…onions are pretty much in every recipe in existance! Deal with it.
Peeve #3. So and so doesn’t like seafood… What the heck does that mean? You say that tuna is the same as shrimp is the same as scallops is the same as kelp etc? What if I said "I’m sorry I don’t like land food? " AAAAARRRRRRRGGGGGHHHHHH!
Oh my goodness - you hate onions?! Garlic and onions are two things I add into just about EVERY savory dish. So good! I am not a fan of raw onions, though.
For the so and so, have they been open to trying it out? I used to be a picky eater, but then I pushed myself to try new things. And even if I didn’t like it the first time, I will try it a few more times. Things I like now that I didn’t used to: mushrooms, tofu, avocado, any condiments, salads (lol).
Boom! I hated asparagusas a kid because my mom used canned and 1 out of 10 were rock hard and the other 9 were mush. I hated fish because of that bone that i always found.Or because salmon casserole made with canned yuk salmon. yes…mushrooms too. LOve them now. Wait…I hated coffee and cigarettes as a kid too!
I can’t eat salmon. No alurgy or anything, there’s just something about it that makes me gag.
Not a big fan of fish due to having been rushed to hospital as a kid to have a couple of fish bones removed from my throat. But But that’s a psychological thing that I could probably work on if I had to.
Other things that I struggle with tend to be due to texture. Kidneys and brains. Either end of the textural spectrum.
My partner’s kids aren’t too bad. One doesn’t do capsicum (bell pepper) or ‘spicy’ food. And his current girlfriend doesn’t like broccoli. That’s a vast improvement on the previous one who didn’t like chicken and wouldn’t eat vegetables, but was limited on her red meat intake due to an overproduction of iron. She’d stay here and pick at whatever dinner I worked hard to dish up and then be off to the golden arches half an hour after leaving the table.
I’ve always been irked by people who refused to even try certain foods, for no rational reason. So I was very deliberate about raising my kids to not have any such attitudes, and to be willing to try anything within reason. I taught both to fish when they were very young, along with the principle that we eat what we harvest. They watched me clean and filet the catch so they understood where the meat on their plate came from. We raised a vegetable garden in the backyard every year, which made them more eager to eat things that they’d helped me to grow. We made sure to try the more exotic dishes (compared with what most kids eat) when we went out for dinner. Calamari, escargot, calves brains (before “mad cow disease” hit the scene), alligator, sushi, etc were all tried and relished. When my son turned 11 years old he and I began hunting together…which started putting squirrel, rabbit, venison (both whitetails and elk), duck and wild boar on the table from time to time. And we live in the suburbs of a metropolitan area with a dizzying array of ethnic cuisines to choose from, and they’ve sampled most of it.
Both are grown now, but have retained their culinary open-mindedness into adulthood. There is very little in the way of food that they won’t at least give a chance, and not much that they don’t enjoy. In fact my daughter is taking care to instill the same attitude in her 3 year-old child (my granddaughter)…though getting her to eat green beans can be a challenge. My son is currently on a tear trying every Korean and Ethiopian place he can find.
So, no complaints here…at least, not at family dinners.
When folks want to change my eating habits. Not so much when strangers do it, but when I am with someone I know and I am like, “I can’t have that cheese because that would be a bathroom disaster for me,” and they’re like, “but you HAVE to try it! It’s SOOO good. Just have a little bit!” Or when I am trying to eat healthier and I am pressured to have junk food.
When I cook all day and someone comes home already had eaten or only eats a tiny bit of what I cooked.
What irks me is when people have problems with my dietary selections. I’ve been on a restrictive diet for some time, for health reasons. If offered something, and i decline, it often comes with 20 questions and a lecture.
The other is when people don’t believe you have an allergy. I’m a crazy huge fan of mushrooms. My girlfriend will go into full anaphylaxis. I haven’t eaten mushrooms, for obvious reasons, in well over a year. I can’t tell you how many times she’s used an epipen because “I thought she just didn’t like them” or “you can’t even taste them, i figured it would be ok”
Its funny reading this because a lot of it applies to me!
I don’t like seafood - the taste of the sea, lake, ocean, whatever- totally unappealing to me. I’ve tried salmon, shrimp, lobster, crab, sole, bass, pickeral in a few different formats and never really enjoyed any of it.
I don’t like onions (raw). I understand the importance of em though, so I cook with them of course! Just … eating a big ol’ raw onion on a burger? blech.
But as for my pet peeves… Other peeps I’ve cooked with who don’t clean as they go, haha. Just the worst. Huge mess everywhere, no organization, I have no idea what they’re doing.
That and anyone who doesn’t pat their proteins dry first. For shame!
There were plenty of vegetables I disliked growing up, but I learned I didn’t hate the vegetable itself. I just didn’t like them canned. BIG difference between canned and fresh. Not knocking on canned, though. I just don’t prefer it.
The cleaning part I can understand SO MUCH. I clean as I go, because I just get anxiety as I start to see dishes piling up. The best part about cleaning as you go is that you have less to worry about after you’re done eating.
I used to host large and elaborate dinner parties with multiple courses, I loved cooking. We had one friend who has a true allergy to gluten, she has celiac disease and is a vegetarian, so I would make a separate dinner plan to accommodate her. Over the span of several years, adult invitees suddenly developed a plethora of food they wouldn’t eat that they previously consumed. Fish, dairy, mushrooms, gluten, meat, onions. It literally became too ridiculous to even consider hosting any further dinner parties, even smaller ones because everyone seems to be avoiding something these days. I have become intolerant of food intolerances. Not food allergies, that’s legitimate.
This made me laugh, as I grew up thinking that I hated seafood. Met my wife, and as it turns out, I love seafood–but I hate the way my mother made it! Opened up a whole world of culinary options I didn’t know existed. Twenty years later, and I am thrilled that my daughter loves seafood as much as I do.
We just never do what my mother did (which I still maintain should be treated as a war crime).
Lol! I was iffy with seafood for a long time, but mostly because the only kind of seafood I really was familiar with growing up was canned tuna that was mostly drenched in mayo.
Ah the modern world, so hard for us elderly people to cope. The Kraft Dinner thing is weird though. I would object to that,
I love onions but know several people that are allergic to them. Same with seafood. I see no reason to poison these people. They didn’t choose to be allergic. For them “deal with it” means either getting sick or going hungry. That is probably why they bring their own mac and cheese. That is rude though. The polite thing to do is pretend the meal is wonderful then eat the mac and cheese on their own where it doesn’t offend the cook, Bringing it to table is an insult. Sounds like someone didn’t do a very good job raising kids.
I rarely do canned tuna. And never, ever tuna casserole. After several debilitating times with pneumonia as a kid, my association with the taste of warm canned tuna causes… unpleasant results. Fresh? I’ll eat that for days and be happy. But not canned. Same with canned vegetables (which is why I still won’t eat string beans). Root veggies are good, though.
(To be fair though, most foods drenched in mayo are appealing, which is why I’m dieting now!)
Funny now that I really think about it I associated the taste of deep fried shrimp with cocktail sauce. I loved it! So as a kid I figured out this trick of mixing ketchup and horseradish on my plate. Mom would say eat your brocolli or no dessert. I just dipped it in the cocktail sauce an it became shrimp!
@Cache At my house growing up the situation with seafood and my mom was alike yet unalike yours. My mom always hated salmon. She would cook the salmon my Dad caught but never eat it herself.
As an adult I ended up cooking running out of time after preparing to smoke some salmon for a pot luck dinner I was attending. I had brined the salmon for a half hour but did not have hours to smoke it. I upped the temp of the smoker and smoked it for maybe an hour and a half and brought it to the dinner. (There was to be so much food anyway that my wife tried to talk me out of bringing the salmon - since I’d not cooked it “normally”.) It was gone in just a few minutes - everyone loved it.
So I made it again. My wife took some to work. And her co-workers wanted to buy a salmon for me to cook for them.
Anyway, I got my mom to take a bite…and she found she loved salmon! She’d just never had it cooked in a way she liked!
(Long winded I know - but I’ve become pretty proud of how much people seem to like MY salmon! lol )
Or when I am trying to eat healthier and I am pressured to have junk food.
