Do you have an aversion to foods that you were force-fed (or fed all the time) as a child? Or, conversely, to you have a food that you eat all-the-time as an adult, partly because you were never/rarely fed it as a child?
I know that few people grew up with a mother as healthy-food-conscious as my own, and I'm sure what I was fed/denied as a child has largely affected my adult palate.
Some of my aversions: Herbal teas (especially red zinger tea)
Most nuts and seeds (particularly almonds, pine nuts, hazelnuts, and safflower seeds)
Figs
Dates
Matzo crackers
Most of these aversions were items that were placed in my lunches when I was in elementary school (except for the herbal teas, which my mom made at home in 2 or 3 gallon-sized jars). My sister V and I would always try and trade away our almonds to the Korean girls at school (Ixoj, if you asked your Korean students what their favorite nut or seed is, I wonder if many would say almonds). If we were lucky, we could barter our seeds away for a Twinkie.
Given my unusual lunches as a child, I guess it's no wonder that as an adult I love peanut butter sandwiches. I guess I'm making up for lost time.
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10 comments:
tee hee, Macaroni and Cheese! Only thing I wanted to eat as a child. Now I can not stand it!!
I hate blueberries. My mother used to love taking her kids to slave away at these "pick your own fruit" farms. To this day I can't eat blueberries because I have flashbacks of the endless hours of torture. Plus I ate way too many of them while picking; that didn't help.
I also have always hated rice, which baffles most people. My family ate it soooooo often. Then serving a mission in Honduras/Belize where I had to eat mounds of it a day didn't help.
Luckily, my mom didn't force feed us anything...I didn't try a lima bean until I was like 16, when my sisters and I made our mom get us some so we could know why everyone else was complaining. Still my family ate a lot of foods I hated. If I didn't agree with what was being served for dinner, I was given the option of starving or fixing myself something else. I would have never survived my teenage years without peanut butter, which I still love to this day.
What about soup? I thought you also had a childhood aversion to soup?
It's true. I don't like soup. I thought about mentioning it, but I was more interested in discussing my school lunch aversions. In fact, I specifically wrote "some of my aversions" because of my omission of soup on the list.
I hate peanut butter and honey sandwiches because my mom would always buy honey in those huge ghetto government tubs and it would get grainy. Plus, by the time it was lunch time the honey had soaked through the discount day old Wonder bread and it didn't look so good. I also hate eating sandwiches on anything other than really nice pieces of bread. My mom used to make sandwiches with the heels of bread or with miscellaneous bread products like hamburger buns. Actually, I don't like sandwiches of any kind very much.
This entry has made me really think about my eating habits and their relationship with my childhood. So, here's my list:
What I won't eat now:
-I am a vegetarian, which I completely blame (at least in the initial stages) on how my family ate. We ate SO much meat -- hamburger, roast, turkey -- and there was always meat at every dinner. I quit eating meat all together when I was 11.
-I do not like white bread, at all. My family only ever at white bread. To this day, I can only stand wheat.
What I still love to eat:
-I love "old people cereal" -- shredded wheat, grapenuts, all-bran, etc. My mom never, ever bought us sugar cereals and to this day, I do not like sugary cereals.
What I really want to eat:
-When I was a kid my dad used to buy himself raw almonds, wheel barrel cookies, and hershey bars as a treat. He would share with the kids but was SO stingy -- I'm talking like 2 almonds each, one square of chocolate, and a single cookie split four ways. I don't even like hershey that much and I definitely don't like wheel barrel cookies at all, but I'll eat tons of them if I come in contact with them. It has to be that whole "deprived thing"
Anyway, love this blog, I may copy it!
Everyone should read what Shauna had to say about school lunches: http://mikeshaunasiebach.blogspot.com/2008/09/like-corners-of-my-mind.html
Hilarious.
Ha! As a 1st-hand witness to the foods you ate as a child (that summer your brother A was born and I lived with you guys in Denver probably scarred me on your mom's food habits for the rest of my - shortened - life), I can say that I HOPE nobody went through the food traumas you guys did, M!!!
I used to have day-mares of you ringing my doorbell, clutching some flat cracker I could have scraped wallpaper with, a glass of carrot juice and some figs and saying "why? WHY?!?!?!?"
Fortunately, apparently unleaven crackers made out of rocks don't leave (obvious) psychic scars, or you are made of IRON, because you seem awesome and powerful (and I refuse to attribute that to your diet). And if a blog post is the worst to come of it, you are my HERO!
Also, I hate mulberries due to an unfortunate canning/preserving incident of my childhood. (Note to your aunt J - mulberries MUST BE STEMMED TO BE EDIBLE.)
I love almonds.
Barfarino foodstuffs I will not eat due to childhood unpleasantries:
-shepard's pie (pox upon it!)
-meat loaf
-fish loaf (whimper)
-fake potatoes (flakes, pearls, etc)
-pork chops
-mussels (whimper again)
Monica and Josh-
You both sound like really picky eaters. And soup is how I survive the winter. I'm one of those people who likes just about anything. The only exceptions I can think of are kale (because my mom grew it and force-fed us that during her health crazes) and mayonnaise (an aversion that developed from having to eat mayo-caked turkey sandwiches at my childhood best friend's house). Oh, and lentils. I never tried them until I got married because Neal loves them and always wants me to fix them. Once was quite enough.
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