What dish have you had to force down with a smile?
My MIL is in town, and brought an Alfredo sauce with her on her 8 hour drive (apparently we don't have those bland little sauce-mix packets where I live). I was a trooper and ate the Fettucine with separated Alfredo sauce, but I'm Italian! Isn't there a law somewhere saying I don't have to eat this stuff?!
What about you? What have you had to eat to keep the harmony at the table?
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30 Comments:
I blame carbs often and abstain.
Smile and say I am on the Atkins. Then eat some meat and cheese.
I save calories for things I like.
This from the person who baked a cake last year on my own birthday that I don't like and didn't eat. Flourless Chocolate Torte with Dark Chocolate. Everyone else loves it.
JerzeeTomato at 10:32AM on 09/22/07
Pears poached in red wine. Yuck. I hate them, but the woman who served them at the dinner party I went to was so excited about them and had mentioned them a couple of times during the meal that I knew there was no getting out of it. I choked down a few bites and said I was too full to finish.
K at 12:38PM on 09/22/07
Coincidentally .... Arugula!
srhcb at 2:22PM on 09/22/07
most of my food dislikes are texture related and slimy food just kills me. when i was in the 8th grade i was staying for dinner at a friend's. her mother had made sliced zucchini stewed in tomatoes for dinner (both textural mine fields for me at the time). she noticed that i was labouring to eat it and repeatedly stated that guest or not i couldn't leave the table until i'd eaten it all.
the next morning she made runny eggs on toast with cheese whiz. i knew from the night before that i'd have to choke those down too, come hell or high water.
lexophile at 3:13PM on 09/22/07
When I met my boyfriend's stepmother, on my first trip to Maine, she offered to make me a turkey sandwich, asking if I wanted mayo. Of course, I said yes, but what I didn't know is that in some parts of the country, a not insubstantial layer of butter is assumed, so what I wound up with was a big ol' grease sandwich with a little bit of turkey for traction. That was over twenty years ago, and I still feel a bit queasy thinking about it.
Barbara Hanson at 3:56PM on 09/22/07
Zucchini in any way, shape or form.........even fried. When my best girlfriend had a good-bye party for me as I was moving back to NJ from Phoenix, she went to so much trouble to have so many foods that she thought I really liked.....fried zucchini with a marinara dipping sauce was one of the appetizers.......a HUGE tray and I am so thankfull she had 2 dogs!
Bevo4 at 10:32PM on 09/22/07
I find prawns to be truly awful, so it's unfortunate that people in Britain seem to have decided that they are the last word in culinary sophistication. Every dinner party I've gone to in the past few years has featured prawns in some form or other, from the retro (prawn coctail) to the aspirational (home made linguini with prawns and cream) to the homey (fish pie with prawns) to the exotic (prawn tempura). I have choked down all of these vile concoctions and many more with tears in my eyes and a forced smile upon my lips.
caley at 6:11AM on 09/23/07
My brother and I were guests of a Oaxcan family, and they served us a gelatin desert that truly grossed me out. It was in layers, opaque in places, and full of foreign objects. Lime jello is fine, but this was really bizarre. What could I do? We'd just met them and would be staying with them for 2 weeks. Also, my stepmom made a fruit salad once with avacados and a super sweet heavy dressing on it. Slimy! Again, what could I do? Small portions and speed eating are my tricks in such situations.
kathy in oakland at 12:25PM on 09/23/07
my mother-in-law makes lasagna with cottage cheese instead of ricotta. ich ich ichy.
squishy16 at 12:44PM on 09/23/07
If I'm out with my friends and everyone decides that we should dine at a place like Applebees or IHOP. Ew. In those cases, I order the least offensive on the menu and eat it grumpily, wishing that I had more foodie friends.
happybites at 3:24PM on 09/23/07
Three things come to mind, two from a trip to China some 15 years ago. Lunch in a workers' cafeteria featured something I can only think of as tiny little fish stewed in motor oil -- the oil was heavy and dark and had the texture of molasses but the smell of....of old fish. Vile. Later on the same trip I was invited to Sunday lunch at the home of a local government official, and this was a very big deal; I was a journalist and she made it clear that just a few years earlier she would have been arrested for inviting me to lunch. Anyway, lunch included 1000-year-old eggs, where the whites have taken on the color and consistency of brown jell-o -- not my fave. Also on the menu was what I've come to know as "bad-smell" bean curd, which...well, it's fermented for a long time, and it's not delicious to my taste. I managed to get those down, but the real killer, for me, was beautiful home-made steamed dumplings -- a vast pile of them, representing hours of fussy work -- stuffed with bits of lamb and long-stewed celery. Cooked celery in any guise makes me gag. Those were tough. I drank a LOT of tea.
The other was right at home, at the house of a friend who had recently converted to Macrobioticism, a factoid she had neglected to mention before inviting me to dinner. Dinner was a huge pile of undercooked brown rice, an an equally huge pile of limp, over-steamed broccoli and carrots and cabbage and other assorted veggies, all of it entirely innocent of fat, salt, or any seasoning whatsoever. She dished me up a heaping plateful, and I just...what can I tell you? It was worse than the putrid fish. It was also (to crib from Calvin Trillin, I think) one of the few times I have been grateful to find there was no dessert.
maggiesara at 4:54PM on 09/23/07
Tripe, soft shell crabs and brussel sprouts and anything with curry. For some reason it is a family traditon to serve brussel sprouts at Easter dinner. Now that I am a grown up I don't have to eat those sour little cabbages. I can't even look at tripe and the smell, yuck. My parents didn't force it on us growing up. Just about everything else was mandatory to eat (try it at least once was the motto). I have a 20 year background in restaurants and I have had the best chefs in NYC make soft shell crab for me and it is still like eating bugs! I can't imagine what it must be like to eat ortolan (which is now banned in europe).
Last week I want to a wine tasting that included the native cuisine of the country, South Africa. The food was very spicy and had a lot of curry. I tried to make a show of tasting some of the dishes since it was at the consulate and I had to be polite.
quaxo at 5:08PM on 09/23/07
This reminds me of the times I have been to gatherings & offered hors d'oeuvres that the host will not reveal the ingredients. I try to keep a napkin handy, excuse myself to the ladies room---however, sometimes these little morsels don't flush, either!
JEP at 7:02PM on 09/23/07
Recently, I was attending an event at a Casino/Resort. I got there far before the event actually started and was really hungry. The only option I had were typical (read questionable) food court offerings and an overpriced steakhouse serving meat of questionable (read unspecified )origin. I went with a baguette from Panera bread, a cup of cream cheese to spread on it, and a diet pepsi. Not bad, but not a balanced meal either.
coolname at 10:37PM on 09/23/07
Ugh - my in-laws are all terrible cooks. My grandmother-in-law cooks without any sugar. Ever. Sour apple pie, 'cheese'cake made with ricotta and no sugar or other flavours, sour (possibly fermenting) fruit drinks... So, so bad. That said, the perogies she makes almost makes up for it. Almost.
My mother-in-law believes that if you boil veggies for ages and then let them sit in the water and then heat them back up to a boil in the water than all the nutrients some how manage to swim back into the veggies. Seriously. Do you know what that DOES to an asparagus? Or what brussel sprouts taste like after being boiled for a minimum of 45 minutes? So, so bad.
Peasantwench at 11:01AM on 09/24/07
I'm generally an adventurous eater and like to think I can get down anything put in front of me. One day I went out for Korean food and felt like trying something new - Bo Sam.
The waitress looked nervous. "Do you know what that is? Generally only Korean people order it."
I assured her I was fine.
"It has oysters. Raw oysters."
Picturing oysters on the half shell, I said that was fine.
When the plate arrived, it held many slices of cold pork that looked like it had been boiled, plain rice, kimchi, cabbage leaves, and a bowl of raw oysters. I had never seen a whole bowl of raw oysters before, but I began to understand why the waitress seemed nervous. Just thinking of it makes me gag.
I choked down as much of it as I could, but it is definitely an acquired taste. I can't say I wasn't warned.
www.hundredthings.com at 11:25AM on 09/24/07
Anything with hard boiled eggs. I just don't care for the texture.
Dughis at 12:54PM on 09/24/07
Miracle Whip on sandwiches. Whenever my friend's mom would make lunch when we were little at the beach I would bite into the most sour tasting lunch. Yuck. It still makes me cringe.
sawyerriley at 1:44PM on 09/24/07
I have trouble choking down anything with a texture I don't like. When I come across vegetables that I don't care for, I eat them with the meat or rice or whatever comes with the meal. Once, I was at a friend's house, and embarrassingly, I choked because I had a ratio of too many string beans and too little pork in my mouth!
misseditor at 2:04PM on 09/24/07
Anything with raw onion in it, which is lots of things. I have been to summer cookouts and potlucks where seemingly every dish (especially "salads" - pasta, potato, egg) includes chunks of raw onion. For the sake of politeness, I'll take a dab of each, choke them down without chewing, and feign fullness. Raw onions are everywhere. Shudder.
producestories at 5:20PM on 09/24/07
One year for Passover, my stepmom made "lasagna" with matzoh boards in place of the noodles. She thought it was really creative, and that since we all like regular lasagna, we would like this too. I knew she worked hard to make it, so I choked down as much as I could. It was wrong in so many ways and for so many reasons.
Kerosena at 9:50PM on 09/24/07
Like "hundredthings," it was Korean--my encounter was a soup that included a lot of loose blood sausage, or maybe just clots of cooked blood. Some people like it, obviously, but to me it tastes like, well, a bad nosebleed. I ate some of it, just to ingrain it into my memory in case I might ever think to order it again (I did the same thing when I tried durian). But mostly I ate around the stuff, and the rest of the soup was pretty good. I certainly didn't put me off Korean food in general.
jscheck at 12:31AM on 09/25/07
i'm an adult, i don't have to eat anything i don't like.
olddad at 9:12AM on 09/25/07
my mil was the worst "southern cook" ever to grace the planet. the only thing she ever served that didnt make me sick was her canned green beans that is untill she served a bowl full that had soured.
huney_bumper at 2:00PM on 09/25/07
Definitely Miracle Whip on sandwiches. I agree with sawyer. Nothing but Hellman's for me!
Lavendergirl at 3:33PM on 09/25/07
Grandma's peanut butter lasagne. Ick. We needed about 10 pints of water to help us gag that down. She's a wonderful cook and also a nutritionist by trade, but sometimes her vegetarian meals are a little off the mark!
jennywenny at 3:53PM on 09/25/07
My mother makes Beef Stroganoff, and she uses beef tips that are frozen.
The meat is tough and I'm also not a big fan of mushrooms, so yeah. It's not my favorite meal, but I eat it just to make my mother happy.
kcorder3 at 3:57PM on 09/25/07
The most memorable time this happened to me was when I was a kid. When I was about 9 years old our neighbor had an attached apartment with an Iraqi man who rented it. His mother came over from Iraq to visit, and they invited the neighbors and I to a traditional Iraqi dinner. I thought I was going to die eating that food, but I tried to smile and eat as much as I could (yay good manners!) Later my neighbor's mother told me that she could tell I hated it, but at least I smiled politely the whole time. Now, as an adult, I wish there was anywhere in my town where I could eat traditional Middle Easter cuisine!
lo82070 at 6:37PM on 09/25/07
My mother likes her kale steamed. I can't stand it-- it's like having a mouthful of soggy, salty toilet paper. Eeugh.
Christina at 7:40PM on 09/25/07
My mother-in-law's Salisbury Steak. Made with nothing but hamburger and horseradish. No salt or anything else, it was disgusting. It was the only time in my life I've ever had to choke anything down.
vizzio at 7:54AM on 09/26/07