Food OCD
I came upon this topic last week on smitten kitchen and it's urked me ever since. It was regarding dunking cookies/biscotti into a liquid.
I've come to notice that alot of people, like myself cannot deal with the crumbs that are left behind in the milk/coffe and find it just plain gross.
My food OCD is
dunking cookies into milk. Can't deal with a soggy cookie and crumbs.
digestice cookies in tea. They disintegrate, it's just plain gross.
a plate that is served on one side hot pasta and the other salad. Can't deal with the 2 temperatures. Salad must come in a seperate dish!
Lets hear about your food OCD, cause I know I'm not the only one out there.
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30 Comments:
my dear jen, to some things there is just an art to doing it
jobug_tincher at 2:48PM on 08/04/08
I can't drink milk unless I'm the one who pours it and it's ice cold. Even at home, I usually don't drink the last half a sip. For some reason, my brain thinks it's contaminated.
I'm really OCD about leaving food out for too long, especially if it's meat from the grill or dairy that could spoil. Most of my friends couldn't care less, so they eat it and feel fine. Maybe it's my anxiety that makes me feel sick after eating food I'm unsure about...
LiveToEat at 2:49PM on 08/04/08
LiveToEat - I'm with you! In culinary school they taught us all kinds of scary things about spoiled food, so I can't leave anything out for any length of time. My husband thinks I'm nuts!
Also, I'm weird about raisins. I love them on their own, in baked goods, in hot cereal. But raisins in cold cereal turns my stomach. I couldn't eat a bowl of Raisin Bran if you held a gun to my head! Can't explain why.
CookiePie at 2:54PM on 08/04/08
Oh you're not the only one! I would never be able to drink my tea or milk if there were crumbs floating in it...no way!
I also need a separate salad bowl - always! It's not the temperature that bothers me (after all, I do enjoy a spoonful of cold sour cream with my hot latkes), I can't stand it when the salad dressing gets mixed into my other foods. So if I, for instance, have a dinner consisting of: a steak with chimichurri sauce, green salad and quinoa, I'll end up having three separate plates as the green salad has always its own bowl, and I won't want my chimichurri sauce on anything other than the steak either. That is not to say that I always want everything completely separated, some foods' "togetherness" doesn't bother me - like mash and gravy, or sauce over plain brown rice. But some foods are just not supposed to be together...not on my plate, anyway!
brooke29 at 3:10PM on 08/04/08
I can't eat a salad given to me on a warm plate. I don't like anything hot with my ice cold salad. For instance, taco salad with hot chili, not happening here. Also, I have to put my own dressing on the salad. If I am served a salad with dressing, I can't eat it. I guess I have OCD salad issues.
izatryt at 4:08PM on 08/04/08
Cold thick sauces. Inexplicable. They just seem so...threatening. So unfathomable. And that slimy-cold texture and temperature...What goes IN to them, anyways? So on the rare occasions I eat salad (I like mah veggies cooked), even though I know that dressing makes it taste better, I scrape as much as possible off so that I'm not hit with a mouthful of cold glop. Uggggghhhhhhhh.
The only exclusion to this rule is ketchup--even mayo is suspect.
Pammeh at 4:12PM on 08/04/08
i don't like it when my foods touch. i don't want to take a bite of one thing combined with another thing on my place. even stuff that probably should be eaten together like stuffing and mashed taters.
ceforrester at 4:15PM on 08/04/08
I won't eat the last bite of banana. That part right at the bottom that's always (or so it seems) just a bit brown and seedy. Yuck.
luswim06 at 4:31PM on 08/04/08
I can't see bread upside down. i.e. A baguette. If it's face down, I will turn it face up. Same with sandwiches. If they are on a baguette (or something with an obvious bottom) I will turn them right side up.
therealchiffonade at 4:38PM on 08/04/08
This one is fun to read!
I like to dunk my cookies and such in milk, but I can't drink the milk. I can't really drink milk at all, and it is not taste. It is an unexplainable thing. And I can't watch someone drink milk from a clear glass, something about the way it coats the drinking vessel...yet I have no issues sloshing it about for cooking. And if I see people share a glass of milk? Ew.
That is the only issue I have with it, something about it being drunk, not the milk itself.
Other than that I can't think of much that bugs me....
I like when food touches...you can get interesting flavors that way! :p
sadiepix at 4:47PM on 08/04/08
i hate when my food touches. hate it. even mashed potatos and gravy. The gravy should be in a separate bowl so that i can dip my fortful of mashed potato into the gravy. ketchup all over the french fries? i wont eat the fries.
terabithia at 5:00PM on 08/04/08
i like to think of myself as a pretty easy-going food person - i love mixing everything on my plate together and drinking crumbly cookie milk - but i would have to say that my one ocd thing is cold soup. gross, i don't get it. it just realllly irritates me - why would people want soup cold?? that may not be so much "ocd" as "something i hate" but still.
sarahlucy at 5:17PM on 08/04/08
I was being all proud of myself and thinking that I'm not OCD about food, but then the baguette comment got me thinking. I used to be a little OCD about having condiments spread evenly to the edges of the bread, and I used to eat around the edges to trim hanging bits of lettuce or whatever, then eat all the crust, then eat the middle. But I've gotten over that (pats self on back).
But here's the weird one. The food needs to be in a certain arrangement on the plate. I can't even explain what it is, but there's a certain relationship of meat/entree, potato/starch, and veggie/salad/other that makes the plate have a proper orientation in relationship to the eater.
Thinking about it, I can't tell you what that order is, but if you get a plate of food in a restaurant, there's usually an obvious front and back (or top and bottom) to the dish. Does this make sense?
At home, when I serve myself the food, it goes in the proper order by habit, but I can recall once when I put the veggies in the wrong place in relation to the spuds, and I actually moved them. It just bugged me seeing them in the wrong place. And it wasn't a matter of spinning the plate, it had to do with which one was clockwise to the other.
Even crazier, now that I'm thinking about it, I can't tell you what should go where. But if I left the table and you spun my plate by 45 degrees, I guarantee that I would spin it back.
In a way, I guess it's like looking at an abstract painting and just knowing which is the top of the painting.
Hi, my name is DB and I suffer from food orientation OCD.
dbcurrie at 5:46PM on 08/04/08
Count me into the no food touching club, with the exception of Thanksgiving foods, which I think taste pretty good mixed.
I do not enjoy wet/soggy bread, so I'm not a dunker. Again with the exception of crackers or croutons in soup.
I tend to finish all of one thing before moving on to the next on my plate instead of moving around and eating in random order.
I don't finish the last bite of banana either!
bobcatsteph3 at 5:58PM on 08/04/08
i really don't have a food ocd but my grandfather has one that cracks me up. you CAN NOT cut a stick of butter crooked. it better be straight, not at an angle, not sliced horizontally from the top. it better be perfect and without any crumbs on the stick of butter or there is hell to pay.
evilchefmom at 6:30PM on 08/04/08
DB, I am with you on condiments and bread. I hate hate hate a sandwich with a blob of mustard in the middle, or toast that isn't evenly buttered...I guess I figure if you're going to bother with the condiments at all, you should spread them out. Part of this is probably that I eat peanut butter toast every morning and I am careful to make a perfectly smooth coat that goes to the edge. Though, of course, it never seemed weird to me until I really started thinking about just how precise I am about it.
producestories at 7:47PM on 08/04/08
This thread made me think of every bad corporate/student buffet or banquet I ever went to--coagulated, lukewarm ziti served next to warm salad, dinner roll thrown on top randomly, kept out and probably sneezed on for far too long...
HeartofGlass at 7:52PM on 08/04/08
I am not and have never been a member of the dunker party.
I don't like stuff floating in anything I drink and I do not drink milk.
I do not slurp my cereal milk either. I splash some on and moisten it and when I am done the cereal there is NO more milk.
I guess I have it too.
JerzeeTomato at 9:51PM on 08/04/08
can't have cereal with milk together in one bowl... hate the soggy cereal texture. Cereal is poured separately in a mug with the accompanying drink in a separate glass.
won't eat an over-ripened banana... can't stand it. Only just ripened or slightly underripe bananas here.
never thought about it before... but I also turn sandwiches right side up if one side of the bread is clearly the top end. and the lettuce/tomato combo need to be the top half of teh sandwich. I think it just looks and tastes better that way.
Madelyn
KarmaFreeCooking
MadelynRodriguez at 10:53PM on 08/04/08
Hee hee, a couple of months ago, in the thread about "strange eating habits", I wrote about how whenever I use any kind of a spread/butter/salad/whatever on a slice of bread/cracker/etc., the entire surface has to be covered evenly. Always. I was hoping that it wasn't a part of a food-related OCD, but now I suspect it is.
I guess I won't be getting into the whole thing of how different-coloured/flavoured anything (jelly babies, M&M's, etc) should be eaten again:-). Butrflygirly, where are you sister?:-)
brooke29 at 11:21PM on 08/04/08
I grew up spreading mayo/butter/whatever to the edge of the bread. I was babysitting- I must have been 16 or so- and making a pb&j for the girl, something I didn't eat myself. I was so frustrated with getting the stuff to the edge, but I did it, and then realized she was WATCHING me... and I said "What's wrong?" and she said, "You do it so PERFECT! I LOVE it!" but it was the first time it occurred to me that perhaps people don't do things that way elsewhere.
Also about sandwiches, if you smush my sandwich, it's over, I'm not eating it. Well, maybe, but I really cannot stand smushed bread. I pick out my loaf of bread and then put it somewhere in the cart where nothing will smash it. My bf once tipped the milk carton on top of it after we were already paid and done and I made him go inside and ask to exchange it because I will not eat smashed bread. It makes it harder to put things on it if you're trying to pull it back into its proper shape. Bah.
Lately, I've noticed when I make food, it has to look good on the plate... but I can't think of any other big issues I have with food.
PS to the person who said they used to nibble around the sandwich to "trim" the excess hangover meat/lettuce/what-have-you : me too. I don't eat white bread sandwiches anymore so I find this happens less but I still eat the crust first (because I hate it) and then eat the middle. Hahahaha.
feistyfoodie at 10:57AM on 08/05/08
@Brooke: Hi sister!! I am here. :) I've been sooo busy lately haven't had time to be near a computer. But I am back in action. I was hoping you would be on this thread. We could definitely go on with this...
Oh boy, I am a member of OCD for Food Anon. It's bad-or at least that's what others say. To me, normal.
~No food can touch. If it were up to me, there would be a separate bowl for everything.
~Skittles/M&M's: one flavor color at a time. Can't be too many of one item either-and they are all separated.
~Trail Mix: Again laid out. Can't have too much of one thing-if I do, the bulk item gets eaten first so there are even amounts dispersed.
~Sandwiches/Toast/Crackers: Spread MUST be on every inch. Can't be eaten otherwise. How hard is this to accomplish??
~Oatmeal and Raisins should not be synonymous with cookies
~Nothing can be uneven. I take one bite of everything. Separately.
~If juices run from something and touch another food-I won't touch the food tainted.
~Fries with Ketchup on top? No thanks. I want to dip.
~Nuts do not belong in anything but trail mix. They are to be eaten by themselves to truly enjoy. Do not put nuts in Brownies.
~Do not try to "hide" foods I do not like. I will taste/find them and I will say I told you so...
Maybe I should stop now...
Butrflygirly at 11:29AM on 08/05/08
@Butrflygirly ~ Me thinks you've eaten too much MONKfish! Do you also solve murder mysteries?? LOL out loud!
PerkyMac at 11:41AM on 08/05/08
@Perky: HaHaHa...I like the reference. Very nice. My parents still wonder how they had a child like me. I am the only one like this-my brother is not anything like I am regarding food, he'll eat anything.
*I must clarify: I've been near a computer-just not able to do things for pleasure. :)
Butrflygirly at 11:50AM on 08/05/08
@Butrflygirly - Hi there, thanks for listing it all, I was getting too lazy:-).
It's funny, my Other Half always claims that I'm more Monkish than Monk...in fact, he took that test for me on the USA site and it pretty much confirmed it:-). But I'm not as bad, really. I just happen to think that there is a right way to do many things (including eating M&M's, spreading butter on a slice of bread and bagging groceries:-)) and a wrong one, that's all.
brooke29 at 12:21PM on 08/05/08
@Brooke: Yes. You are sooo very right. There is a right way and a wrong way. Plain and simple.
Butrflygirly at 2:34PM on 08/05/08
I'm with the temperature people. I hate it when I get take out and the salad is in the same bag as the hot stuff. I pretty much get anxious when I take anything to go. I am afraid that the food is going to get ruined or cold or melted or whatever. I catered a dissertation at University of Michigan, but l prepared all of the food at my home which was 1 hour away. I was SO nervous on the way to the college that something would happen to the food. I also can't bring drive-thru fast food home and eat it. I either have to eat it at the restaurant or in the car.
smile at 3:43AM on 08/06/08
Wellllllll...I wont eat anything with condiments on it ( such as ketchup, mustard, mayonnaise, thousand island dressing...you get the drift)..I wont even eat a fry if a drop of ketchup already touched it and the same with sandwiches, salads ( I eat em plain or only with balsamic vinegar ).
I love peanut, and peanut butter, but I would not eat it in sauce form.
Oh, and I dont like mixing my food, like when I eat a chocolate sundae from McDonalds I will not mix the chocolate sauce and vanilla ice cream together. The same with chicken porridge and noodles.
nindi_18 at 6:03AM on 08/06/08
Man, you people are crazy. ;)
Stufsocker at 10:51AM on 08/06/08
@Stufsocker ~ Isn't everyone a little..........CRAZY?
izatryt at 10:54AM on 08/06/08