Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

When I was a kid, there was pretty much nothing I didn't like. I loved brussels sprouts, cabbage, dill pickles, broccoli, liver and onions, oxtails, and all kinds of seafood and any kind of cheese. Loved pickled herrings, and particularly the onions that went with them. Loved raw onions. Cream cheese and raw onion sandwiches were tasty. Loved sauerkraut. Loved raw hamburger and rare steaks. Loved cooked spinach drenched in lemon. Loved lemons...

Wasn't fond of peas, because we only had the canned stuff, but I'd eat them anyway. I loved fresh snow peas from the garden. When mom discovered frozen veggies, it was a wonderful thing to have green peas that weren't sad and mushy.

Oddly, I wasn't so fond of peanut butter and jelly, but I liked them separately. I also didn't like breakfast cereals when the got soggy. But since I was a painfully slow eater, most breakfast cereals were soggy by the time I got to the bottom of the bowl.

Didn't like strawberries until my dad explained that you didn't have to crunch down on the seeds. And then I loved 'em. Didn't like the skin on peaches, I preferred nectarines. Or peeled peaches. Loved cherries.

Didn't like shredded coconut or licorice candy (still don't) and developed an aversion to raisins. I'm still skeptical of raisins, but I could probably force one down if I had to. Not fond of jello, except that I liked to make it, and I would have drunk it warm, if that was allowed. Oddly, there was a short time in high school where I'd eat jello for lunch from the cafeteria, but I think that was more about how dismal the other choices were.

We usually had a big salad at dinner and large amounts of veggies. Went to a friend's house for dinner and her mom opened one of those half-size cans of green beans, and I was astounded. That was for both parents, my girlfriend and me (growing teens) and her little brother. I looked at that little can and thought my mom never bought anything that small, and she was just feeding my dad and me (she didn't eat dinner). I could have eaten that whole can myself, and would have been looking for more. When that tiny bowl of green beans got passed around the table, I was very careful to take just a little bit.

My very favorite snack when I was a kid was kidney beans. Yes, kidney beans. I'd drain a can, pour hot water on them and let 'em sit for a couple of minutes, drain, and pop in mouth. Delish. And honestly? I still love it.

Back home, one of the most delicious things in the world was very lightly steamed broc that you dipped into a sauce of mayo mixed with shoyu. I'm still addicted, but people are always like, huh? And it's not something that people tend to love unless they've grown up with it. But if they have? Sheer heaven.

barbeque chips with ketchup, awesome. canned corn. french fries dipped in mayo, not so odd in europe however. the list goes on and on...

White rice, the only way I would eat it is with pork and beans on top. I still don't like plain white rice, but will make and eat mexican or chinese fried rice, or rice pudding.

When in college I would eat onion, ketchup and mayo sandwiches.

Currently, I'm a salt, vinegar, pickle freak. My co-workers can't believe it when they see me eating pickled or cocktail onions, mini dills, pretzels dipped in celtic grey salt...and potted meat on crusty bread with butter. Also, currently I have a craving for oranges. I have an orange tree and have never eaten one from it before...now, my office is redolent with the inticing orange aroma as I have been eating at least 3 a day. Can't figure why!

I was that kid who ate carrots and celery--not in stocks, just the whole carrot or celery stalk. I also ate the sour clover/grass stuff that grows in the spring. My mom kept saying that the clover was going to make me sick, but it never did.
@lamora--I bought my current house because it had mature orange trees in the back yard, and the outher house I was considering didn't.

Oh, and by "biscuits" I mean "cookies".

For lunch in high school, I often ate cold chickpeas doused in balsamic vinegar. I also ate so many carrots that my hands and feet turned orange.
Hmm, what else...oh, I also loved tuna noodle casserole! Actually, I still do. Yum.

Gefilte fish with horseradish on saltines! I was about 6/7 the first time I can remember eating it. Loved cream cheese and jelly and still enjoy it. Marinated veggies, raw kohlrabi dipped in vinegar and salt, cheddar cheese and canned beet sandwiches and canned sardines where all in my repertoire before the age of 10.

I ate my spaghetti with ketchup instead of tomato sauce.

I loved these things as a kid and was surprised to find out kids my age thought they were gross:
brussel sprouts
onion sandwiches on a bialy with cream cheese
chopped liver
olives

Blutwurst-
Head cheese
Mac and Cheese w/ketchup on it.
Barbaqued potatoe chips that I would dip into apple sauce.
Red cabbage.
Pickled herring.
Brussel sprouts.
Meat sandwiches that had a hard boiled egg in it.
I still make all the stuff above, and love them.

Okay, here's a weird one from when I was a kid.

Nuteena (a peanut-based meat-substitute thing that comes in a can), sliced into half-rounds and laid in a baking dish so they overlap slightly.
Sauteed onion slices on top.
Canned, undiluted campbell's tomato soup over all.
Bake in the oven until hot & bubbly.
Yum!!

I loved it as a kid and would still love it now, if the Nuteena stuff was still available. Sadly, it is not. :(

I don't know if anyone else does this, but I dip my fries in a mayo/ketchup mixture .... ½ mayo - ½ ketchup.

wierd to one person may not be wierd to someone else, of course. right now on Serious Eats photograzing there's a shot of a 'pickle and ice cream cupcake'. That's a bit wierd, no?

Peanut butter and shredded carrot sandwiches. As an adult I've modified them by using toasted ww bread and mixing the peanut butter with a little cinnamon and honey. Also good with dried cranberries mixed into the carrots.

My weirdest childhood snack was handfuls of fennel leaves grabbed from the plants that grew wild out of the sidewalk. I loved that intense anise taste. For all I know, a dog could have peed on those plants. My mom was horrified. Also honeysuckle blossoms off of the trees and wild lemongrass and mint. I loved to eat the garden, what can I say.

Mom wouldn't buy cream cheese, but I had cream cheese and jelly bagels at a friend's house and loved them. We used to have peanut butter and celery sandwiches packed in our lunch boxes. Celery was diced. Might have to make one now!

Ricotta and Jelly (Dad worked for Polly-O for 38 years)
Cottage Cheese and Jelly (Mom was perpetually on a diet and we actually liked cottage cheese)
And honestly, Cream Cheese and Jelly is not such a stretch :D

Mackerel & Onions with Vinegar (got a lot of WTF looks for that one)
Canned Salmon Salad (think tunafish) Sandwiches
Broccoli Stems (Bro and I favored the stems v. the florets and mom used to say she felt like Morticia Adams who'd buy roses for the thorns.)
Romaine lettuce in salads - before it was chic. The rest of my friends' moms were serving iceberg.

In the "it doesn't sound nasty now but did as a kid" department, bro and I looooved mom's Liver & Onions. She was the only one in the neighborhood who would cook the onions to within an inch of their lives but only briefly saute the liver. It was delicious and to this day, I love it that way.

We used to eat braunschweiger and green onion sandwiches. So many people didn't (and still don't) know what braunschweiger is. I haven't had it in years though.

Also as a kid I sipped vinegar and pickle juice and sucked on bouillon cubes.

@ all who like cream cheese & jelly - are you from the East Coast? my mom grew up in Burlington MA, just outside of Boston and she said everyone ate it.... but here in Ohio it seems like i am the only one who eats it. my entire dorm floor was kind of grossed out by it, but once they tried it, they loved it!

headcheese and mustard sandwiches...
salad sandwiches
broccoli sandwiches
snails--my grandfather & I eating snails cooked in a tomato based sauce with a toothpick--aah, good memories
tripe--
and every now and again--my grandpa would give me ("sneak" actually) a cherry soaked in brandy!! I loved those!

@smokey07 - We're variations on the same theme, there! Not sure I'd return to my former ritual, but I might give yours a shot sometime!! ;)

When I was little I was a horribly picky eater, but loved the following:
*Peanut butter on hotdogs. WTF? My mom still likes this, but I don't eat hotdogs anymore.
*White rice with margarine and brown sugar. I once sneezed with this concoction in my mouth. The aftermath was not pretty.
And I ate so much peanut butter and jelly I'm surprised I didn't turn into one.

@gutreactions I'm truly shocked that people are grossed out by cream cheese and jelly! I thought that was a classic combination!

Pasta with ketchup is also a favorite at home when we ran out of tomato sauce, especially cheese ravioli with ketchup... yum!
I also mix mayo and ketchup and dip french fries, or put it over grilled chicken, or meat. It makes everything taste better. In Argentina we call it Salsa Golf.

I used to count down the days until Thanksgiving so I could eat the turkey neck. My grandfather used to love it, and I idolized him, so while everyone else was chowing down on slices of honeydew melon for their appetizer, we sat and picked the neck meat out from in between the vertebrae. Mmmm....deliciously disgusting.

I also loved lima beans, brussells sprouts, cream cheese and salami sandwiches, and cottage cheese on toasted English muffins. I HATED anything that was food you couldn't chew, i.e. pudding, yogurt, jello, etc.

As a child, I could not abide cream cheese and jelly or pbj - any of those alone were fine but combining them was just wrong. I love pbj's today, but only with raspberry or strawberry jam.

Cream cheese and black olive sandwiches - now those made me swoon. And I was and still am a big spinach eater.

In elementary school my mom would pack me a lunch of one hard boiled egg, one large pickle, and liverwurst on whole wheat bread. I thought it was awesome, the other kids thought I was a giant weirdo. I now fondly refer to it as my old man lunch.

@sfgoo--Ritz crackers and cream cheese and jelly--now that's weird! Everyone knows that Ritz only go with peanut butter, plain butter, and cubed cheese. Maybe honey, if I'm being liberal ;)

Okay, the cream cheese and jelly got elevated in my home as my dad started the "sandwich" with butter.Sorry, delicious.
@Joeqboo--braunschweiger was and still is a favorite of mine. Pile it high wth onions and mustard on rye, oooooo!
@dbcurrie--we were seperated at birth, there is nothing on your list
I've not grown up on and do not stil eat till this day.
@MicaBArg--when we were under the weather my mom's go to was not chicken soup, but buttered noodles with parsley and ketchup. Gotta tell ya,
one or
twice a year I find myself craving this.

I made tuna sandwiches with solid white albacore, green onions, S & P, two hard boiled eggs and plenty of mayo (Hellman's), all mashed up together on whole wheat - everyone wanted to trade with me but it wasn't worth it!

My dad made us fried baloney and hot dog relish sandwiches. Occasionally fried Spam and egg sandwiches, too. Always on Wonder Bread smeared with butter. He also believed in making gravy out of any and all "meat leavings". Hamburger gravy had to be the worst. Liberal sprinklings of Lawrey's Seasoned Salt on baked chicken or pork chops. Those little cans of deviled ham with Velveeta on rye rounds. And yet, our cholesterol levels are below average. Go figure...

As a treat when we were kids, our grandmother used to put peanut butter on white bread and cover it with maple syrup. I would never dream of eating it now, but as kids, we couldn't eat enough of it. It probably had something to do with the fact that Grandma was making it.

I had cream cheese and jelly sandwiches ALL the time! I still eat it!

Salted orange slices. I still like them salted. When I was a kid I loved sour cream and garlic salt in a rolled up flour tortilla. The shock of the fake tasting garlic salt did it for me. Another thing I ate as a kid was slices of American cheese, cut up and smooshed between vanilla wafers.

I used to (and uh, basically still do) POUR hot sauce over my food...and sop up the remainder with a good piece of crusty bread.

I once had my friends over for a snack after school...I chopped the top off a clove of garlic and roasted it in the oven. I then spread the buttery smooth garlic over bread slices. They looked at me like I had six heads. I eat so much garlic...if my BF wasn't a fellow garlic hound, I might have major issues. I probably stink to everyone around me.

Provolone cheese around a pickle spear, YUM.

Cinnamon bread with mozzarella as a grilled cheese. It is amazing.

I also used to pour olive oil and vinegar over croutons and eat it.

I love Cream Cheese & Jelly. Still eat it today. If it is weird, so be it.

@lo82070 - I will definitely try that! Sounds yummy!

Speaking of imbibing condiments...

In elementary school I remember always drinking the pickle juice from an empty pickle jar (sometimes I'd get impatient waiting for the pickles to be eaten and I'd just plop a straw in...if only I understood food safety), taking a swig of any balsamic or Italian dressing in the fridge, and eating ketchup straight up out of the bottle. I'm sure any household epidemics could have been traced back to me.

Not me, but my 8 year old refuses to eat peas unless they are frozen. She's also been obsessed with corned beef since she was 3...but she hates spices and seasonings--makes no sense!

my dad would cook canned corned beef with onions, tomatoes, and potatoes, then serve over rice. it's still one of my favorites.

As a kid I would not eat: bell peppers, onions, avocado, salsa or lima beans. I still won't eat avocados. Yet I would eat: squid, snails, frog legs (mom was an adventurous cook), pickled pigs feet, almost any green veggie (especially spinach and asparagus). My favorite thing (still) to put on pancakes and waffles: a mixture of equal parts maple syrup and crunchy peanut butter.

As a kid I loved Oreos, but I only liked the white filling. I'd eat the filling then toss out the cookies.

Now that I'm older, I don't find a lot of the foods posted weird or anything. In fact, I've gotta try some of these combos!

LOVED canned fish, especially sardines in tomato sauce or Chinese dace with the black beans (fermented soybeans?). I used to eat all the beans out of the can - I thought I was sneaky and swiped a few beans...until they were all gone.

I grew up eating liver, pork blood, offal, duck feet, chicken feet, fish cheeks, etc - and I loved it all. I still love perfectly prepared tripe and offal. I pretty much tried everything a few times.

My grandma would make soup and give me to carcass to snack on. Boiled chicken or other poultry dipped in soy sauce. Grandma would also give me a boiled potato and I'd dip slices of that into salt. When I cooked ramen and hot dogs, I'd pierce my hot dogs with shards of ramen so the noodles would be floppy after cooking. Also loved ketchup sandwiches.

Classmates always thought I had weird food. Processed ham and cheese sandwiches still makes me sick to this day.

As a kid, I would only eat the broccoli stems not the trees. Oh, and boiled carrots and potatoes.

Pickle and mustard sandwiches. Preferably on rye.

Canned hominy. And the best junk food? Colby cheese and crunchy Chee-tos, a bit of both in each bite.

My mom tells me I adored sardines as a toddler. I much preferred raw ground beef to cooked, so while everyoen else had hamburgers, I had raw meat shaped into patty form. My pediatrician said it was okay.

@chisai and hmw0029-thank you so much for validating my mayo and soy sauce combination. I loved to spread it on toast for after school snacks. Never tried it on veggies though...

Whenever we had hotdogs as a kid we usually had a salad. I used to scoop up my baked beans with my cucumbers. I still do it to this day!

When I was a kid and my mom was making any kind of cabbage dish, I would beg for the core. She'd give me pieces of it, but I'd keep asking...I loved eating it raw, and still do.

If I'm cooking cauliflower and not cooking it whole, I save the core and eat that raw, but the cabbage one is better. Unless of course the cabbage is really old and the core has gotten fibrous, then you need to peel off the outer layer and just eat the core of the core.

Mmmmm....I'm weird.

Mint chocolate chip ice cream with pineapple topping! Don't know why it works . . . but something about the combo makes a whole new and unexpected flavor.

Cream cheese and orange marmalade, on a toasted bagel. Thats still a favorite. Banana, peanut butter and potato chip sandwichs made on squishy wonder white bread. My parents always gave us slices of whatever was left of last nights loaf of italian bread, slathered with butter and dunked in a cup of coffee used for just this purpose. Really never thought it was weird until I stayed over a friends house and their parents wouldn't give me coffee to dunk my toast. Funniest thing is, I never drink coffee, I just use it as a condiment.

I thought cream cheese and jam was normal? I can't have a bagel with cream cheese WITHOUT jam. My healthier version is whole wheat toast with jam and cottage cheese on top for breakfast a few days a week. I've lived in Los Angeles my whole life. Am I alone here?

@dbcurrie: The core is the best! It's kind of sweet wouldn't you say? I always wondered why people cut off the broccoli stem too, and just eat the "trees". They are totally missing out!

Mustard of all varieties especially the 365 organic stone ground yellow from whole foods, super acidic and tangy. Yummy. I just got my Mom into dipping her chips into grey poupon, sooo much better than ketchup!

As a kid my father often brought home quarts of soup, onion rolls, blintzes and pierogen from Ratner's. I loved the food and so looked forward to those meals but there was always a slightly embarrassing aspect if friends were around. I felt like the kid who's parents had the "weird" food. I never knew how to explain it.

I would kill for a Ratner's meal today!

Lets see... strange things I used to eat:

White rice, butter, sugar, and milk... to form a type of soup/porridge I guess. I used to absolutely love it as a kid, but either I can't find the right ratio now or I have just learned it's horrible :D

I also used to really like fried eggs with sugar... not all the time of course, but once every few months. I have my aunt to blame for it... she made me eggs like that once, and only later did I learn she thought it was salt.

I like dipping my french fries into honey. I blame being a kid and not liking ketchup for that- also fast food places offering honey alongside ranch dressing and barbecue sauce..

One of my current guilty pleasures (mostly because I don't eat much sweets nowadays) is a honey bun with a layer of peanut butter shoved into the freezer for a bit- just enough for it to have a chewier texture. I've tried it with a bunch of different kinds of honey buns, and most honey buns really really suck- I seem to be stuck using one particular brand I always get at SAM's Club... and yet I can't remember the brand name. I'm screwed if they stop carrying it! Haha!

Cottage cheese and applesauce, mixed together, was a childhood staple and something I still adore, although I now throw in some walnuts for crunch.

I remember that I used to like to eat raw oatmeal and raw dried spaghetti. I don't know how I got started on it, but I remember putting it in some of my play dishes and having it as a snack.

When I was barely 2 I had my first taste of homemade Italian salami. I became obsessed!!! I remember sneaking down the stairs of my Nona's house to her pantry hoping that the adults all in the kitchen wouldn't catch me trying get more salami, or sammy as I called it. They caught me and I was mortified! Fortunately they eventually understood what Sammy meant and I got me some more salami!! oh I also obsessed over anchovies and pickled herring. mmmmmm

ALSO when I was 6 I was obsessed with pomegranates and took one to school (cut in half of course)with me as often as possible. One day my mom forgot to cut it and I was horrified. I cried and cried... When I tell this story to a friend they usually can't believe I actually took pomegranates to school regularly.....

olives - basic black and green and other varieties - as an adult i've met many people who tell me they don't like or didn't like olives till recently - this is hard to imagine for me - black and green were always part of the spread at my Italian grandmother's house on Sunday's and all the kids basically "inhaled" them.

artichokes - my mom's stuffed artichokes - there is nothing in the world like them except maybe the Little Italy recipe she originally recreated them from - i think she may have improved it!

broccoli rabe - olive oil, fresh garlic, red pepper flakes - enough said - I still can't get my hubby to eat this though.

baccala - stewed in tomato sauce, with whole green olives - nothing like it

i loved jelly and cream cheese sandwiches! i also loved peanut butter...with honey or fluff - but these were only special treats i got to have at friend's houses because my mom didn't buy those ingredients.

she did buy those pre-made scallion pancakes at the asian market and for extra "protein" would melt a slice of cheddar cheese on top! another favorite treat was melted cheddar cheese in a bowl (yup, that's it), dried apricots and prunes, and the occasional bowl of lucky charms.

We had cream cheese and jelly sandwiches, too! I thought it was a normal combination, but have since found no one (till this) who ever even thought of it. School lunch (packed in paper bags, or in Roy Rogers/Dale Evans lunch boxes) were the same 5 sandwiches every week: tuna salad,egg salad, bologna, cheese, and the cream cheese/or peanutbutter and jelly. And a banana or apple, and a little box of raisins. Milk in the thermos (if it didn't break). I never missed one day of school from 1st grade (we didn't have Kindergarten then) through college for being sick.
As far as strange foods, my siblings and I always laugh about one thing my non-cook mother served us: canned tomatoes over a slice of white bread, as a side dish at dinner. I started cooking for the family by the time I was 12, just because I knew food could be better than what Mom made!

Kids sure eat some wacky pairings, and sometimes tap into something that later becomes a food fashion. At about age 8-10, pure heaven was having my own jar (DelMonte, maybe?) of Queen Anne Cherries. I could eat the entire jar as my afternoon snack. Not sure if they are still available in a jar, but they appear in the produce section of Whole Foods at a whopping $9 per pound on occasion. Other fav was a can of Dromedary Date Nut Bread, spreading the slices with cream cheese or butter. I always thought my food cravings as a kid were pretty weird, but after reading these postings -- well, other kids' favs were just as out there.

I've eaten braunschweiger on a cinnamon raisin bagel. This came about when, as a child, I was starving on the way home from the grocery store and this was the only thing I could eat readily in the car. I won't eat braunschweiger anymore, mostly because I now know what's in it :(

Koegel Red Hots (spicey pickled bologna), just grab one out of the jar and bite into it, perfect with a couple saltine crackers... I still get lemon faces all around when I eat them, I find them fantastic!!!

low calorie/diet jell-o
pickles... and pickle vinegar. I love drinking it, and recently discovered my mom does too... Its just something NO ONE EVER sees.
mustard. Yeah... just mustard.
mayo... on pizza, and potato chips, and lots of other things.

There are more, just can't remember them now.

@blackliquorice I used to eat the garden as well... loved clover and bitter plants, and light colored roses. Yum... I guess the strangest were ants though... I used to head to the front of the house with tweezers and a magnifying glass - then proceed to pick out the biggest ones and scorch them before eating. Crunchy!

when i was a kid i loved, loved, loved chicken gizzards and livers.

PS Cream cheese & jam is not weird. I used to pick up lunch for the guys I worked with at a cycle shop & they always got cream cheese & jam on a toasted bagel

My mom and dad are both into very healthy eating. My mom was raised a vegetarian, so growing up, we didn't eat as much meat as the average American family probably does. My brothers and I used to be so embarrased by some of the types of sandwiches we'd get in our lunch. We used to try to hide them to avoid being made fun of by other kids.
Most notable in my mind is a linkett, cheese and pickle sandwich.
For those of you who don't know, a linkett is this type of canned fake hot dog like think made by Loma Linda Foods.

Linkett picture

There's a picture if anyone's that interested. Anyway, the sandwich filling involved grating up the linketts and the cheese, cutting up little pieces of pickle and mixing it up with mayo so it was like a spread. I used to be so mortified whenever I'd get this in my lunch, even though I actually loved it.

I haven't had that in years...Now that I'm thinking about it, I want to make some!

-Sara

There's nothing weird about cream cheese and jelly sandwiches, especially when they're on dark rich pumpernickel. Yum.

Nothing extreme here. Just odd.... french fries dipped in apple sauce. Chicken nuggets dipped in mashed potatoes..... like it was a condiment. And ketchup buns... learned that one from Mummy.

PS: LOVED dots, and hated pizza as a kid.

I still love cream cheese and jelly sandwiches, especially on a nice fresh kaiser roll. Also, cream cheese and chopped green olives. MMMMMMMMM!!!

Every day for lunch during my junior & senior year of high school I brought 2 4 ounce ostrich burgers & a sliced bell pepper to school! Everyone was always so curious and asking for bites! I am not really a SHARING type person so NOPE, I ate it all myself! lol