Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

lets just say when mommy is gone and it is boys night in ...bring on the ribs and wings!

Liver and kidney. BF doesn't like them (despite my best efforts). I also need to be careful that I don't make spicy foods too hot because otherwise he gets the hiccups!

Salad with any lettuce other than iceberg and romaine. My husband, dad and brother won't eat anything else... and trust me, romaine was a stretch!

liver (good to know it's common) and chicken gizzard.

Broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, Brussels sprouts, cucumber, watermelon. Given that my bf will eat anything else I make, no matter how weird, I consider myself lucky that the list is this short. (And he's tried over and over again to like broccoli & Brussels sprouts in various preparations, because he knows how much I like them - just hates the stuff, though.)

Sadly, my bf is a fairly picky eater. If I'm cooking for the two of us, I avoid all seafood, soup (yes, soup!), onions, peppers, mushrooms, asparagus, and most condiments, including mustard, mayonnaise, and ketchup. He used to also dislike spicy food, though he has come around of late. Of course, I use all of these ingredients when I cook for myself, and sometimes in a larger dish if I'm fed up by his limitations.

Oh, man. What DO I cook? Off the top of my head, things I avoid cooking (or cook much, much less than I would) because I am way too nice include:
chicken/turkey, eggplant, beans, brown rice, soba noodles, quinoa, pretty much every whole grain, soft tofu (he prefers the ultra-firm so I use that almost all the time), curry (he liked it for awhile, then got sick of it. but I want it back), salmon, beets, sweet potatoes, winter squash, any fruit except sometimes blackberries. Also, I have discovered that his spice tolerance is lower than mine. Being that he loves spicy food, it took nearly killing him a couple of times to realize this. He also has this great habit of being "polite" and making me figure out what foods he doesn't like.

There's more. What gets worse is that I'm lactose intolerant and pretty much everything he wants to cook is really heavy on the dairy. Pretty much anything with salt tastes too salty too me and any amount of sugar tastes sickly sweet.

We both like to cook and we both go crazy over what we can't make. But we're up to a dozen or so dishes that we both really like. Which is pretty good, since we lived on 3-4 meals and take-out for awhile there.

I adjust the amount of heat, spice and garlic down if I have guests. I try to prepare foods they will enjoy and suit their dietary needs- vegan, lactose intolerant, food allergies, simple like-dislikes, etc.

But not because I'm too nice.

My mom generally refuses to eat anything with either lamb meat or goats' milk cheeses, though oddly she is willing to eat both goat meat and sheeps' milk cheeses. Dad doesn't really like cooked carrots at all, and anything Asian is too unfamiliar to him. I don't cook for them often, but I do find these sorts of things somewhat limiting when I do.

Ex hated cheese ( I know that was a GIANT Red flag) so even though I adore baked mac and cheese, I didnt have it for more than 15 yrs. Never again. SO doesnt like mushrooms, but I still cook them for myself and thats fine with both of us.

Flipping the coin & chatting from the other side of the fence... A watermelon, jicama, cuke, and red onion salad is on the menu tonight. I prepped it, but I won't eat it because several of the ingredients don't agree with me.

It's an accompaniment to some chicken, cheese, mushroom & onion quesadillas. I'll sub baby spinach for the arugula, use the left over grilled chicken, and cook them up in my homemade flour & corn meal tortillas.

Very nice that DH scans the mags (like the current Cooking Light) and catalogues for recipe ideas.

Mac and cheese here as well (surprised it's come up so often, I always thought that everyone loved it), and any kind of Mexican food that involves a tortilla (I'd say Mexican food in general but honestly it slips past most of the time, so long as there isn't a tortilla in the picture). He just doesn't like them. Also, cornbread.

And pancakes, which makes me sad.

Spicy food, REAL mexican (anything that doesn't come from Taco Time, Taco Bell or Taco del Mar), eggs in any form except for scrambled with cheese, mayo, dark meat chicken, potatoes that are not mashed and served with gravy, brown rice, mac and cheese that doesn't come from the blue box, mochi, custard, ganache, rice noodles (but loves pho - Thanh Brothers only), pudding, fish sauce, liver, chicken gizzards.

This isn't cooking but it's something I wish more people would do...I don't burn popcorn in the office microwave. That smell sticks around days. As for real cooking, it's just me so I cook what I want. I just try to bring "less smelly" leftovers to work for lunch and if I do bring something even a little bit smelly (this week was portobello and beef stew), I eat it in the lounge off the hallway, not in the break room that is right off the main admin area.

Liver and onions.
anything thats too Vinegary
Brussel Sprouts
smoked oysters from a can.

EGGPLANT. one time the BF puked like 5 years ago after i made him eggplant parm (funny -- everyone else was JUST fine...) and he now blames the eggplant. and won't eat it. and i don't really feel like making a whole eggplant just for myself.

then again, he never gets his beloved fish since i inexplicably hate fish so -- i guess we're equal. he can order all the fish he wants when we go out to eat :)

When my mother was alive, and I would cook for her, it used to drive me crazy to cook her meat without spices. I don't eat meat, so you think cooking meat would be the worst part of the experience. I admit I disliked it, but it drove me crazy how she had to have her chicken boiled and plain--ditto with meat, no matter what the cut. I guess it was hard for me because I just couldn't understand not wanting to eat food like that without any spice or seasoning at all.

Whenever I go to my parents' house, I never make anything with peanut butter because my father absolutely hates it in any form. Sad thing is, both my sister & I absolutely love it, and would put it in or on just about anything if we could. Unfortunately, since we live in separate states, we don't get to cook & bake together that often (and we both love to), and so even when we do, it rarely involves our favorite ingredient! Occasionally we will make something just for the two of us...but then I always feel bad, so usually we stick with something everybody likes.

I'm actually pretty lucky. My BF will pretty much eat anything. It's me that's the picky one. But since I do the cooking (and am starting to learn grilling) everything is in my control. :)

If I am making something he will eat, I stay away from:

Pickles - and any variation of relish
Cole Slaw
Sauerkraut
Pumpkin stuff-kind of gets sticky here because he likes some things but not others. For instance, he doesn't like Pumpkin Pie but he will eat a Pumpkin Cheesecake...

I think that's pretty much it. If this list would be for me-it would be MUCH, MUCH longer.