Even on a day like today, when our country took a possibly irretrievable step down the road to destruction, the most disturbing thing I’ve read is this post over at Big Hollywood, from former Federal Agent Bob Hamer.
My mood is still dark (that Big Hollywood post didn’t help), and it occurs to me that I might do A List. A negative List. A list that shines a good, harsh light on my own alienations and inadequacies.
Herewith, 10 Foods I Hate That Everybody Else Loves.
1. Cheese. Except on pizza (through which cheese has somehow managed to insinuate itself into even my life, obviously with my destruction in mind), I don’t like any kind of cheese, prepared any kind of way. Macaroni and cheese? Doesn’t even taste like food to me. Toasted cheese sandwich? Useful for inducing vomiting. I honestly think that on the day in my infancy when (I’m told) I fell over backward in a high chair and bit my tongue through, I must have severed some important taste nerve. There’s something good out there, that the rest of you can experience, that’s lost to me forever.
2. Watermelon. Tastes insipid to me. Only a vague taste, and that an unpleasant one. Plus it’s messy to eat and full of seeds. In general, I’m against seeds in food. They’re like bones; just an interruption.
3. Pickles. Sweet or sour, I hate them all. If I had a nickel for every pickle I’ve picked off a hamburger, I’d have enough money to buy a big jar of pickles, which I’d then throw away.
4. Tomatoes. They’re OK in Italian sauces, and French dressing, and wonderful in Blessed Ketchup. But on their own, they’re the bitter fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.
5. Anything smoked. Bacon is, for some reason obscure to me, the darling of bloggers right now. I’ve never gotten bacon. Smoked stuff is bitter, and I’m sensitive to bitter. Ditto for ham. If I ever converted to Judaism, shrimp and lobster are about all I’d miss.
6. Lime. Anything lime flavored is off my shopping list. It’s bitter, but I think the color green is also part of it. In general, I try never to eat anything green.
7. Nuts. Nuts taste like wood to me, and make an irritating noise in my skull when I chew them. Salted peanuts are an exception, but they’re really legumes.
8. Salmon. I like fish generally, if the bones have been removed, but salmon doesn’t taste right to me. It doesn’t help that it’s generally served smoked.
9. Raspberries. Too bitter.
10. Mushrooms. Just thinking of mushrooms invokes my gag reflex. They taste like dust and feel like fetal mice going down.
A speaker at the Scandinavian retreat did a talk on how our ancestors ate pretty much everything they could find that was edible (and much that I don’t consider edible), because it was a matter of survival.
Well, I already knew I was unworthy of my ancestors.
My wife wants to know if beef jerky escapes from the “smoked foods” category, which she is subsisting on now that she’s pregnant. She also laughed at the fetal mice comment.
What kind of… sick person reads my blogging to his pregnant wife? Have you no decency, sir?
Actually I like jerky. Especially teriyaki flavor.
The fetal mice comment invoked my gag reflect.
Dear sir; I must take offense at this post. Salmon is of course the most wonderful food on earth. Sockeye salmon in particular. (How little you know Lars :=) Smoked salmon might even be better. (How sad it is that this is a lost art among our people. The horrid stuff one finds in stores is admittedly beneath contempt.) I yearly smoke salmon for the Christmas season; keeping up the ancient art.
– I hate to say this (gentle soul that I am) but, really Lars, a man who cannot remove the bones from a salmon on his own… well; no, I’ll say no more. But really, this doesn’t sound like a descendent of Vikings to me.
– I suppose you know that sailors of old had to eat lemons or limes to prevent scurvey.
– I have to wonder what you do eat Lars. (No celery? no lettuce? no peas? no beans? no (dare I say it) broccoli:
– I’ll agree with you on the watermelon.
2. Watermelon. Tastes insipid to me. Only a vague taste, and that an unpleasant one. Plus it’s messy to eat and full of seeds. In general, I’m against seeds in food. They’re like bones; just an interruption.
US fruits and vegetables are often bred and raised for looks, not taste. This is because looks is what gets you picked up on the shelf. You should try the real kind – but I bet they’re rare up north where you live.
Other than that, just remember – the world may want to go to hell in a hand basket, but God doesn’t. God is stronger.
I subsist entirely on turkey TV dinners and chocolate.
heh. This from a guy whose people invented lutefisk.
Many years ago, on my survival skills trek I ate stuff you wouldn’t believe. Including a raw lizard. Which, by the way, tasted like lizard. Not a hint of chicken.
But when it comes to stuff most Americans won’t eat, very little beats balut:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balut_(egg)
mmmmmmm balut.
Yeah, that’s pretty awful.
Our Scandinavian lecturer spoke of Viking delicacies like rotten shark and the south end of a northbound ram, prized as an aphrodisiac.
What kind of… sick person reads my blogging to his pregnant wife? Have you no decency, sir?
Sir, whether it be conversation material or genre preferences, my decency has always been questionable. As evidence, I offer a selection from the journals of Knud Rasmussen, the first explorer to cross the Northwest Passage via dogsled:
Right alongside the spot where we pitched our camp we found an old cache of caribou meat – two years old I was told. We cleared the stones away and fed the dogs, for it is law in this country that as soon as a cache is more than a winter and a summer old, it falls to the one who has use for it. The meat was green with age, and when we made a cut in it , it was like the bursting of a boil, so full of great white maggots was it. To my horror my companions scooped out handfuls of the crawling things and ate them with evident relish. I criticised their taste, but they laughed at me and said, not illogically: You yourself like caribou meat, and what are these maggots but live caribou meat? They taste just the same as the meat and are refreshing to the mouth.
Yum!
Fetal mice? That was an excellent, albeit unsettling, description.
I need to lose some weight. I’m bookmarking this page. NOW!!
You are familiar with the feel of fetal mice going down?
And only Yankees don’t love pecans and watermelon; oh, I forgot, you are a Yankee.
All Yankees eat fetal mice. It’s part of our initiation rite.