For the love of strange foods
“Your cereal’s going to get soggy,” I warn my 9-year-old daughter as she sits, lump-like, in front of her bowl.
“I know,” she says, carefully dunking a disintegrating batch of Coco Pebbles with her spoon. “It tastes better that way.”
She allows the cereal to sit until it congeals. It resembles brown tapioca. I snarl my nose in disgust, which is apparently her signal that it’s ready to eat.
“Try it,” she says, offering a spoon of her sludge. Because I’ve spent these past nine years trying to coax her to taste different foods, it feels hypocritical to refuse, so I try a bite. It’s actually good. Better than good.
I shouldn’t have been surprised that I liked it. I’ve been eating strange foods ever since I was a kid. I believe it was potato chip sandwiches that got me started. Raw pie dough was a delicacy, as were raw potatoes. Even now, I like to put sliced raw potatoes in a bowl of water and refrigerate them until they’re good and cold, then eat them loaded with salt.
Unfortunately, I’ve never been particularly good at coming up with strange food combinations that actually work. Luckily, those around me seem to be gifted that way. I’m forever saying, “That looks disgusting.” Which I almost immediately follow with, “Can I try a bite?”
Sandra, a peanut butter-loving friend, recommended mixing Jif with baby gherkins or crispy bacon–neither a taste combination that I could imagine. Both were surprisingly good. She also suggested a cream cheese, olive and pecan sandwich. Now, that was fantastic.
My friend Nancy’s mom boils macaroni, then once it’s soft, she drains it, throws it in a pan and cracks an egg over it, then mixes it up. After it’s fried, she serves it with ketchup. When I mentioned this to my husband, he looked contemplative a moment, then said, “Sounds good to me. Maybe if we just added some cheese . . .”
Speaking of my husband, he loves sour things. He once created a dish he calls the “perfect pucker,” a concoction consisting of a bowl of grapefruit pulp that has been liberally salted and doused with a teaspoon (or three) of vinegar.
Even though I love both salty and sour, I’ve grown accustomed to having enamel on my teeth, so I haven’t yet given it a try. (I’ll stick with sneaking sips of green olive juice from the jar.)
My friend Sue likes to smear cherry preserves on her toast, then add shaved turkey breast. She says cling peaches make a good substitute if no cherry preserves are on hand. She also likes to coat a slice of bread with mustard and brown sugar, then broil it in the oven for a short time. She swears it tastes like a sugared, cooked ham. My husband says it probably does. (Cooking people seem to share a private knowledge of taste combinations that escapes me.)
My niece likes to fill a bowl with several marshmallows (or a bunch of mini ones) and add about a quarter stick of butter, then microwave until melted and bubbly. Stir with a spoon. She warns that if you eat this when it’s too hot, it’ll burn the roof of your mouth, but if you wait too long, it’s yucky. (She also said it quickly becomes one with the bowl and can be a nightmare to clean.)
My friend Wendy admits to eating plain mayonnaise sandwiches, although sometimes she says she goes all out and mixes her mayo with peanut butter, which she spreads on a cracker.
Wendy also shared a story about when she was growing up. “Mom used to make a casserole that I absolutely hated, and she made it at least three times a week. It consisted of beef, corn, stewed tomatoes, and some other things all mooshed together. I was one of those kids who didn’t like my foods even touching each other, so Mom’s casserole concoction was particularly off-putting. I would go to bed hungry rather than attempt to choke down the foul food. Fast forward ahead 20-ish years. On my birthday, Mom gave me a framed copy of that casserole recipe. At the bottom she wrote, ‘Hee-hee-hee. Love, Mom.‘ I have it hanging on the wall in my kitchen.”
My friend Charee’s grandmother tortured her family once a year with her Easter bunny cake, which she decorated with coconut and jelly beans she bought on clearance the year before.
Stale coconut and rock-like jelly beans. Sounds disgusting.
Can I try a bite?
Do you have a strange food combination or bizarre snack you’d like to share? Please post it under comments (anonymous comments are now allowed!) or email it to me at karinfuller@cnpapers.com. Thanks!
July 28th, 2006 at 10:14 pm
I don’t have no strange foods, but I had to comment on the raw potato. I am glad that I am not the only one that eats them. Everytime we have any kind of potato for dinner, my boyfriend is always yelling at me because I say that I am going in to check and see how done they are. But really I am getting bites of them! YUMMY!!!!!!
July 29th, 2006 at 6:35 pm
Cottage cheese and garlic salt … great!
July 29th, 2006 at 8:37 pm
Cottage cheese with sliced green onion, loads of salt and pepper. I’ve always eaten it that way (my whole family does), but I’ve never tried it with garlic salt. To me, that sounds delicious!
I’m so glad I’m not alone with my raw potato and strange cottage cheese tastes.
July 29th, 2006 at 9:23 pm
I don’t like cottage cheese, so I guess I am alone on that one!
July 30th, 2006 at 6:16 am
My Mom eats radish sandwiches…sliced radishes(preferably the “Icecycle” type) and salt between two slices of white bread, with NO condiments of any kind.
An aquaintance once was so desparate for a sugar buzz that she mixed a one lb. box of confectioners sugar with a pint of Karo Syrup, stirred it into a thick, sticky paste, and ate nearly all of it. She said it definitely gave her the boost she needed, but made her very ill the next day, and she doesn’t reccomend the recipe.
As for me, I like Welch’s Concord Grape Juice with pizza.
July 30th, 2006 at 2:31 pm
Had to add my ‘weirdness’ to this one!! Let’s see, I have several so I’ll just share a few:
1) Clauseen pickles. Once the pickles are gone, I drink the juice.
2) My mom eats her cottage cheese with ketchup. Actually she puts ketchup on everything.
3) My dad prefers popcorn burnt to a crisp then left on top of the fridge overnight to enjoy the next day. You guessed it, he now lives alone.
4) My mom recently acquired an awesome squash casserole recipe that is yummy yummy!! Let me know if you’d like to try it!
This column had me remembering the book Freckle Juice. Am I the only person who tried to make my own?
July 31st, 2006 at 10:56 am
Um, I’m with your dad on the burned popcorn. I’ve never tried aging mine on top of the refrigerator, but y’know–he might be onto something there.
I never tasted squash until marrying Geoff, and he uses it in a lot of recipes. (But unlike me, Geoff could make dirt taste good.) Can you post it or email it to me?
July 31st, 2006 at 2:26 pm
Growing up, I ate plenty of potted meat with mayo on white bread sandwiches - until I could read and I found out what “tripe” was. My favorite sandwiches were peanut butter with apple slices or peanut butter with Fritos. But, those aren’t too strange.
My son and I eat our apples and watermelon with salt, so the aforementioned radish sandwich sounds great to me.
July 31st, 2006 at 8:20 pm
Eviltwinswife, I think we have a lot of strange food things in common. I am glad to hear that I am not the only one that likes potted meat with mayo on white bread sandwiches. Unlike you though, I refuse to know what is in it. If I read the labels for half the food I eat, I probably would not eat very much. (And for someone that is already extremely picky that is not good).
I also love apples with peanut butter! I will hae to try them on a sandwich.
August 1st, 2006 at 5:29 am
How about shaved corned beef, colby longhorn cheese, and horseradish (the pure, ground, HOT kind–not the creamy stuff like at Arby’s) on a Ritz Cracker? YUMMMMMmmmmm…
August 1st, 2006 at 5:42 am
My mom, the oldest of six girls, grew up during the depression. Since there were no luxuries in any area of their lives, including food, my grandmother would cook white rice. After it was done she would scoop some in a bowl, mix with sugar and milk. Instant cereal. Needless to say, my mom fixed it for her children as well. When feeling a little extra sassy, she would mix chocolate syrup in it too. We loved it. I have made it for my family. My husband likes it but my six-year-old snarls her face up at anything that is out of the norm or not served in a paper bag. She would have never survived the depression.
August 1st, 2006 at 6:43 am
I just thought of some more, but not mine.
My aunt eats cheese puffs dipped in Mayo.
My baby sister loves plain mayo sandwiches (which I can’t even look at while she is eating them).
August 2nd, 2006 at 4:02 am
To anonymous, regarding the rice dish: my Dad always liked something similar, only sweeteded with brown sugar. His mother fixed it for him as a child, and he kept his taste for it as he grew older. Everyone else in the family was repulsed by it!
August 3rd, 2006 at 10:16 am
I’ve had the rice dish before a long, long time ago. We called it rice pudding, although it’s not what most people think of as rice pudding.
Speaking of rice pudding, Sitar’s of India has the absolute best. I’m craving it in a big way right now.
August 6th, 2006 at 8:01 pm
I have to put my 2 cents worth in on this topic. Being an extremely picky eater, I grew up on peanut butter & Frito sandwiches. I don’t know about the other blogger who also eats these but I put mine on hamburger buns because I don’t like the Fritos poking through the bread. But other than that, my main particularities with food were texture and smell, but we won’t go there.
I have a friend who eats pork rinds with BBQ sauce, the same friend likes to shove her McD’s apple pie to the bottom of her chocolate shake while it’s still hot
My cousin eats ketchup on her green beans
My Mom makes a homemade chocolate cake that I adore eating in a bowl with milk poured over it
I also like old popcorn…not burnt though, yuck! Just sit it on the stove & eat it for breakfast, BUT it has to be REAL popcorn, not that microwave stuff!
Chocolate fudge pop-tarts, toasted, poke holes in it with a fork/knife & spread with butter, margarine, whatever and then use the knife to peel back the frosting, eat it alone & then scrape out the chocolate buttery goo eat it & then the crust last….YUUMMMM….
I like to dip my French fries into a chocolate shake
Someone I used to know liked to dip his garlic bread into French dressing
Raw chocolate chip dough….no longer lethal since eggs are pasteurized!
My Dad eats peanut butter, fried egg, Miracle Whip and cheese on toasted bread sandwiches. He eats peanut butter on his hamburgers with his Miracle Whip, cheese, ketchup, onions, lettuce; the works. He will also put a blob on the side of his plate if he is eating something he doesn’t particularly like & take bites in between bites of whatever he doesn’t like. Mom said that she learned that early in their marriage!
My paternal grandmother also made her rice with milk & sugar. My Mom had to learn how to do it that way too. She knew she had it the day Dad declared it ‘as good as Mom’s’….I have never tried it, I have just snarled my nose at it as did the other blogger’s kid!
August 8th, 2006 at 6:10 am
Hi there, Bessersothergirl! (I crack up every time I see that name.) I can’t wait to get Celeste to read all these. Your mom always said you were the only person she knew that was as picky an eater as Celeste. Wait ’til she sees the things you DO eat.
The chocolate fudge pop tarts with butter — that sounds delicious to me. I can’t fathom what the shake and apple pie combo would taste like so I’m just going to have to try it.
By the way, Celeste does the fries in her shake thing, too. Did you teach her that?
August 8th, 2006 at 9:50 pm
dutchnzoey and bessersothrgrl, I am also a very picky eater. The list of foods I will eat is much shorter than for the foods I refuse to eat. And Dutch, it’s best to slice the apples very thinly, then layer on the peanut butter on the other slice of bread, then join the slices. Yummy.
Bessers, I like PB and fritos on plain bread and I kind of “crunch” the sandwich down, so bits of Frito are sticking out. I’ll have to try the hamburger bun approach. Sounds tasty.
August 10th, 2006 at 1:51 pm
Hey Karin!
No, I did not teach that little food quirk to Celeste, it apparently is an only child thing! LOL! Mom has said many times that Celeste reminds her of me at that age…of course, she has said it since Celeste was a tiny thing! I’m comforted with the fact that she reminds them of me & she is the surrogate granddaughter, that I, more than likely, will not be giving them. With me, they have to settle for 4 legged furry grandcats! ,,,^..^,,,
Anyway, I’m off the food subject. Mom reminded me of another one, I used to do. I would spread Cool Whip on a piece of bread, slap another piece on top & would have myself a Cool Whip sandwich! It doesn’t sound so good now though! I have outgrown some of my food idiosyncrasies, but I had to do it on my own terms. Dad learned early that bribing, forcing, conjoling, nothing worked. Mom always said it was a control thing for me with him. Sound familiar? =)