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Do your food preferences make you an outcast in your own family or ethnic group?

Tropicalsenior

By Tropicalsenior
in Food Traditions & Culture

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Tropicalsenior

Tropicalsenior

Posted
Posted

Some years back @liuzhou introduced a topic, 

So I would like to revive it but with a slight twist. Is there a food that is so fundamental to your family or to your ethnic group that it is almost mandatory eating but you can't stand it?

 

Mine is sauerkraut. My father's family is German, all German, 100% German and everybody ate sauerkraut. I hated potluck style family reunions with my father's family. At least half the family brought something with sauerkraut. Sauerkraut salad, anyone? I couldn't stand the smell of the place. Every fall my grandmother made sauerkraut, huge crocks of sauerkraut. I couldn't stand the smell of her house and wouldn't go anywhere near while she was making it. And that's when I learned that sauerkraut is just rotten cabbage. It doesn't matter how anybody fixes it or tries to disguise it, I will never eat sauerkraut!

 

On that point, I will never change and I hope that everyone will play nice and not criticize or try to change the preferences of anyone else. We Are Who We Are and everyone has a reason, logical or not, for feeling the way he/she does. A few words here or snarky comments are not going to change anybody's mind. We're here to find out what's on your mind, not psychoanalyze it.

Conversely, is there anything that you love that no one else around you will eat?

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dans

dans

Posted
Posted (edited)

In my Irish-American family, most of my siblings don't like corned beef and cabbage. I know this is really an American thing more than Irish. I keep telling them that what our mother cooked doesn't hold a candle to what the dish should be. I corn my own beef and don't overcook the vegetables - especially the cabbage.

Edited by dans (log)
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heidih

heidih

Posted
Posted

I would not say "outcast" - more eye rolls and head shakes that I am such a beeotch. It is the Viennese born stepmother's chicken Goulash (heavy on the paprika).  My sister, her hubby and her kids clamor for it when in the States. I say I am off chicken but that does not get me out of the fire. My son eats it when he is not in vegetarian mode. I know I ate my mom's as a kid but I just can't. Oh I have been in therapy so I know there are issues present ;)   I also do not like Sultz but that more amuses them. Happy with cow's foot soup but cold pig jello - no.

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Tropicalsenior

Tropicalsenior

Posted
  • Topic Starter
Posted (edited)
8 minutes ago, heidih said:

Sultz

I had to go to the internet on that one and I am with you 100%. It sounds too much like the head cheese that my mother-in-law used to make. I have low gag reflexes but that one got me every time.

 

** but then come to think of it, everything she cooked did.

Edited by Tropicalsenior
addition (log)
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KennethT

KennethT

Posted
Posted

I can't stand gefilte fish... My mother doesn't like it either, but my father would go to town on them, even the ones out of the glass jar.  Doesn't really make me an outcast though...

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Tropicalsenior

Tropicalsenior

Posted
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3 minutes ago, KennethT said:

Doesn't really make me an outcast though...

One of the funniest food rant articles that I ever read was from a young Scandinavian man that couldn't stand gefilte fish. In fact it was that article that put me in mind of this topic. I've tried them and I agree with you.

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Darienne

Darienne

Posted
Posted

I love lamb, liver and cooked beets.  Ed will not touch them.  He likes head cheese.  Yuck.  I won't eat anything jellied.  We both like sauerkraut.  No one with any sense at all likes gefilte fish.   We both can't stand Nutella.  And we don't eat shellfish of any kind.  Partly heritage; partly I don't like meat that crunches.

 

 I've never had corned beef and cabbage but I'd like to try. 

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Darienne

 

learn, learn, learn...

 

We live in hope. 

Tropicalsenior

Tropicalsenior

Posted
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Posted
1 minute ago, Darienne said:

I've never had corned beef and cabbage but I'd like to try. 

Have you ever had pastrami? If you like that you will love corned beef and cabbage.

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heidih

heidih

Posted
Posted (edited)
7 minutes ago, Tropicalsenior said:

Have you ever had pastrami? If you like that you will love corned beef and cabbage.

Uhhm - quite different in my experience, Pastrami with a boat load of cracked pepper rubbed on surface and  freshly smoked then steamed is wonderful. Thjs explains it fairly well.  https://www.eater.com/2019/9/13/20863770/whats-the-difference-corned-beef-pastrami

Edited by heidih (log)
Eatmywords

Eatmywords

Posted
Posted

I like everything mentioned above and can't think of anything (properly executed) I don't like.  I've heard fermented shark is vile but w love to try it.   My wife despises sauerkraut too. (She has other silly aversions like sour cream, cream cheese, mushrooms, balsamic and a few others that cause great strife but she'll eat any meat or offal w makes up for a lot of it).   I quite like the sauerkraut from time to time but could see it off putting on any regular basis.   Did you move to Costa Rica to get away from it?

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That wasn't chicken

Tropicalsenior

Tropicalsenior

Posted
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Posted
2 minutes ago, Eatmywords said:

I like everything mentioned above and can't think of anything (properly executed) I don't like.  I've heard fermented shark is vile but w love to try it.   My wife despises sauerkraut too. (She has other silly aversions like sour cream, cream cheese, mushrooms, balsamic and a few others that cause great strife but she'll eat any meat or offal w makes up for a lot of it).   I quite like the sauerkraut from time to time but could see it off putting on any regular basis.   Did you move to Costa Rica to get away from it?

No, I left Nebraska when I was 18 to get away from it. As far as I know all the rest of them are still back there eating sauerkraut.

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Tropicalsenior

Tropicalsenior

Posted
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Posted
7 minutes ago, weinoo said:

French fries cooked on a train! Gets me every time.

Wrong topic, however, the Internet won't back me up on this but maybe he was one of the first to figure out the double fry method.

chromedome

chromedome

Posted
Posted
57 minutes ago, Tropicalsenior said:

Wrong topic, however, the Internet won't back me up on this but maybe he was one of the first to figure out the double fry method.

I would venture to guess that, if anything, it might have been the first opportunity for many travelers to actually eat french fries, back in the day. Most people were still rural, remember, and fat was something you carefully conserved. Deep frying would have been a splurge in many households.

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“Who loves a garden, loves a greenhouse too.” - William Cowper, The Task, Book Three

 

"Not knowing the scope of your own ignorance is part of the human condition...The first rule of the Dunning-Kruger club is you don’t know you’re a member of the Dunning-Kruger club.” - psychologist David Dunning

 

Tropicalsenior

Tropicalsenior

Posted
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Posted
3 minutes ago, Shelby said:

I LOVE sushi

I do too but the Nicaraguan couple that I share my house with just shudder at the thought. Carlos is pretty adventurous and will eat just about anything but he draws the line at sushi. Rosario could exist on beans and rice if that was all I would feed her. I've been feeding them a lot of tonkatsu which they love, and I finally got them convinced that if they go to a sushi restaurant with me that they can always get tonkatsu.

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Tropicalsenior

Tropicalsenior

Posted
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Posted
1 hour ago, Eatmywords said:

I've heard fermented shark is vile but w love to try it. 

I don't know how this one got past me. But you have got to be kidding me. Was it @liuzhou that posted an article about a young Icelandic man that wouldn't eat fermented shark? It seems that they slit the shark down the middle and pack it with other fish then bury it until it is totally fermented (rotten). Just the description of the fish inside at the end is enough to give you terminal food poisoning. How have these people survived that all these years? Do we have any Icelandic eGers that can explain this.

liuzhou

liuzhou

Posted
Posted
1 minute ago, Tropicalsenior said:

Was it @liuzhou that posted an article about a young Icelandic man that wouldn't eat fermented shark?

 

 

No.

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...your dancing child with his Chinese suit.

 

"No amount of evidence will ever persuade an idiot"
Mark Twain
 

The Kitchen Scale Manifesto

Eatmywords

Eatmywords

Posted
Posted
8 minutes ago, Tropicalsenior said:

I don't know how this one got past me. But you have got to be kidding me. Was it @liuzhou that posted an article about a young Icelandic man that wouldn't eat fermented shark? It seems that they slit the shark down the middle and pack it with other fish then bury it until it is totally fermented (rotten). Just the description of the fish inside at the end is enough to give you terminal food poisoning. How have these people survived that all these years? Do we have any Icelandic eGers that can explain this.


Who am I to turn away a national delicacy?

That wasn't chicken

Tropicalsenior

Tropicalsenior

Posted
  • Topic Starter
Posted
12 minutes ago, liuzhou said:

No

Thank you, because I was about to go back and look through everything that you had written. And that might take me a while.

Tropicalsenior

Tropicalsenior

Posted
  • Topic Starter
Posted
10 minutes ago, Eatmywords said:


Who am I to turn away a national delicacy?

Some ethnic group in Alaska loves "ice cream" made from frozen whale blubber and strawberries, are you up for that? If so, come to Costa Rica and I'll make you some, as soon as our next shipment of whale blubber comes in.

chromedome

chromedome

Posted
Posted

I've seen hakarl described as resembling a really, REALLY strong cheese, and like many here I'm okay with those. So I'd probably try it at least once, especially if well-primed with the traditional several shots of aquavit.

  • Haha 1

“Who loves a garden, loves a greenhouse too.” - William Cowper, The Task, Book Three

 

"Not knowing the scope of your own ignorance is part of the human condition...The first rule of the Dunning-Kruger club is you don’t know you’re a member of the Dunning-Kruger club.” - psychologist David Dunning

 

heidih

heidih

Posted
Posted (edited)
1 hour ago, Tropicalsenior said:

I do too but the Nicaraguan couple that I share my house with just shudder at the thought. Carlos is pretty adventurous and will eat just about anything but he draws the line at sushi. Rosario could exist on beans and rice if that was all I would feed her. I've been feeding them a lot of tonkatsu which they love, and I finally got them convinced that if they go to a sushi restaurant with me that they can always get tonkatsu.

You must get them to watch East Side Sushi. A young Hispanic woman trying to become a sushi chef with major resistance from her dad. Spanish is spoken in the home so they might enjoy that part as well.  https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2340650/

Edited by heidih (log)
AlaMoi

AlaMoi

Posted
Posted

I like liver and onions

I like beef tartar with raw egg divot

I like anchovies

 

lotsa' family don't endorse my 'those' dishes....

otoh, my grandmother and I ate well together. 

we would go shopping together seeking out fresh calf's liver and sweet onions.

she rocked.

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Tropicalsenior

Tropicalsenior

Posted
  • Topic Starter
Posted
44 minutes ago, chromedome said:

hakarl

I went to the internet and found this, and this is disgusting enough but the young man that wrote the article that I read said that they did it even worse in the area where he lived. They split the shark open and filled it full of other fish and sewed it up before they buried it to ferment (let's be honest about it, it's rotting). Then they ate the whole rotten mess. Taste aside, this can't be good for you. I think those people have had their brains frozen a few too many times.

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