"I was FLOORED!"

[pingarina]

I have to laugh at some of the posts regarding the eschewing of home-baked desserts. I truly was, and still am, blown away when I started going to holiday dinners at my husband's family. Aside from the fact that everything, yes EVERYthing was made ahead of time, frozen(!) and re-heated, they actually refused to believe that anyone would make a dessert at home. I still have a hard time convincing them that I do, in fact, make pastry from scratch. The fact that it is a lovely apple or cherry pie made with love and good ingredients does not entice them in the least. The purchased babka or cookies are far more familiar, and therefore more tasty. One Channuka a couple of years ago, I had some unused cake boxes on hand, and I put my usual still-warm apple pie in one, tied it with string, and made the trek out to NJ with it. No problems that time. "Oh my gaawwwwd, this is so delicious! Where did you get it?"

[Fynnicki]

I am floored by people who cut the crusts off of their bread. Now, I'm not talking about people who purposefully make delicate tea sandwiches, but those who, when eating a sandwich or bread and butter, cut off anything browned around the edges. Why?????

I am floored by people who claim they don't like sweets - then grab Twinkies and cheap drugstore candy at every opportunity. But, oh, no, they'll always refuse dessert.

I am floored by people who will only eat out at fast food restaurants - who would rather go through the drive-thru than sit down for a real meal, even when they have time.

[SobaAddict70]

Reminds me of the orange chicken in this thread.

What a great thread!  I haven't laughed this much in a while.

My worst meal was cooked by my brother-in-law 20 years ago, right before he and my sister got married.  He invited my sister and members of the wedding party over to his apartment and promised to surprise us all with a memorable dinner (and boy did he deliver on his promise). 

He announced that our first course would be French onion soup.  When he placed the soup bowl in front of me, I thought it odd that there was no cheese on top.  And that there was no bread in the soup.  And that the whole white-ish mass smelled strongly of freshly chopped onions.  It looked quite unappealing, but not wanting to offend our host (and soon-to-be new family member), we all took a first spoonful from our soup bowls.  I had to keep my head down, staring at the bowl, so that he and the other guests wouldn't see me stuggling to choke down the disgusting stuff.  When I looked up, my sister was staring at him in shock and confusion.  I vividly remember her wailing: "Honey! What did you DO???".  He explained that he didn't have a cookbook (and of course this was before home computers and the Internet), so he made up his own recipe for the soup:  he had chopped some onions, pureed them in the blender, poured the whole thing in a pan and simply warmed it up.  Ugh! My sister gently explained to him the more conventional way to make French onion soup, and then told the rest of us not to feel bad if we didn't eat any more of it.  We were all relieved as we pushed the bowls aside, cautiously anticipating the next course.

Next he brought out a platter of what he called chicken a l'orange.  It was whole chicken, covered with a sandy orange substance that had bled onto the chicken, creating splotches of neon orange across the skin.  Still reeling from the soup fiasco, and feeling more relaxed by lots of wine, we all eyed the chicken and grilled him on how it was prepared.  He proudly explained that he had simply spread a package of orange Kool-Aid mix over the chicken, covered it tightly with foil, and baked it.  He added, with a note of concern, that the Kool-Aid mix had "eaten" through the foil in spots (no doubt the reaction of the acid with the aluminum), but that he had managed to get all the bits of foil off of the bird before serving it.  My sister just slumped in her chair and sighed.  We were all starving at this point, so we dissected the bird, pulled off the skin and any lingering bits of Kool-Aid, and ate. 

I don't remember anything about the meal after that --- I think it's one of those post-traumatic stress things.

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I have a feeling it'll floor many of you.

Soba

[mike_r]

that's one of the funniest posts i've read, and it absolutely does floor me!

what really gets me though, is pickiness in general, rudeness, and especially close-mindedness. every night, when service hits full swing, guaranteed, sooner or later a server is going to come through the kitchen doors with another silly request. ok, sauce on side is lame, but it's old enough that it's easily doable. i DETEST people that come into the restaurant, look over the menu, and then request the beef with veg from the lamb dish, and this sauce, and that garnish, and well done, etc. create your own meal at home! legitimate food allergies, ok. not much you can do about it, and i don't want you dead on the restaurant floor. but if you don't like something, just say so, don't invent some silly allergy to compensate. rosemary? c'mon. atkins infuriates me. bread is the STAFF OF LIFE, people! and when you go out to eat, don't be surprised when the med-rare lamb you ordered isn't FULLY COOKED ALL THE WAY THROUGH! and don't order a pork chop well-done, and then send it back because it's too dry! oooh, and people who won't eat anything with the slightest hint of spice to it. when that habanero hits your throat you KNOW you're ALIVE! oh and finally i REALLY hate people who had a meal at the restaurant three months ago under a different chef, and when they order the chicken are shocked that it's not exactly like it was three months ago. upon being informed that there is a new chef in the kitchen, the response was, "well, can't he make it like it used to be?"

whew. needed to get that off my chest. more a rant about pet peeves really, but honestly, i think anyone who goes out to eat should be forced to work at least one or two days in both the front and back of the house. or be an eGullet member, of course!

[Adam Balic]

Or the idea that we have no idea what the ancient Greeks and Romans meant by certain herbs they have listed in their recipes. Did these things disappear? Did we really just *lose* that knowledge?

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There are a few herbs and spices that scholars debate, but I don't recall which exact ones they were. A popular Roman spice, sylphium, is known to be extinct; it is thought that the last plant known was served to Nero. In later years the Romans discovered the Indian spice asafoetida (hing) which was a close substitute, and is available to this day (warning: there is a reason the name of the spice includes the word "foetid"...)

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Part of the issue is that there are so very few sources. Pliny mentions quite a bit of food related information and there is also Apicius, but other then that the references are few. It is also difficult to indentify things like spices from a description. So we may have the same spices/herbs but may not know it. It is odd that there are so few records on a people that where quite into food, one way or another.

From the images (mostly on coins) sylphium is almost certainly a giant fennel of the Ferula genus (as is asafoetida). I have seen Ferula communis growing in Sicily and it looks just like the coin images (as it is toxic in makes it unlikely to be the original sylphium). Although, sylphium is often refered to as extinct, we don't actually know that, it could be locally extinct or it became difficult to obtain because of changing trade routes etc.

but back to the original question. Peanut butter desserts floor me.

[creepygirl]

oooh, and people who won't eat anything with the slightest hint of spice to it.  when that habanero hits your throat you KNOW you're ALIVE!

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Spicy food can exacerbate acid reflux, which can cause, among other things, nausea and vomiting. And if I had ever had spicy food make me vomit, I would be "picky" about eating spicy food, too.

I agree customers need to cut the waitstaff and the chefs some slack. But cutting slack should go both ways. What good does it do to assume the worst possible motivations from the customers? Why not give them the benefit of the doubt?

[Mooshmouse]

I'm absolutely floored by people who don't like their food to touch on a plate. And by people who eat all of one food item before moving on to eat another, especially those who eat their rice last without any accompaniments or condiments.

Not that this is wrong, mind you. It's just completely foreign to my eating experiences while growing up in a Filipino household. The variety of dishes served at the dinner table all go on your plate at once. Soup or meat/veg and sauce atop your rice, which is why Filipino food is traditionally eaten with a fork and spoon. I have friends who are horrified at this prospect and it never ceases to amaze me.

[Pan]

I'm absolutely floored by people who don't like their food to touch on a plate.  And by people who eat all of one food item before moving on to eat another, especially those who eat their rice last without any accompaniments or condiments.

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To eat all the plain rice by itself and then eat the side dishes by themselves - yeah, that's truly weird!

You actually have met people who do that?

[Mooshmouse]

I'm absolutely floored by people who don't like their food to touch on a plate.  And by people who eat all of one food item before moving on to eat another, especially those who eat their rice last without any accompaniments or condiments.

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To eat all the plain rice by itself and then eat the side dishes by themselves - yeah, that's truly weird!

You actually have met people who do that?

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Heck yeah... served a meal to one or two of them, in fact. It was all I could do not to stare while they were eating. To make matters worse, they ate all their flavourful side dishes first and then ate the plain rice last. Which means that the rice was plain and cold.

[Pan]

Wow! I'll bet you won't invite them over for a meal again!

[corinne]

I am floored when people insist on bringing something and then it is an abominable cake from the A&P or they bring food that is in various stages of completion, asking for the ingredients necessary to finish it!

[Smithy]

The duck a l'orange post gets the pre-packaged cake prize!

I knew someone in college who refused to cook because he hated to do dishes. He lived off-campus, in an apartment, and he ate out. Every single meal.

I am floored by people who go to Cairo and Luxor (Egypt) for two weeks and want to go to McDonald's.

[kimmyb72]

my friend just had gastric bypass surgery but has not changed her eating habits. she still eats carbs and cheese and sweets, just less of them. we were at a wedding this past weekend, beautiful place with a killer coctail hour.... sushi, pasta stations, carving stations, huge italian meats and cheese platters, dumplings, you name it they had it. she flags down the waitress holding a tray of something and asked where the pigs in a blanket are. enough said

[kimmyb72]

my friend just had gastric bypass surgery but has not changed her eating habits. she still eats carbs and cheese and sweets, just less of them. we were at a wedding this past weekend, beautiful place with a killer coctail hour.... sushi, pasta stations, carving stations, huge italian meats and cheese platters, dumplings, you name it they had it. she flags down the waitress holding a tray of something and asked where the pigs in a blanket are. enough said

[chile_peppa]

I once invited a friend and her family to dinner at my house. She showed up with a complete meal that she had made from cans and boxes, as if what I had prepared was not good enough. This was a woman who put flour and sugar into her spaghetti sauce to thicken it. Needless to say, that was the end of that.

I am floored by what some people consider cooking. For example, I saw a published recipe for spaghetti that consisted of cooking the pasta according to package directions and pouring a jar of prepared sauce on top. How is that cooking?

I am floored by people who have diet-related health conditions but do not change their ways. My mother's husband is a diabetic who takes daily insulin injections and has been hospitalized in a diabetic coma at least twice, yet he has stashes of sweets all over their apartment... digging his grave with his teeth.

[pyrguy]

I am amazed at how much credit I get for making simple things from scratch.  I am floored that people are amazed that I cook every night.  I am floored that some of these people also claim to never cook. Ever.  What do they eat?!?

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You just reminded me...I'm floored by the number of people who state PROUDLY that they don't cook. I didn't know that was something to be proud of.

Marcia.

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I work as a Building Inspector for a North Metro Atlanta City. A couple of years ago we had a million+ dollar home without a kitchen. They did not cook but ate out for all meals. They were floored when they were told that they were required to have at least a kitchen sink, refrigerator and cook top. They had no idea that some people enjoyed cooking and found pleasure in the task. The whole thing was foreign to them.

[Kevin72]

I am floored by people who go to Cairo and Luxor (Egypt) for two weeks and want to go to McDonald's. 

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Good one. On our honeymoon in Venice I remember walking past a jam-packed McD's at 8pm. I was just . . . well, floored.

[Pan]

I'm pretty amazed that Malaysians pack into McDonalds, KFC, Wendy's, etc., when Malaysian food is so great and so much of it is so cheap. In particular, I was kind of floored that within a 2-block radius of the Night Market in Kota Bharu - full of all manner of very inexpensive delicious foods, especially Ayam Percik Yati - there was a Wendy's, KFC, McDonalds, and I think some other chain, filled with Malaysians. But there's no accounting for taste...

[Smithy]

I'm pretty amazed that Malaysians pack into McDonalds, KFC, Wendy's, etc., when Malaysian food is so great and so much of it is so cheap. In particular, I was kind of floored that within a 2-block radius of the Night Market in Kota Bharu - full of all manner of very inexpensive delicious foods, especially Ayam Percik Yati - there was a Wendy's, KFC, McDonalds, and I think some other chain, filled with Malaysians. But there's no accounting for taste... 

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It's a little less horrifying to me to see the locals jamming into those chain restaurants: they're going out for foreign food, in a sense, just as it was exotic for our family to go to a Chinese restaurant when I was growing up. That's the one hand. The other hand, of course, is that junk food is being encouraged as "nutrition"...and oh why oh why, are these sorts of thing among the USA's largest exports!? It sure doesn't help our image!

[saskanuck]

I am floored by my MIL's and her daughters' cooking, if you could call it that. We are going to visit them for about 3 days this weekend and I am already dreading what we might have to eat. To look on the positive side, I could stand to lose more than a few pounds anyway, but I'm a crabby thing when I'm hungry.

I am a bit of a picky eater, but dear God, the food is an atrocity. The last meal we had there was mashed potatoes, cooked 30 minutes before the rest of the food was ready, smashed in a bowl without any seasoning whatsoever and left on the table to cool while the roast beef and frozen mixed veg were cooking.

The roast beef was done to a lovely gray colour and was cut in inch-thick slabs. I did try to save the poor veg by saying that they did not need to be boiled rapidly for 20 minutes, but to no avail.

The topper was dessert. Fresh strawberries and (cheap) vanilla ice cream, you say? What could be wrong with that? Well, MIL wanted to pour boiling water over the $5.00 a pound strawberries to "soften" them up for the ice cream.

By then I had enough. I asked her if she'd lost her mind and that it was an insane thing to do. By some miracle, she listened to me and left the strawberries as they were. So I had seconds at dessert, because by then I was starving.

Please pray for us. We will have to endure this all weekend. Thank goodness there is a Boston Pizza restaurant in the town, so I may get an edible meal there, not great, but at least it will be edible.

These are the people who scorned my beautiful Bavarian Apple cheesecake, and instead chose the unset, warm, Jello no-bake cheesecake with the burned crust that my SIL made. Heathens.

And if I see food in the fridge again there that has an expiry date of 3 years ago, I'm saying something. That's just ridiculous.

[birder53]

What still continues to astonish me is people who make things like macaroni and cheese out of a box, or brownies out of a box, when making them from scratch is only a very, very little bit more work than making the stuff in the box. I'm not talking about things that really do involve a lot more work to make them from scratch (chicken pot pie comes to mind) or having a box around for an emergency - I'm talking about things that really are almost the same amount of work, and that teensy little investment in time and effort gives a enormous payoff in taste and quality.

Marcia.

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I confess! While I love to cook, I keep a cake and brownie mix on hand. I'm not much of a baker and those Duncan Hines brownies are pretty good. I always try to use fresh lemons and limes for juice, but I keep a bottle of each in case I run out, which has happened.

It's very possible the folks that used the packaged mixes on regular basis grew up eating it that way and don't even know you can make them without the mix!

I was bragging to my brother, who is an excellent cook, about a cocktail sauce I had made. He asked me if I had made my own catsup. I thought that by combining the store bought catsup, jar of horseradish, bottle of tabasco sauce and my very own freshly squeezed lemon juice that it qualified as homemade. After all - I did have to follow a recipe! This isn't a level playing field, and we will all pick the levels we are comfortable playing on. Maybe those folks who live on pre-packaged mixes just haven't had a chance to broaden their horizens - or they need a little convenience sometimes, like me.

[bleachboy]

I was bragging to my brother, who is an excellent cook, about a cocktail sauce I had made.  He asked me if I had made my own catsup.   I thought that by combining the store bought catsup, jar of horseradish, bottle of tabasco sauce and my very own freshly squeezed lemon juice that it qualified as homemade.  After all - I did have to follow a recipe!  This isn't a level playing field, and we will all pick the levels we are comfortable playing on.  Maybe those folks who live on pre-packaged mixes just haven't had a chance to broaden their horizens - or they need a little convenience sometimes, like me.

Well, asking the question is fine but to deride a cocktail sauce because it contains Heinz catsup is just plain snobbery. Cocktail sauce is supposed to contain store-bought catsup, IMHO!

[ladyyoung98]

burnt crust on a no bake cheesecake?......seems not only cant she cook..she cant read directions either

Edited November 10, 2004 by ladyyoung98 (log)

[Toliver]

I was bragging to my brother, who is an excellent cook, about a cocktail sauce I had made.  He asked me if I had made my own catsup.   I thought that by combining the store bought catsup, jar of horseradish, bottle of tabasco sauce and my very own freshly squeezed lemon juice that it qualified as homemade.  After all - I did have to follow a recipe!   This isn't a level playing field, and we will all pick the levels we are comfortable playing on.  Maybe those folks who live on pre-packaged mixes just haven't had a chance to broaden their horizens - or they need a little convenience sometimes, like me.

Well, asking the question is fine but to deride a cocktail sauce because it contains Heinz catsup is just plain snobbery. Cocktail sauce is supposed to contain store-bought catsup, IMHO!

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In his PBS show this weekend, even Jacques Pepin used a bit of store-bought ketchup in his "quick" salsa.

birder53, tell your brother you'd like a batch of his homemade ketchup as a gift for Christmas in case you eventually want to make more cocktail sauce.

[purplewiz]

What still continues to astonish me is people who make things like macaroni and cheese out of a box, or brownies out of a box, when making them from scratch is only a very, very little bit more work than making the stuff in the box. I'm not talking about things that really do involve a lot more work to make them from scratch (chicken pot pie comes to mind) or having a box around for an emergency - I'm talking about things that really are almost the same amount of work, and that teensy little investment in time and effort gives a enormous payoff in taste and quality.

Marcia.

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I confess! While I love to cook, I keep a cake and brownie mix on hand. I'm not much of a baker and those Duncan Hines brownies are pretty good. I always try to use fresh lemons and limes for juice, but I keep a bottle of each in case I run out, which has happened.

It doesn't floor me that people keep a box or two around - when you're short on time or attention, they're a great convenience! It's more a combination of "Whoops, I don't have a box of brownie mix, I can't make brownies!" and "it's so HARD to make them from scratch!". The recipe I use has only two steps more than a box mix: you have to melt the chocolate and butter, and you have to measure ingredients. Otherwise, it's just like a box - melt the chocolate in the pot, add everything else, stir until mixed, put in pan, bake. Just a little more work for a much better result!

It's very possible the folks that used the packaged mixes on regular basis grew up eating it that way and don't even know you can make them without the mix!

For some reason, that makes me very sad.

I was bragging to my brother, who is an excellent cook, about a cocktail sauce I had made.  He asked me if I had made my own catsup.   I thought that by combining the store bought catsup, jar of horseradish, bottle of tabasco sauce and my very own freshly squeezed lemon juice that it qualified as homemade.  After all - I did have to follow a recipe!  This isn't a level playing field, and we will all pick the levels we are comfortable playing on.  Maybe those folks who live on pre-packaged mixes just haven't had a chance to broaden their horizens - or they need a little convenience sometimes, like me.

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That counts as homemade to me !

Marcia.