BS: Quirky Food Rituals - what's yours?

Subject: BS: Quirky Food Rituals - what's yours?
From: VirginiaTam
Date: 12 Dec 08 - 05:31 AM

Remembering my kid's being picky eaters and dredged up memories of my own peculiar meal time and food rituals.

These are from childhood (before age 10), all a bit OCD now it comes to it.

I loved bread crusts, but preferred them trimmed off so I could eat them last of all.

I used remove the peel from grapes.

I had favourite spoon and fork and was not happy if I did not have them at mealtime.

Could not bear to have metal fork or spoon touch my lips, so used my teeth to scrape food off.

Whether paper or linen napkin (serviette) I had to fold in such a way to produce a sharp corner. This corner I would press against corners of my mouth and then trace outline of my lips.

As an adult I eat the biscuit base off of a Tunnock's TeaCake and then lick the marshmallow cream out of the left over chocolate bowl.

Earl Grey only tastes right if I heat the teapot before brewing the tea.

I now have favourite cup for my coffee/tea.

Found this sometime back and think it is quite hilarious.

Toast Leaner's Club

Your turn to tell me yours.

Subject: RE: BS: Quirky Food Rituals - what's yours?
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 12 Dec 08 - 08:21 AM

I have to tap the closed top of a yoghurt with the the spoon to the rythmn 'tump-ty tumptump, tump-ty tumptump, tump-ty tumptump tump tump tump'. Partly to get the yoghurt off the top but mostly because it annoyed the tits of the bloke I used to sit opposite at work.

Now I just can't get out of the habit!

I'll always bite the top off a walnut whip and lick out the cream, and I'll always eat cherries by circumferencing them with my front teeth, easing the stone out with my tongue and then sucking the rest of the cherry off the stalk to eat. And yes... I can tie the stalks into a knot with my tongue but they taste like shit.

LTS

Subject: RE: BS: Quirky Food Rituals - what's yours?
From: Rapparee
Date: 12 Dec 08 - 08:57 AM

I intensely dislike deviled, boiled, fried and poached eggs -- especially the whites. Always have. Scrambled, omelets, meringue -- fine. It goes back to a battle of wills with my mother over eating the white of a fried egg (I won, but like all kids, I also lost).

My family used to put sugar on cottage cheese, celery, tomatoes, and lettuce.

Subject: RE: BS: Quirky Food Rituals - what's yours?
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 12 Dec 08 - 09:06 AM

What's this "Toast Leaners" thing?

You do that, you don't have that wonderful, perishable commodity, hot toast!!

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: BS: Quirky Food Rituals - what's yours?
From: Spleen Cringe
Date: 12 Dec 08 - 09:06 AM

I only ingest pork pies nasally...

Subject: RE: BS: Quirky Food Rituals - what's yours?
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 12 Dec 08 - 09:12 AM

That should read 'annoyed the tits off the bloke opposite'.... but it didn't work. His moobs are bigger than most.

LTS

Subject: RE: BS: Quirky Food Rituals - what's yours?
From: Rapparee
Date: 12 Dec 08 - 09:14 AM

He had little birds sitting on him? Wasn't that messy at lunch?

Subject: RE: BS: Quirky Food Rituals - what's yours?
From: Wesley S
Date: 12 Dec 08 - 09:33 AM

I have absolutly no food quirks if you don't count the mayo I put on peanut butter sandwiches.

Subject: RE: BS: Quirky Food Rituals - what's yours?
From: Georgiansilver
Date: 12 Dec 08 - 09:35 AM

I eat my fillet steak extremely rare and always with a good French Red Wine..............is that quirky?

Subject: RE: BS: Quirky Food Rituals - what's yours?
From: VirginiaTam
Date: 12 Dec 08 - 09:36 AM

Yes I found the Toast Leaner's by googling it after meeting my very English partner who leans his toast.

I prefer mine hot and the butter completely melted. And that final statement is nearly as packed with inuendo as Liz the Squeak's cherry eating description.

My aunt used to eat peanut butter and vidalia onion sandwiches and she was not pregnant.

Subject: RE: BS: Quirky Food Rituals - what's yours?
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 12 Dec 08 - 09:40 AM

Manitas hates to have his food mixed up on his plate.. if you give him something like rice and sweetcorn, he separates each out into piles with a distinct gap between them... then eats from each pile separately. A good stew really confounds him!

LTS

Subject: RE: BS: Quirky Food Rituals - what's yours?
From: Rapparee
Date: 12 Dec 08 - 04:02 PM

Red beans and rice? Shepherd's Pie? Son-of-a-bitch Stew? Breaded and fried calves brains? Does he eat Rocky Mountain Oysters?

Subject: RE: BS: Quirky Food Rituals - what's yours?
From: VirginiaTam
Date: 12 Dec 08 - 04:18 PM

Rapaire

What is Son-of-a-bitch Stew? Anything like Brunswick Stew?

Subject: RE: BS: Quirky Food Rituals - what's yours?
From: Rapparee
Date: 12 Dec 08 - 05:12 PM

Son Of A Bitch Stew

All the meat is of course beef, preferably from an animal slaughtered to feed the trail drive crew.

Throw into the pot 1 pound of neck meat cut in small pieces, 1 heart cut up, the brains, the lights chopped small, all the marrow-gut, a little of the liver, salt, pepper, and chiles. Start in cold water. cook slowly until done, about 6 or 7 hours. When the meat is almost done, add 1 large can of tomato juice, if desired. Feeds about 8.

You can also add chopped onions and carrots if you have them.

(For the edification of those who may be dubious about marrow-gut, it is not an intestine. It is a milk-secreting tract found only in calves, and it imparts to a stew a delicious flavor all its own, without which the stew is nothing like so distinctive.)

Subject: RE: BS: Quirky Food Rituals - what's yours?
From: Bill D
Date: 12 Dec 08 - 05:34 PM

When I was young..(7-12) I used to nibble my PB&J sandwiches into shapes...a boat was common.

And then there was the Borden's Eagle Brand Sweetened Condensed Milk....spread on soft, white bread....and often eaten right from the can.

Subject: RE: BS: Quirky Food Rituals - what's yours?
From: Rapparee
Date: 12 Dec 08 - 05:41 PM

Forgot to include the sweetbreads! Gotta have sweetbreads in SOB stew.

Subject: RE: BS: Quirky Food Rituals - what's yours?
From: VirginiaTam
Date: 12 Dec 08 - 05:42 PM

Thanks Rapaire, but no thanks.

Shudder... not into chitlins and such.

Subject: RE: BS: Quirky Food Rituals - what's yours?
From: Bert
Date: 12 Dec 08 - 06:26 PM

When I was about nine we went to visit an Aunt who lived in Cornwall, she had a three year old son who wouldn't eat his boiled egg.

Auntie wanted me to finish the half eaten runny mess. I have never been able to eat runny eggs since.

Subject: RE: BS: Quirky Food Rituals - what's yours?
From: Rapparee
Date: 12 Dec 08 - 06:28 PM

Weeeeell, there ARE some citified, sissyfied, recipes that are sort of like the real thing....

Subject: RE: BS: Quirky Food Rituals - what's yours?
From: Alice
Date: 12 Dec 08 - 07:04 PM

I can't eat mashed potatoes unless there is gravy on them.
Could not as a child, and still can't.

Subject: RE: BS: Quirky Food Rituals - what's yours?
From: Joe_F
Date: 12 Dec 08 - 08:39 PM

Rapaire: What, no puppy meat?

I still hate any food whose texture reminds me of snot -- egg white, fat, etc.

Subject: RE: BS: Quirky Food Rituals - what's yours?
From: Rapparee
Date: 12 Dec 08 - 09:16 PM

Did you want some?

Subject: RE: BS: Quirky Food Rituals - what's yours?
From: olddude
Date: 12 Dec 08 - 09:35 PM

Mom my makes these christmas cookies every year. She calls them "stuffed Birds" when you see all the good stuff that goes into them you think wow I bet these are great. I tell you, it is like taking harmless household chemicals and when you mix them together something deadly and dangerous occurs.   

She however, loves them, the worst part is she thinks I love them. All my life I have never had the courage to tell her that I would rather eat rat entails ...

but she would never make them just for herself. So here I sit at age 55 choking down these God forsaken things. You see I can't toss them because it takes her all day to make them and I would feel guilty. So I hold my nose and choke them down with a lot of coffee.

Every year, I get in the mail a care package of her "special christmas cookies"

you would have to eat one to understand what I am talking about. I gave one once to my buddie Garry. Now I have seen Garry eat things that the survivor man wouldn't eat. The cookie put him to his knees.

I have 6 left, wish me luck

Subject: RE: BS: Quirky Food Rituals - what's yours?
From: Bill D
Date: 12 Dec 08 - 10:36 PM

Do know for a fact that MOM eats them?


(My mom told me that *I* quit eating eggs at 18 months. I still do not eat anything that has recognizable lumps of egg.)

Subject: RE: BS: Quirky Food Rituals - what's yours?
From: olddude
Date: 12 Dec 08 - 10:49 PM

Good point ... hmmmm come to think of it ... I haven't seen one in her mouth in years .. hmmmm maybe it is payback for breaking all her expensive dishes when I was 5 years old .... you may be on to something here Bill ... it is all a ploy I tell you ...

wait till I see that little old lady .. now she is in for it

Subject: RE: BS: Quirky Food Rituals - what's yours?
From: Becca72
Date: 13 Dec 08 - 07:35 AM

I don't recall any food quirks for me other than not liking certain things. My sister, on the other hand, will not eat certain foods because of the way they feel and she insists on having cake and ice cream on separate plates and hates it when her food touches each other.   My B-I-L has to have cake placed a certain way on his plate (he claims to maximize the cake-to-frosting ratio of each bit).

Subject: RE: BS: Quirky Food Rituals - what's yours?
From: Spot
Date: 13 Dec 08 - 09:35 AM

Allooo everybody...

1. Toast leaning is without doubt the most important culinary      
    procedure ever invented...

2. I hate an overloaded plate..

3. I hate any other irons than "my" ones....

4. I dislike overcooked food....

5. I can't do with folk speaking with a mouthful....

6. Repeat previous 5...

       That said , I love my grub and revel in cooking for others and am far from the miserable git I may appear to be from this post!!

               Best Wishes to all.....Spot   ;-) ;-)

Subject: RE: BS: Quirky Food Rituals - what's yours?
From: Rapparee
Date: 13 Dec 08 - 10:20 AM

Cold toast is better than no toast, but not by very much.

Subject: RE: BS: Quirky Food Rituals - what's yours?
From: Alice
Date: 13 Dec 08 - 10:31 AM

I can't drink milk straight. If it's with cereal, or is chocolate milk or cocoa, that's ok. Never could drink milk as a kid, still can't.

Can't drink coffee without milk or cream in it, no sugar, and I'm a coffee addict, drinking it since I was nine.

I could not handle the texture of cheese and would not eat it until I was in my 20's. I was one of those kids who could not let foods touch each other on the plate. I would not eat tomatoes until just a few years ago. Tomato sauce on pasta or pizza was ok, but just plain raw tomato... yuk. Now I can eat it if it is a slice on a sandwich. If it's raw in a salad, I pick the tomato pieces out and push them to the side.

Subject: RE: BS: Quirky Food Rituals - what's yours?
From: Gurney
Date: 13 Dec 08 - 02:45 PM

Fruitcake and cheese, a Yorkshire delicacy, better than either taken separately. Not really a ritual, though it takes a little courage to take the first bite. As it must have done to eat the first raw oyster, eh, Joe_F?

Subject: RE: BS: Quirky Food Rituals - what's yours?
From: Charmion
Date: 13 Dec 08 - 02:56 PM

I finally overcame my rooted objection to oatmeal at the age of 53, when Edmund persuaded, wheedled, chivvied and nagged me into trying steel-cut oats cooked with raisins and a bit of cinnamon. I still won't eat rolled oats, whatever you put in them.

Subject: RE: BS: Quirky Food Rituals - what's yours?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 13 Dec 08 - 03:01 PM

1) A good strong Lancashire cheese (Kirkham's) toasted on heavy fruitcake.

2) Mini Cheddars sandwiched with tomato sauce (this I do whilst awaiting the main course in Wetherspoons much to the irritation of my long-suffering wife).

3) Xmas Day - a good strong wholegrain mustard mashed up with frozen brambles for a very excellent garnish.

4) Laughing Cow & Colman's Mustard spread on Warburton's crumpets.

Subject: RE: BS: Quirky Food Rituals - what's yours?
From: lady penelope
Date: 13 Dec 08 - 03:18 PM

Ginger cake and pears... Mmmm....

Hmmm...quirky....

Any sweet covered in chocolate is liable to have the chocolate nibbled off first (down to and including Malteesers). I do the same as Liz with regards to walnut whips.

I still nibble the crust off any sandwich involving marmite.

It took me years to get used to toast done both sides (grew up with an eye level grill and could never be bothered to wait to do the other side of the toast...)

I like raw tomato but can't abide it on burgers or pizza.

I like raw bananas but can't abide them processed in any shape, form or fashion.

Hate drinking either milk or water out of anything but a glass. I have no idea why. I can just about cope with water out of a plastic bottle.

Subject: RE: BS: Quirky Food Rituals - what's yours?
From: Bainbo
Date: 13 Dec 08 - 06:51 PM

This refers to what we in the UK call chips - like french fries, but about five times as thick, preferably hand-cut, and served with salt and vinegar.

If they are on the same table as a plate of bread and butter, it is impossible - physically impossible - for me not to make a chip butty. Sllice of bread and butter, topped with a few hot chips, then another slice of bread and butter; wait a few seconds until the butter starts to melt; and then it's chippy nirvana.

I don't care where, or in whose company, I am. It would be a sin not to.

Subject: RE: BS: Quirky Food Rituals - what's yours?
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 13 Dec 08 - 08:50 PM

Someone above confided that (s)he had no food quirks except that (s)he wanted mayo in his/her peanut butter sandwich.

That's no quirk; that's a wonderful sandwich! Especially if on HOT toast, so that the mayo and peanut butter get gooey together!

Other great peanut butter combinations are peanut butter and honey sandwiches, peanut butter and (sweet) onion sandwiches, and hors d'oeuvres of a crisp base of some kind with peanut butter with just a little bit of hot horseradish on top. Positively Lucullan!

--------

Leaving peanut butter aside for the nonce, a great favorite out of my childhood is apple pie served with a good slice of SHARP cheddar.

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: BS: Quirky Food Rituals - what's yours?
From: IvanB
Date: 13 Dec 08 - 09:46 PM

Rapaire, I'd never consign sweetbreads to a stew! They're much too good on their own to waste. Calf sweetbreads are the ultimate treat, but Holstein steers have acceptable sweetbreads too although they're much more fat infiltrated than those from calves.   Mmmmm...

Subject: RE: BS: Quirky Food Rituals - what's yours?
From: LilyFestre
Date: 13 Dec 08 - 10:08 PM

I love popcorn sprayed with olive oil, salt and garlic granules and then I like to throw in some grapes or a sliced banana....it drives my husband crazy but I love it! I also really like green olives with red grapes, together....sweet and salty...Mmmmmm Mmmmmmmm GOOD!

Michelle

Subject: RE: BS: Quirky Food Rituals - what's yours?
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 14 Dec 08 - 02:31 AM

"I have absolutly no food quirks if you don't count the mayo I put on peanut butter sandwiches."

Bloody hell, Heart-Attack City, man!!

But fruit-cake and cheese - mmmmmmmmmmmmmm! Yumyumyumyum! Plum loaf and cheese are delicious too (and before anyone asks - NO, it doesn't contain plums!).

And Dave-O, my friend Sooz says that you should always eat cheese with an apple - or as she puts it:-

"An apple without cheese
Is like a kiss without a squeeze!"

Subject: RE: BS: Quirky Food Rituals - what's yours?
From: VirginiaTam
Date: 14 Dec 08 - 06:58 AM

Apple and cheese are brilliant together. I like sliced apple and cheddar on soft white roll. Kind of modern ploughman sandwich. But apple and peanutbutter are great together too.

I am getting hungry... cornflakes banana and skim milk not enough. Think I'll make some cinnamon toast under the grill.

Subject: RE: BS: Quirky Food Rituals - what's yours?
From: RangerSteve
Date: 14 Dec 08 - 07:48 AM

When I was a kid, we got our milk from a local dairy. For a short while, they started using amber colored bottles. I couldn't bring myself to drink that milk. It was the same old milk once you poured it into a glass, but it looked wrong in the bottle.

We also had jelly glasses when I was a kid. Jelly came in jars that were meant to be re-used as drinking glasses. Usually they had cartoon characters on them. I couldn't drink from a jelly glass that had a cartoon character that I didn't like. In my mind, they made the drink taste bad. (Archie was the worst offender).

Subject: RE: BS: Quirky Food Rituals - what's yours?
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 14 Dec 08 - 10:59 AM

In my youth we, too, used jelly or jam containers to drink from, but they were screw-top jars. I never questioned it in the least until early adulthood.

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: BS: Quirky Food Rituals - what's yours?
From: wysiwyg
Date: 14 Dec 08 - 11:17 AM

I always get a racoon to wash each bite before it goes in my mouth. They used to be willing to wash at the other end as well-- you know, so I could put things into plastic bags--but now, not so much.

~S~

Subject: RE: BS: Quirky Food Rituals - what's yours?
From: Gurney
Date: 15 Dec 08 - 12:49 AM

OOh, Uncle_DaveO, drinking vessels? You were lucky! WE had to drink out of PUDDLES!....

With apologies to the four yorkshiremen.

Subject: RE: BS: Quirky Food Rituals - what's yours?
From: GUEST,Mr Red
Date: 15 Dec 08 - 07:10 AM

Avoiding restaurants.

The day they can take instruction and understand what they are serving without making me feel somehow guilty for asking them to understand what goes into their preparations, is the day I eat out.

Vegetarians and allergics have their understanding, if grudgingly, but tell them you don't like this or that and they don't have a label (or sympathy) for you.

Subject: RE: BS: Quirky Food Rituals - what's yours?
From: kendall
Date: 15 Dec 08 - 07:16 AM

You had puddles? Luxury! we had to go around on our hands and knees sucking the dew off the grass.Of course, we tried to avoid the places where the cow had been grazing.

Seriously, when I was a boy we were not allowed to have any such hangups. We ate what was put before us or we went hungry.

Subject: RE: BS: Quirky Food Rituals - what's yours?
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 15 Dec 08 - 09:25 AM

"Fer them as don't like beans, you have et!"

Subject: RE: BS: Quirky Food Rituals - what's yours?
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 15 Dec 08 - 09:30 AM

I guess I am less ritualistic about my eating than I used to be as a kid. This thread has brought back memories.

I loved canned chili with beans. Still do. As a kid, I had to eat it with saltines, and they had to be Nabisco Premium brand. I had to strictly alternate one bite of cracker with one spoonful of chili. It didn't taste right otherwise. I evolved a method of biting the cracker so that each cracker gave me three bites of equal size.

Another favorite: Choose one from each group, depending on what is available: (butter* or peanut butter) and (honey, Karo syrup, or molasses). Put a dab of each on a saucer or plate. Stir them with a tip of a knife until they are well blended. Then spread the mixture** on toast, or better yet, dip the toast in the mixture. Sometimes you will finish a slice of toast and have some of the mixture left over; then you have no choice but to make another slice of toast. Sometimes you will use up your mixture and have some toast left; then you have to make some more of the mixture. With luck, you can keep this up until your mother throws you out of the kitchen and eats whatever is left herself.

*Actually, I knew only margarine as a kid but we called it "butter." At first I didn't know there was a difference; later, I thought butter was something only rich people ate. I didn't find out what real butter tasted like until I was in college. Since then, I have eaten butter almost exclusively, except that recently I started using margarine occasionally, in the interest of controlling cholesterol.

**Regardless of the actual ingredients, the only name I knew for this was "butter and honey."

Subject: RE: BS: Quirky Food Rituals - what's yours?
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 15 Dec 08 - 10:47 AM

I find that my idea of what is edible has 'set' with age. For example, I cannot abide the texture of raw fish. Let the young whippersnappers eat sushi, say I.

I'm fussy about eggs. They taste fine, but I would like to have them scrambled so as to hide their true nature. However, that makes a messy pan, so I have adapted to eating a fried egg on toast. The texture of the toast hides the eggness. However, it is federal law that the white be completely cooked and the yoke be cooked over/medium. Any clear material nullifies the egg.

RangerSteve, I know what you mean about the cartoon character making the drink inside seem bad. Little kids think by process of association very much.

I remember not wanting to eat catfish because big kids had told me that catfish will attack you with their barbs. Catfish hurt kid, therefore, kid refuse eat catfish.

Subject: RE: BS: Quirky Food Rituals - what's yours?
From: Sleepy Rosie
Date: 15 Dec 08 - 11:14 AM

Chopped pickled chillies on pretty much everything that isn't sweet.

And this I learned from my father - raw chunky chopped garlic and Red Leicester sandwiches made with wholemeal bread doorstops. Mmmm.

Spinach with maceroni cheese.

This one's from my uncle, when he had piles he was advised by an enthusiastic amateur herbalist to put a raw peeled garlic clove up his... Which he duly did. It sent him through the roof. But apparently the piles packed their bags and left...

Subject: RE: BS: Quirky Food Rituals - what's yours?
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 15 Dec 08 - 12:21 PM

Leeniea mentioned:

However, it is federal law that the white be completely cooked and the yoke be cooked over/medium.

Federal law? I doubt it. There would be no way for federal authorities to reach down into the neighborhood breakfast joint, let alone into kitchen of the average citizen. What's more, no federal jurisdiction.   And I've never heard of any such law or regulation.

Of course I could be wrong. (No, THERE is a handsome admission, if I ever heard one!)

Conceivably, warnings from the Surgeon General, but that's not law in any sense.

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: BS: Quirky Food Rituals - what's yours?
From: Mrrzy
Date: 15 Dec 08 - 06:56 PM

Back when airplanes served meals, I always saved the dessert for last. Mom always ate it first, in case there was an air raid.

Subject: RE: BS: Quirky Food Rituals - what's yours?
From: Alice
Date: 15 Dec 08 - 07:22 PM

I've never liked fledermaus.
Just picky, I guess.

Subject: RE: BS: Quirky Food Rituals - what's yours?
From: kendall
Date: 16 Dec 08 - 04:00 PM

When I was in the Explorer I had a Mate who put Mayo on everything, including cucumber slices.

I also draw the line at raw fish. Around here it's called "Bait"

Subject: RE: BS: Quirky Food Rituals - what's yours?
From: jeffp
Date: 16 Dec 08 - 04:23 PM

No law, merely a reluctance on the part of restaurants to risk lawsuits in case of food poisoning. Of course, at home you can cook it any way you effin like.

Subject: RE: BS: Quirky Food Rituals - what's yours?
From: TRUBRIT
Date: 16 Dec 08 - 09:41 PM

I always eat apples in circles. Round the middle first, then round the yukky end, then round the end where the stalk is -- always have always will. Neither my sister nor my daughter will touch fresh tomatoes in salad, sandwiches or anywhere else though tomato based products are ok...........my son eats anything and everything but he is 20 and growing by the hour.....