Speaking of foods, what won't you try?

[MRG]

Quote:

Originally Posted by ABQ2015 This reminds me of a woman I met who would not eat "casseroles." The meat, starch, and vegetables had to be separate on the plate. She would not eat enchiladas, burritos, lasagna, spaghetti, pizza, stir fry, East Indian, etc. so any ethnic restaurant was out. We were on an out of town audit for two weeks and she was very social and wanted to get together at night for dinner. But it was a pain and boring to find a restaurant that would accommodate her tastes. I think she would eat a hamburger or sandwich.

I love it. Many people are like that about food.

Some people can't eat if their food touches. These people are many times "serial eaters", they eat all of one item before touching any other foods on the plate. Complex items(sandwiches, burgers, salads etc..) are seen as one item.

Others are "mixers" they don't do well unless all their food is combined together. They tend to believe that your food touches in the stomach. Let's help it out.

There's a few "rotational eaters " who randomly eat a bite of whatever as long as it's different from the last. They always end up with exactly one bite of everything left, believing it's coincidental. They expertly ate their way around the challenge.

There are also people who watch others eat!

[anethum]

Fresh durian was never in season when I've been in SE Asia. I bought some durian paste and thought it was absolutely vile. An Indonesian restaurant in the USA that some friends & I ate at had durian ice cream on their menu. We ordered one bowl for the table. I was reminded of a letter from a reader which was in a Lonely Planet guidebook. The reader said he was sick & tired of hearing how fabulous durian tastes despite its awful smell. As far as he was concerned, "Durian looks like sh*t, smells like sh*t, and tastes like sh*t. If you really want to try it, try durian ice cream. It still smells like sh*t and tastes like sh*t, but it looks like ice cream." Each of us took one taste of the durian ice cream and we all agreed with that assessment.

I've had chapulines (grasshoppers) in Mexico and thought they had a pleasant crunch with not much flavor themselves.

Escamoles (ant larvae in Mexico) are supposed to be delicious but I haven't seen them on a menu.

I was disappointed when I had huitlacoche in Mexico. It's corn smut, which is a fungus. I didn't think it had that much taste, but it wasn't bad at all.

I was at a restaurant in a small village in Laos which had "large lizard" and "mole" (the underground animal, not a Mexican sauce) on their menu. None of us ordered either one. Anyway, don't you just hate it when you order lizard and they serve you one of those little ones?

[braumeister]

Sort of related:
We once had an audit team visit us in Rio de Janeiro. Nice people, but one woman had three enormous suitcases for a five day visit. Each of her huge bags weighed a ton, and we struggled to get them up to her hotel room.

For the entire week she would ride into the office with her team, but at the end of the day go into her room and stay there until next morning. No amount of coaxing could get her to come out for dinner or anything.

When they were leaving, all her bags were light as a feather. It turned out they had been full of bottles of Perrier, along with enough food to sustain her for the week.

It was her first trip away from home, and someone had told her "Be careful of the water down there in South America" and she took them literally. She never turned on the tap in her room -- brushed her teeth with the Perrier, used it to take sponge baths, everything.

[Sue J]

I do not eat Jello or sauerkraut. I also don't eat anything spicy.

The Jello aversion comes from 6 days in the hospital where I was on clear liquids for several days. Sauerkraut just seems like an awful thing to do to cabbage. I like cabbage, just not sauerkraut.

Mexican spicy seems like punishment to me. As in - "What did I do that was so awful that you would put this horrible thing in my food?" I've tried the mild kind and it's just not a flavor I would choose to eat.

It's funny, I kind of like the chinese takeout mustard in the little plastic packets. Who knows what's really in those! It gives you that sinus clearing feeling and then it's gone. I can tolerate a little of that.

Our new Chinese daughter-in-law brought this from home. She warned me that it is very hot so I am avoiding it.

[Goonie]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nodak There is a dish that's quite popular around Christmas with the Icelandic descendants around here. It is Lutefisk AKA lye-fish served with lots of melted butter. I cannot get past the smell. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lutefisk

I usually go to the annual Norwegian smorgasbord that the Sons of Norway throw every year in little town of Norway, IL, a few miles from my home (the first permanent Norwegian settlement in the U.S.). Everything is traditional Norwegian fare, including a lot of lutefisk! The first time I went, I just had to try it because all of my Norwegian friends said that it was the most god awful stuff ever devised. I tried it....and I liked it!! I went back through the line a couple more times and each time I got some more. It's kind of like a thick fish jello.

Quote:

Originally Posted by ABQ2015 This reminds me of a woman I met who would not eat "casseroles." The meat, starch, and vegetables had to be separate on the plate.......

Quote:

Originally Posted by MRG ........Some people can't eat if their food touches.......

Years ago, I used to have a couple of friends who were that way.....one food item could not touch another food item.....ever! I couldn't stand going places to eat with them. They were always griping if food items touched. Needless to say we tended not to socialize very much after the first couple of times like that.

As for me, food items can touch either other, be mixed with each other if desired or necessary, or even piled on top of each other. Heck, once it gets swallowed it gets all mixed together anyway!

[2017ish]

Quote:

Originally Posted by MBAustin Ditto. Or anchovies or blue cheese. I just returned from 2 weeks in Peru and the food was fabulous (even though we didn't make it to any of the high-end Lima restaurants. Cuy (guinea pig, pronounced "coo-ee") .... Anticuchos are marinated beef hearts also grilled on a stick - very tasty (enough so that I may try to find beef hearts and make it myself). Ceviche .... Many varieties of corn and potatoes. Their bar snack equivalent of popcorn is baked corn kernels of different shapes, sizes, and colors. I could go on but this is making me hungry!

I love ceviche and it sounds like there is a great variety of it to try in Lima! Thanks for this post. Hadn't heard of Anticuchos. DW has us booked at a couple of the renowned Miraflores restaurants so far--but we have enough time there to do a whole bunch of regular food days to average the price out.

Don't know what aspect of the trip we are most looking forward to, but the food is high on the list.

[EastWest Gal]

Quote:

Originally Posted by athena53 I"m going back to Iceland next month and will skip the things DH and I saw on menus there on our 2015 trip: whale, puffin, and horsemeat carpaccio (thinly-slicd raw horsemeat). I'm sure they're all palatable but puffins are so CUTE and I like whales. Horsemeat is perfectly acceptable in some European cultures if it's sold as such and they follow the laws for feeding and treatment of the animals- but I just can't get used to the idea. I don't like organ meats. Tried haggis and blood sausage (also called "black sausage") in Edinburgh. Once was enough. Did not try eating termites in the Costa Rican forest although a couple of my fellow travelers did. I love spicy foods, especially Indian, and haven't encountered a fruit or vegetable I didn't like. I particularly loved traveling in India on business because, unlike most areas in Asia, you were unlikely to be presented with, let's say, unusual forms of meat. I ate traditional Indian food 3X/day and stayed happily vegetarian. It was a piece of advice I got to prevent stomach upsets- maybe the unfriendly bacteria are more likely to proliferate in meat than plants. The worst upset I ever had was after I violated this and had fish in the restaurant of the hotel where I stayed- a good one that prepared foods to the standards of European and American sanitary practices. I won't do that again.

I had horse meat in Iceland and didn't really care for it. It's hard to eat well in Iceland. One thing I enjoyed was the wildlife boat tour complete with fresh seafood, scooped up from the sea. That was the only time I dared raw seafood. It was good, actually. Anything not eaten went back into the sea. There were a lot of crabs crawling around on the deck until they got tossed back into the sea.

We ended up eating a lot at breakfast and a lot of hot dogs, pizza, and Indian food due to the cost and lack of other affordable choices. I also brought 2 lbs of nuts in my suitcase. It allowed for skipped meals. Here is a link to the seafood tour:

https://www.icelandtravel.is/tour/it...short-version/

Last, I like Andrew Zimmerman and Anthony Bourdain both. There is one thing Andrew Zimmerman won't eat: oatmeal!

[Tom52]

Tried rattlesnake once in Arizona. It tasted like chicken. I won't eat raw fish, or any organ meat. I do not like wild gamey tasting meats like elk or buffalo, or even deer unless it is corn fed.

[wrigley]

Most of the things Andrew Zimmern eats. Even though I do like the show!

Mike