re-try all the foods i hated as a kid

i haven’t made a lot of progress on this lately – I’ve been picking the mushrooms off my pizza, though I could taste a couple that slipped by under the cheese. I don’t think that REALLY counts I suppose since I tried my best to get rid of them

and it was disgusting.

i didn’t mean to eat the mushroom, I was at Lola for dinner last night with friends. The restaurant was dimly lit and thought it was a eggplant kebab.

blech. it was not.

ok, mushrooms re-tried, still on the hate list.

I’m suprised I grew up pretty healthy given that I barely ate anything as a kid. I had a small appetite to begin with, and it didn’t help that I was picky. my ‘no-list’ fell into a couple categories:

• foods that were white (milk, soy, mayonnaise, yogurt, cheese, creamy sauces like alfredo, bok-choy because the stems are white and when translated means white vegetable, egg whites and as a result scrambled eggs because I knew the whites were in there)

• foods that had anything to do with mold or fungus (mushrooms, stinky cheeses) because I thought i would get sick from it (which also made me not like sushi because it was raw and how could raw things be good for you?)

• foods that smelled (cucumbers have this awful smell to them that makes any food that they touch smell like them too. If watermelons weren’t sugary, watermelons would be in this category too)

• foods that looked like any of the other categories of foods I didn’t like (like zucchini which looks like cucumber)

• foods that (I deemed) made unpleasant noises when you or those around you eat them (water chestnuts, bean sprouts)

• foods that reminded me of traumatic childhood experiences, like that time I threw up on the dentist for giving me strawberry flavored fluoride treatment. That rules out strawberry gum, strawberry jam (which made me dislike all jams for the sake of it) strawberry ice cream, strawberry milk (double violation on that one) or anything that might have that artificial strawberry flavor

• foods that my mom didn’t have an non-chinese name for (and therefore could not be found in raw/uncooked form in a normal super market for me to examine if it fell into any of the above named categories) or my mom couldn’t decide if it was something that lived in the sea or on land; if it grew on a tree or on a plant.

Oddly enough, I LOVED things like liver, brocoli and any of the other stereotypical ‘hated’ foods.

So here’s where i stand today – I’ve overcome a lot of theses, but off the top of my head, here’s the things I still can’t bring myself to eat (in no particular order)

• cucumbers
• eggs (in cakes, fantastic! alone, no thanks)
• artificial strawberry related things
• mushrooms
• water chestnuts
• bok choy
• other miscellaneous chinese vegetables
• sea cucumbers
• bean sprouts
• mayonnaise

that’s the list for now…we’ll see how it goes