What's the food dish that traumatized you as a kid?

My family loves my fried “pork chop jerky!” Lol.

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re: cotton candy - I had a summer job in HS/college at the Jersey shore, working as a waitress in a hamburger stand on the boardwalk. The place had a cotton candy machine, which was rolled out each night as a star attraction at their open-air counter for those walking the boards. The cotton candy was made to order - no pre-bagging. To make it right you had to learn the art of twirling it around the paper cone and making it look pretty. When it was humid, it would get super sticky, and sometimes even start to drip a bit. If the air was cool and dry, it wasn’t sticky enough to stick on the cone and it was real challenge to make it so it would stay on (while the customer was standing there watching us struggle!) Either way, that spun sugar got all over our hands. We all hated making it, and during the 6 summers I worked there, I NEVER once put even a tiny bit of that nasty stuff into my mouth. And it always floored me how excited parents would be to buy it for their kids!!

I forgot my most hated food as a kid - bluefish! and flounder, but particularly bluefish. My dad was a salt-water fisherman, he went out fishing on his boat every Friday, and would catch a ton of fish. After cleaning and deboning all of them, he would bring them home in large baggies and put them in the fridge, ready for my mom to cook up for a week-end’s worth of meals. Oh how I hated those fish dinners, and I got a lot of grief from both parents for refusing to eat it. I was well into my 30’s before I began to shed my aversion to white fish of any kind, but I still won’t eat flounder (or bluefish, but you don’t really see that too often on a menu.)

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Boiled Brussel sprouts ( and they are so delicious roasted….what a travesty!)

Tongue ( why God, why !)

Beets (The giant ones that were slimy!)

Peas from a can (such a horrible thing to do to peas)

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Hot dogs. Yuck. Bologna.

My bologna had a first name. It’s OSCAR

Anything from Oscar Mayer…

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@sushiritto - my husband is with you on cotton candy! He hates anything sticky and says the stuff should be made illegal because it is just yuck! My husband is dreading taking our grands to the fair… :laughing:

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Liverworst and Mayo sandwiches. Having to eat one of those while other kids had peanut butter and jelly was unfair!

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I have another British food story.

Stayed with a British host family as a high school student and liked the food they made just fine, but once, when travelling, they got chicken pie and steak and kidney pie from a van. I had never had kidney, but I thought steak sounded better than chicken, so when asked which one I wanted, I said steak, please.

The pie stuffing tasted like unadulterated piss. To this day, I don’t understand how anyone could eat it. They were very nice and let me swap for chicken pie immediately, but I adamantly refused kidney ever after. Until my brother, who is a bit of a gourmet took me to a fancy restaurant in college and insisted I try some of his fancy kidney dish. Surprise! When properly prepared, it just tastes like liver, which I like. I’ve since prepared it once myself, but really the trouble of the prep isn’t worth it. And I’d still never order it on my own, I don’t trust anyone!

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I’m amazed at how many foods y’all don’t like that my family loves - chipped beef and gravy (though we serve it over mashed potatoes or pasta) or swiss steak, for instance. Many can be a commonly requested foods when the kids come home.

Researchers who study taste buds sure have a lot of variety to work with.

I too like lots of things mentioned by others-swiss steak, meat loaf, corned beef and cabbage, Manwich, hard boiled eggs, beets, lima beans,anchovies, etc. Heck, I’ve even been known to enjoy canned peas now and again (Leseur with mushrooms and onions). We eat lots more healthy things than things like meatloaf, but i do like a good meatloaf now and again! Now, sushi- no interest. But, I like lots of fish, just not raw.
So much depends probably on what you grew up with and your tastebuds!

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I can’t stand sushi either, so we have a bit in common!

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I’ll bet swiss steak is one of those entrees that can vary in preparation/ingredients a lot. Sort of like meatloaf which can go MANY ways.

I too was surprised that swiss steak was on so many :-1: lists. I haven’t made it in a while but I used to buy a round steak, pound some flour and salt/pepper in it with a tenderizer mallet, brown it on both sides, add fresh mushrooms, onion and some type of tomato , maybe a little beef broth and simmer for awhile. My H loved it. I preferred that over stew which for me is :nauseated_face:

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Milk has always made me gag. Same with tuna from a can. My mom was a terrible cook, nothing was from scratch. We had instant mashed potatoes, minute rice, frozen fried chicken. Vegetables were from frozen but cooked to mush. I remember sitting at the table long after everyone was done because I didn’t want to eat something. My siblings and I went with the wrap the offensive item in a piece of white bread to try to get it down or gulp it down with water. My Mom loved the microwave and we were one of the first families in the neighborhood to get one. Scrambled eggs over cooked in the microwave, Yuck!
I actually loved dried up pork chops baked with Shake and Bake or Lipton onion soup mix. Hated the smell of pork roast and meatloaf.

My H is a saltwater fisherman and fishes every chance he gets. Usually, he’ll catch and release, but he will sometimes keep blues. Agree with you on bluefish–unless you prepare and cook it the same day you catch it. I broil the fillets with a mixture of mayonnaise and mustard and capers on top. Sounds weird, but it tastes much better than it sounds. That being said, I would never, ever eat bluefish the day after it’s caught. There’s a reason you never see bluefish on a menu and it’s rarely sold in fish stores.

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The trouble with blue fish is they are super fun to catch but taste terrible in my opinion. We had plenty of fish growing up --I loved trout and grouper but blue fish got a big nope from me. Maybe my mom just never got the hang of cooking it. Sheepshead were fun to catch too but I dreaded having to eat one–too many bones to watch for.

I do like Swiss Steak. And I like meat loaf but my mom never made it–I learned to cook it in home ec as a home project in middle school. I still make it the same way all these years later.

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Bloodworms. That’s hotdogs skinny-sliced lengthwise in a tomato type sauce, served in a big pile. Whose the #$%! idea was that? It was not a family hit and my brother tormented me with it.
Also, canned beets.

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Not fighting at all here - you can have ALL the sushi, including my portion. :wink:

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I hated mayo as a kid, and actually preferred Miracle Whip.

Today, I love mayo – nary a meat-filled sandwich enters my belly without a healthy smear of mayo in it. Even on a Reuben, it is welcome, to mellow the tang of the 1000 Island a tad.

And I never choose Miracle Whip.

I grew up with Miracle Whip. Then I tasted Mayo sometime in college and have never looked back.

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Liverwurst and braunschweiger - Dad served in the Army in Germany, so maybe this was the source.

And Brussels sprouts.

Blech.

(Sushi was a later-acquired hatred).