Fussy eaters do my head in; discuss

I've got to run now but wanted to start this while I remembered.

My brother is a fussy eater.

I concur. You do realise this is gonna be a clusterfuck, right?

it's their loss i guess, unless their fussiness is detrimental to people around them (e.g. vocal complaints, not joining in with mealtimes etc).

which it usually is.

I'm a fusilli eater...
http://tonetta.net/files/pasta_shapes_fusilli__1.jpg

people who complain endlessly about other people do my head in.

http://www.organizeit-online.com/images/ironingCompact6.jpg

People who post picture zings aimed at people who complain about people who complain endlessly about other people who do their head in do my head in.

You should do a thread about that.

Nah don't think I'll bother

people who don't bother do my head in

This is fine with me provided I don't have to cook for them or, worse, spend ages tramping around looking for a restaurant that meets with their approval.

Actually, people can like or dislike whatever they want provided they don't expect everyone else to reorganise all their plans on their account.

I am so sorry. I am one of those proverbial fussy eaters. :-(

Well, actually, I'm not when it comes to making and cooking mine own food - but I'm a terror to have to find a restaurant with. Which is why I try to have a selection of restaurants I know will be OK and always suggest we go to one of those so others don't have to be exposed to my fussiness and dithering.

It's totally a control thing, I fully admit, the need to have control over one's own food is central to the need to exercise control over one's life.

i think being a fussy eater is okay as long as you fuss about important things, like how good something tastes, rather than like, how many adjectives they use in a menu to describe the food.

I think the great problem behind my fussiness is that I tend to go into feeding situations with a pre-conceived notion or craving for what it is that I want to eat. So I will reject restaurants that do not satisfy this a priori foodwant.

Which is probably hellish for people with me who just want to go into a restaurant and be surprised by finding something new or different or exciting when I want my old favourites.

Fussy eaters are fine with me when:

1. They let me know if there is a restriction *before* I cook them a meal (U&K when someone might be kosher/halal/vegan/hater of a menu item I really like cooking).
2. When choosing restaurants, I'd like to consider their needs so knowledge aforethought also good.
3. They do not temporarily abandon their ironclad dietary restriction to snaffle something off of my plate because for some strange reason, their body 'needs' it. Wavering macrobiotic friends who have repeatedly violated point 1, I AM TALKING ABOUT YOU.
4. They pay attention to mine in turn - I loathe canned tuna wherever it lurks, won't eat liver or kidneys, and sweetcorn off the cob is not my friend either.

fussy eaters are good to go to restaurants with as long as there's SOMEWHERE they like - i am completely unfussy and indecisive when it comes to restaurants (though have a bias towards places i've never been) so any reason to narrow the field is welcome.

i've never knowingly been annoyed by anyone being fussy over food though.

wait a minute, what is a fussy eater?

I thought it must mean people who ate with great delicacy and table manners and the like. but Suzy's post is making me think it is about what they will and will not eat.

If I was going to cook for someone and they told me they were kosher or halal I think I would tell them not to bother coming round. But they probably wouldn't want to come round anyway. Would you? No.

I am fussy in that I don't like vegetarian food much.

I am a fussy eater but I do not and will not expect anyone to change their plans on my account.

SO THERE

Ex-girlfriend was (is) a fussy eater of the type that was in fact way into the realm of food phobia, which kind of did my head in but wasn't really something you could bitch about

also bad: people who go "OMG YOU EAT THAT?!??!" when you like, have something exotic like the fatty bit of bacon.

actually people who discard the fatty bit of bacon. bad.

I suppose that I am fussy, but in a bizarre way. I won't eat anything that is in the shape of an animal. So, for example, I won't eat chocolate mice, creme eggs, Lindt bunnies, jelly babies, etc.. But I will happily gnaw away at hot chicken wings or a plate of barbecue ribs, or any stuff that is made from the meat of a real animal. I guess that it comes from a larger fussiness of disliking people playing with their food. I detest such things as a plate of sausage, mash, and pea, arranged to look like a smiley face. Come on, this isn't the Turner prize, just serve up the food and then eat it...

If I was going to cook for someone and they told me they were kosher or halal I think I would tell them not to bother coming round. But they probably wouldn't want to come round anyway. Would you?

Not anymore now.

(xpost) Someone once offered me a jelly baby and I said "I don't eat this kind of thing, because I'm a awkward tosser metaphysical vegan"

Boy did I ever misread this thread title.

haha i only came here to post that too

(the thread is great reading if you decide to keep the misread title)

spend ages tramping around looking for a restaurant that meets with their approval.

Oh they say " oh you know whatever I don't mind" after rejecting the first four choices.

maybe your first four choices were really shit

My brother's diet now, at 38, is pretty horrific. He pretty much wont touch it if it's not toad in the hole, chips, sunday roast, or crisps. He keeps crisps with him at all times; often leaving a packet in each room in whatever building he's in, and having one crisp each time he leaves the room. wtf? He's very skinny and plays a lot of football, and to be fair, does eat fruit. But anything spicy, anything pasta, anything rice, anything foreign, not a chance. My other brother eats better, but very blandly; proper meat & 2 veg type stuff. When we go out for a family meal, Jim will have scampi and chips, and JR will have a mixed grill or something. There have been a few stand-offs in recent years when it's been my birthday and we've been trying to find a venue for a meal, and I've wanted to go somewhere a bit more exciting. Like somewhere that does something scary as fuck like a fajita, or lasagna, or something. My parents' diet is very... northern working class middle aged. Stews. Even in summer. Sunday roasts.

I was quite fussy as a kid, insisted on ham sandwiches EVERY day for lunch, and didn't like vegetables, but looking back I think this is because they were generally boiled to a mush by my mum. She CAN cook; she makes an amazing stew, and variations thereof, champion dumplings, a great flan (or quiche, or open pie, etc). But pasta was an alien in our house. Meat was always cooked WAY past pink in case it killed us. I think this is why I don't like steak or pork chops; my experiences of them require stamina. My dad had been quite ill as a kid and has a sensitive stomach which wont take anything too rich or spicy. I fucking ADORE rich and spicy food. My belly is proof. Mum and dad will go for a chinese meal pretty regularly. My dad likes a chow mein. But not spaghetti?

I like to cook. I like buying cookbooks and stealing / adapting ideas. We had friends down this weekend and on Friday I cooked a paella, and a tomato / potato / chorizo / red pepper side dish. On Saturday night I cooked a big chili, which we had with taco shells, guacamole, salad, etc. The leftover chili I last night turned into a chili lasagna, which we had for tea. It was ace. Today for lunch I have leftover paella with extra chorizo (removed the seafood bits, as they'll be like car tyres now), and Em has leftover chili (which has fake mince and LOTS of beans in it, no meat). I used to hate salad; these days I love a rocket salad with sundried tomatoes.

Fussy eaters piss me off a bit, I think because I enjoy food, and different types of food, and the whole stand-offs with my brothers is awkward. I'd love to have them round for dinner more often, but wtf do I cook? A roast every time? it's a lot of effort for not enough return.

i love spicy foods but i also love roasts! my bro and his wife are fairly fussy eaters who live interstate. they're moving home soon and i'll happily cook them a roast as often as they like because i'm really looking forward to spending some more time with them than i've been able to the last few years.

I get that fussy eaters can be a little annoying at times, but i figure... different strokes for different folks and it doesn't kill me to cater for their tastes. plenty of time for exotic food when i'm with my partner, who also loves trying new stuff.

Nick, what you're describing isn't a fussy eater, just a totally unadventurous one.

A genuine fussy eater would be more like "oh no, I only eat VEGAN MACROBIOTIC bean sprouts that have been harvested at the full moon so that the plants feel no pain, but oh no, I can't eat those ones, because the colour doesn't match my Anya Hindmarsh handbag, but last week I was reading about how the Dalai Lama said we should all become fruitarians, and I was thinking about it, but my dietician said I had a banana intolerance and should stick to kiwis and other fruits in the cool colour range..."

(I do actually know people like this, hence I don't feel so bad about mine own fussyness.)

"crisps" haha so cute.

i guess id be considered a fussy eater but its only because i like bland food. As long as its not spicy, spicy hot, asian, east asian, african, sth american, nonwesternized european or unhotified central american food im pretty good. look, just give me some white bread.

oh and ill eat seafood exclusively as long as its not fish

or american "shrimp" (WTF is up with this crap?)

Ha ha, I'm the opposite - I can't eat anything unless it's spicy, spicy hot - I'll happily eat Mexican, Indian, Chinese, Japanese, Thai, Vietnamese, Malaysian (so long as I can find something with no fish in it), South American etc. etc. but I would just DIE if I had to eat at, say, some gourmet French restaurant.

But I am allergic to seafood so I have an excuse about being picky about that...

That said, I did go through a phase when I only ate yellow food for about a month, but I blame acid and reading too much Keats in a cornfield.

I am a fussy eater of the "raised unadventurous" kind (see Pizza Hut thread) but I'm making progress!!! Am v proud of self for eating Thai, Indian, sushi, asparagus, broccoli, guacamole, scallions, radishes, and all manner of foods I didn't grow up with. To everyone who has watched me fish peas and onions out of my entire dinner and shaken their heads: I'M WORKING ON IT, OKAY?

Cooked peas are vile, though.

I generally don't care about people's eating habits, but I have a nephew who is super-fussy: He'll only eat one or two things off of an Italian menu, doesn't like Mexican or Chinese (even the crappy stuff that passes for them at, like, Chipotle or PF Chang's), etc. I took him on a trip to NYC for the first time when he graduated high school, and he only wanted to eat at chain restaurants in Times Square. It's like, THERE'S A HARD ROCK CAFE IN CLEVELAND IF YOU REALLY NEED ONE NEPHEW.

But aside from that, we hosted Christmas Day last year at my house, and my wife set a great table with lots of options, and my nephew not only sullenly sat there and wouldn't eat anything, he as much as asked if he could have something else made. Sorry, kid, this ain't the fucking drive-thru window. You eat what's out, or go hungry, when you're a guest in someone's home. It's not like we made calamari and pate foie gras for Christmas. You can't eat a plate of mashed potatoes and fresh green beans, grab a Big Mac on the way home.

do you like toad in the hole, nick?

I wish that, like Laurel, I could feel proud of myself for eating Thai and Indian food. I would feel just fantastic and constantly ready to make myself feel even more fantastic.

My sister came to NYC to visit me and ordered calamari at a restaurant without knowing what it was. I offered to tell her, but she said, "I don't know what 'calamari' means in English, and don't tell me because I'm sure I won't eat it if I know." I was like, OH HAI MORE FOR ME! But I refrained for the pleasure of watching her eat squid.

This is the person who cried when I put scallions in the breakfast eggs on Christmas morning because it made them inedible for her.

what are breakfast eggs?

how old is your nephew, pancakes?

it does piss me off when i see parents indulge their super-fussy kids (like, under the age of 10), esp with unhealthy food.

nick, surely there are interesting variants on what your brothers will eat that you can present in a non-foreign, non-scary way? like, i dunno, a pie w/interesting stuff in it. if they don't like pasta or rice, i assume it's not weird flavours which scare them but the concept of "foreign" food that they're not used to.

the best thing about having irrational culinary dislikes as a teenager is that you can spend your adult life making up for lost time with eg avocado. i would eat all the avocados in the world now.

lex, he just turned 19 in June, so he was 18 at the time of the aforementioned NYC trip and Christmas.

here's a clause in the lease at the place I live now that forbids any "cooking with pungent spices"

Not sure I would categorize this as racism, tho I won't argue too hard about that. Wd DEF say it's part of an overall xenophobia, just your everyday garden variety rejection of the unfamiliar. What if you made garlic chicken? French onion soup? Any curry of any kind? Banning cooking smells is just insane, plus who decides what's "pungent"?? It's like saying, "anything I don't like" where the "I" is completely undefined.

Laurel do you want to live next to paki or what

think Laurel is OTM, more xenophobic than racist. fyi there are a lot of Indian/Pakistani people moving into the area, and area that until very recently was almost nothing but upper middle class whites.

lol already did! Well, Yemeni. The mom had an awesome DIY garden on the roof behind their apt, she planted tomato plants and special hot peppers and stuff in old spackle buckets. I bet they ate pretty well. xp

And obv I've cooked "pungent" stuff many times, fuck that noise.

I mean I think they were kind of poor and they had like 6 kids to house, clothe, and feed, but that still doesn't motivate a lot of people to plant their own gardens so I give them "thumbs up" for rad. Also the kids were cute & friendly. I liked being their neighbor.

my sister has a coworker who has complained to her about the smell of indian food people reheat at work. my sister frequently brings in leftovers of indian food i've cooked for her lunch.

Actually it is low-level racism, as Somali, Mexican, Vietnamese and Ethiopian families are a big part of Minneapolis and their home cooking involves bringing the spicy. I think you'd move into a whole other level of cockness if you tried to enforce the clause, which might not even stand up in court.

wow that's incredible! My best friend is a 15 year+ vegetarian who is easygoing enough to pick pepperoni slices off of pizza and have a "cheese slice" and I thought that in itself was award-worthy - but a chicken sandwich!

I really can't tell how sarcastic this is supposed to be.

Not sarcastic at all.. I think my best friend is a champ and I think this person is almost past champ status. Is that so hard to believe? Bravo for non-fussy eaters!

FWIW I will eat almost anything, but I have never been convinced to eat a McDonald's filet-o-fish sandwich because it looks so very gross.

It's not that it's hard to believe, it's just that the effusive tone is something that usually I only see on things that are really, really sarcastic, plus I'm tired.

just stopping by to say that filet-o-fish sandwiches are AWESOME

I haven't eaten one in years because I used to love them and am now afraid that they would make me hurl.

nah, I'm Canadian and thus naturally effusive!

I still don't know about those filet-o-fish sandwiches though. Does it taste like a Chicken sandwich but with fish inside? It just doesn't seem appealing to me.

It tastes like a fish fillet with tartar sauce that happens to be on a bun.

Yeah it takes like chicken if chicken tasted of fish...
Actually I've never had one, but I always suspected that they tasted of cotton wool? Anyone confirm?

Hmmmmmm. I didn't consider tartar sauce. Maybe one day! When I'm stoned. I think this is part of the reason I am not a fussy eater - pickle slices and cheddar cheese on a Triscuit? Damn right!

Well I knew fish wouldn't taste like chicken - I was referring to the breading on the meat, the bun, the mayo (tartar sauce evidently), lettuce..

No lettuce. Breaded fried fish, tartar sauce, american cheese, bun.

dammit now I want one

more foods should adopt the "_____ O' _____" naming template.

"What you grilling there, Bob?"
"Why Ribs O' Pig, of course. "

mmmm, with some Cob O'Corn and Salad O'Potato on the side

More truth in advertising needed, tho.

Burger O' Crap
Fries O' Mold
Coke O' the soda machine broke wtf do you want me to do about it?

This girl I used to work with was the pickiest eater, she could eat say burgers or ham sandwiches but with NO mayo or toppings - just plain. Not just preferred them like this - if the cafe got it wrong and put mayo in the burger she wouldn't eat it. Also wouldn't eat all kinds of other foods. She didn't really make a big deal out of it but after a while it began to seem quite weird.

I used to be pretty picky as a child but again I think that was because meat was gristly or was liver, beans were stringy, etc - eating meals was more of a chore whereas I LOVED all puddings, cakes, any sweets, and stuff like breaded turkey drumsticks(probably full of sugar, I remember them being quite sweet) or any such frozen food.

Now I love food so much and will eat pretty much anything, unless I deem it slimy (some seafood). I even learned to like mushrooms (well cooked) and olives (after going to Greece and eating bucketloads of tapenade). I never even tried avocados until a couple of years ago, now I love them (can't think why particularly, they don't have a strong flavour).

Btw I had arugular on a pizza in the USA but I didn't know it was rocket so asked them what it was and they said it was a type of lettuce. I still ordered it despite expecting some crazy iceberg lettuce pizza or whatever.
Generally agree re pizza toppings should be classic, although a good chicken tikka pizza is awesome and even better is a fajita pizza with chicken and guacamole and sour cream.

Burger O' Crap

LOLZ

I wish people at work wouldn't heat up leftovers that smelled yummy. It makes me hungry.

I just heated up sausage and lentil casserole IN THE WORK KITCHEN. hah.

it's taken me three days to chew my way through this thread ... which reminds me of the time my mum tried doing home-made pizza back in about 1987. fuck me. i still have nightmares about that.

i, too, was a fairly fussy little shit when i was younger: didn't like red meat (fat, gristle), didn't like sauce (messy, cf abbott's comments about ice cream), was positively freaked out by the idea of cheese that had been cooked in any way. but i have this vague memory of being ill (nothing more than a bad cold, IIRC) and suddenly fucking starving, and, as i was getting better, wolfing down a plate of meat stew my mum had made. and from that moment on -- i'd have been six? seven? -- it was like, woah, food rules.

there's pretty much nothing i won't eat now. i had a bad experience with an aubergine in 1993 but i'm over that now (indeed: perhaps the single greatest thing i've ever eaten was a baked lamb and aubergine concoction in greece). cauliflower cheese is something i'd avoid, though -- i think that's just because i remember my mum making it for herself and it looking so fucking rank: big white lumps of brainy whiteness in an off-white sauce. boak. love cauliflower, though, and love cheese (although i'm still not so big on the smell of cheese being grilled, say). whatever: i know these are just associative problems from childhood, so they don't bother me at all.

the only thing i've refused to eat in the past fuck-knows-how-many years was a dish mrs F made, from a recipe in a normally very good book, the other week: spagetti with spinach and quark cheese. christ on a bike, that was honking. mrs F wouldn't touch it, either. the only thing that tasted worse was the quark cheese on its own. hard to describe ... almost like an aggressively bland anti-taste, as if it was scraping off your tastebuds.

amusingly, and completely coincidentally, i've just this second read the sentence "quarks are hypothetical constructs" in the book on research methods over which i'm toiling. wish that fucking cheese had been a hypothetical construct.

Maybe it wasn't salted enough? I made a quark cheese in high school and it was kind of awesome.

indeed: perhaps the single greatest thing i've ever eaten was a baked lamb and aubergine concoction in greece).

was that a moussaka?

U&K with cauliflower cheese (and also macaroni cheese) is that the cheese must be strong mature English cheddar. Anything else is either tasteless or smells too strongly. Also important is the addition of breadcrumbs on top, plus a bit of freshly grated parmesan, both of which must be browned properly under the grill.

Worst dish I've eaten for a long time recently was some kind of pasta dish with lemon sauce. We had to keep piling on the black pepper. I kept eating it, even after other people had given up, saying "you know, it's OK, you just have to add lots of black pepper", before I eventually said "you know what? fuck this, it's disgusting".

Worst dish I've eaten for a long time recently was some kind of pasta dish with lemon sauce.

― snoball, Thursday, 9 October 2008 14:41 (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

^^^anti-Sicilian comment, thus suggested ban

oh I have to retract my statement about eating almost anything; I loathe eggplant so much I forgot it existed!

I also had a few pieces of tripe once at dim sum and didn't care for that. Kind of like eating elastic bands.

Yeah I don't know that I'm ever going to get around to giving eggplant a shot. It kind of disgusts me with its purpleness and fleshiness. I might have eaten it once by accident and been severely disappointed that it wasn't something else (cf the "celeric does not equal potatoes" story up-thread).

thai green chicken curry is the best delivery method for eggplant that I've encountered. eggplant parmigiana being 2nd.

I could probably handle eggplant parmigiana.. what bothers me about the few bits of eggplant I've had in my life is it tastes/feels like overcooked mushy zucchini. Smothered in tomato sauce and cheese, I might not mind so much.

Probably the best eggplant I've had was in an Indian dish; not only was it flavored awesomely, but it practically fell apart in my mouth.

A lot of the eggplant I see in Thai cuisine is actually green eggplant:

http://www.recipetips.com/images/glossary/e/eggplant_thai.jpg

Lots and lots of good Indian dishes w/eggplant in them. The bhaigan barta at my local Indian place = yummm!!!!

xp

guys you obviously never had this beauty
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/25/64564603_61e8aa08f0.jpg

ken, "beauty" isn't necessarily how i'd describe that but i do imagine it tastes fucking lovely. what is it?

it's aubergine and meat with sichuan chilli sauce

Now I want indian for lunch and there's nothing near my office. :(

i only like to eat bananas is they're still a little bit green.

or pink

on the bbc's loltastic Freaky Eaters, what happens to the big mountain of food they show the hapless schmoe in each episode? is it just dumped or do they give it away?

they make them eat it all. like people's dads in tv shows when they catch them with cigarettes.

Also, on topic, fussy eaters are fucking clown-shoes.

the one who was confronted with a bathful of Pasta - all the pasta was out of date, so you'd hope they didn't eat too much.