Things I Hate Eating but Do Anyway

Alternatively titled: "I am not a picky eater."

People have complicated relationships with food, whether they want to admit it or not. Disorders, aversions, avoidances, whatever, you name it. As the child of immigrant parents, I, too, have a complicated relationship with food, but many times, it always feels different from everyone else’s. I always preface my dietary restrictions by saying “I am not a picky eater, just a victim of circumstance.” Just before the penultimate moment of my mental health saga, I was diagnosed with Celiac disease. I had spent two years prior feeling like I was going to essentially die - I’d dropped to near 90 pounds, could not keep food down, my vitamin levels were disastrously low, and a few hospitalisations where I was sent home with the stamp of “it’s just a panic attack.” It was not. Clearly.

Before Celiac disease, I was your average, run of the mill, vegetarian. I stopped eating animals at the darling age of 11, after being forced to read Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle in an Honors English class. I’d stopped eating pork much earlier though, after learning that they were equally as smart as dogs. All very good and precocious. My Russian Jewish immigrant parents, however, were not thrilled, and we can even go further to say they were generally pissed. I was informed I needed to cook for myself on non-vegetarian meal nights (as a good portion of Russian food actually IS vegetarian on its own). So…I did, back in the ye olde days of Food Network and library cookbooks. Food blogging was mostly just being born, leaving me with the subconscious knowledge of hours and hours of Ina Garten and Bobby Flay and Rachel Ray, and paper cookbooks which I hated using, and still hate using to this day, because turning pages with messy hands makes the inner (and outer) librarian in me upset.

The positive to all of this is I did get quite good at cooking. It is unclear how many teenagers in the mid 2000’s could have told you what was, and executed, a brunoise cut of vegetables, but probably not as many as could now. In college, I started a food blog which went defunct due to my own inability to consistently write - as mentioned in my last post. I cooked, and cooked, and cooked. I went to college in Buffalo, a city known for its wings, and found tons of vegetarian options in Lebanese, Ethiopian, and of course, Amy’s. I have always been a “I will try anything once” kind of person, and always will be - with the exception of things that will kill me - and infrequently came across foods I genuinely disliked.

And then, came the test years. My logic behind this was I’d been eating and cooking vegetarian meals for so long, that maybe I should expand my repertoire into meat dishes, to learn the craft. My parents were clearly thrilled, they thought I had finally seen the light, that I NEEDED animal protein in my diet, and were immediately disappointed by my reasoning. I ate EVERYTHING - except pork. Foods from my childhood: plov and stuffed peppers, and pelmeni, lulakebab, harcho, beef tongue and chicken livers. Burgers, and wings, medium rare steaks, and fried chicken from The Commodore and Pies N’ Thighs, duck confit, a sea of fishes, you name it, and then I’d go home and cook it. “How did your body react?” many of you will ask, and I will tell you, I was FINE. Generally speaking, the human body is meant to digest most of what you put into it, due to stomach acid. Stomachaches happen due to the overproduction of that acid, causing gas build up. But I cooked, and ate, and cooked, ad nauseum.

Eventually, after about three years, I was satisfied with the extent of knowledge I had gained, and went cold turkey vegan after a particularly traumatic life event. I had eaten everything, and learned a lot in the process. In that time, Instagram had gone from “niche photo sharing app” to “people are making money off this,” creating a broader network of access to vegan recipes and chefs who had been doing this since the era of plastic tasting soy ice creams, and I was so stoked - I could make seitan at home, there were vegan meat substitutes, things I once had to drive to the Asian Food Center in Edison for, were now at my local ShopRite, it was heaven…and then two years later, because my life is a big old joke, I was diagnosed with Celiac disease - and everyone thought I was dying because of my vegan diet, which technically was not untrue - most meat substitutes are made out of vital wheat gluten, which is public enemy No. 1 to my intestines - and made it a big old point to tell me so for two whole years.

The point of all of this, is to say, I am not a picky eater, and at 30 years old, I feel comfortable just not buying things or ordering dishes just because I should have it at home, or because I generally dislike that food in most applications. I have eaten lots of insane things, blood pudding is fine I guess, nattō is better mixed into rice where the sliminess is hidden, I’ve accidentally put a teaspoon of fish sauce into my mouth, and lived to tell the tale. So, without further ado, the list of things I hate eating, but will sometimes do anyway:

Eggplant
Broccoli
Rutabaga
Chinese takeout
Mashed potato (except the ones Caitlin makes)
Tempeh
Honeydew
Canteloupe
Pickled watermelon
Gefilte fish - both patties and whole fish, if you’ve never had the misfortune
Natural peanut butter
Cooked bell peppers
Spaghetti squash
Hot peppers
Persimmons
Dates
Pine nuts
Figs
Caraway seeds
Marshmallow
Turkish delight
White chocolate

and I will never, ever, ever, EVER eat pumpkin. Take your nasty decorative gourd and go.