Anyone know a picky/finicky Eater? I have several friends- one female will only eat pasta and sauce, cheese pizza or plain cheese nachos and Coke. Well she drinks wine but that’s all she eats basically. Going out to eat is Mexican or Italian only.
Another (fiancée of colleague) will only eat meat, potatoes, corn and bread. Beef steaks or porkchops. Doesn’t even like mac&cheese. He’s from Nebraska so maybe I’m judging him too hard. His bride to be is baffled too.
And another extreme case will only eat white-rice and green peas.
I can’t help it but my bias is that these people are somehow mentally deficient. I know it’s wrong to think this. But Nacho Lady has a Master’s degree. She’s intelligent. But doesn’t she get tired of eating the same thing over and over?
I blame it on the parents indulging the child at some critically wrong stage of their lives. But that’s just an assumption. Just can’t fathom it. ???
I work with a guy who won’t eat vegetables at all. We go for thai food - he asks for no vegetables. Sandwich - no vegetables. Gyros - no vegetables. I don’t get it at all. He’ll eat french fries, but those hardly qualify as a vegetable anyway.
when i was a kid my best friend would only eat hot dogs and peanut butter-jelly sandwiches. he would never eat hamburgers until we were bowling one day and he got a “beef” burger at the stand. i said 'i thought you didn’t like hamburgers" he stated that it was a beef burger. he had no idea they were the same thing.
The first one… is a chick.
The second one… will need bypass surgery
The third… will die early of malnutrition
I would probably just serve whatever when they show up - they can go home hungry if the wish. Same with beer - if you ONLY drink “Heineken” for example, well I got a tall glass of cold water for you as an alternate. Yes I like to have happy guests, but I’m not running a restaurant either.
This reminds me of the time we had some friends over for dinner. We served a nice grilled salmon (yes Denny, wild Alaskan salmon) and a cucumber salad with rice wine vinegar among other things. The whole spread was delicious!
Except one of our guests didn’t eat salmon. Or cucumbers. So she ate a PB&J sandwich like a child, while our 4 year olds chowed salmon and cukes. :
Wasn’t long ago that I might have joined them! At least, members of my family would’ve. I have long hated things like pickled cucumber salads…throw in potato salad (except the German version), macaroni salad, bean salads, anything dressed in sugary vinegar or mayonnaise. Salmon I can eat, but years ago I wasn’t a big fan of many fish. Which isn’t to say I wouldn’t have eaten the dinner out of politeness and put on a brave face about it!
On the whole I’m not generally considered picky, though…there’s hardly a cuisine in the world I’m not curious about trying my hand at, but you just happened to pick one of the few sorts of things I’m not fond of. I do like cucumbers fresh though!
My daughter will go vegetarian for a few months at a time, then demand a bloody leg of lamb or T-bone. It’s no problem, it doesn’t REALLY hurt to skip the meat at a meal once in a while. But ever since my kids were tiny they never had issues with anything, either meat or veggie. We told them when they were old enough to understand that we don’t run a cafe, they don’t get a menu at dinner time. Eat what there is or go hungry.
I am worried for my kids going that route. But not too much. I feel that I am, and my close
friends and neighbors are, eclectic enough that my boys will learn about good food and
know how to enjoy it. My three year old loves his wasabi covered peas, and my spicy
cooking. Hell, when he was two we went to a YardHouse restaurant and I ordered a spicy
gumbo meal but it was served on noodles not rice. He was loving it. My lips were burning
from the spice. He didn’t say boo.
Sadly my wife is right there with them, but getting better. When we finaly got her a passport
we didn’t break it in with a quick jaunt to Canada or Mexico. We took her around the world.
It was a challenge for her to eat in Hong Kong and New Dehli. The food was spectacular.
she stuck to rice…She was the smart one though…We came back and it was about 2 months
before we were “solid” again…
I can now take her out for sushi without her cringing…
I read some article a while ago about picky eaters and how it is almost a phobia of sorts for some of them.
I think it all has to do with your early experiences with and introductions to food as an infant/toddler, and how your parents approach food and eating. When I was young, my mom was usually at home making something from scratch, and she’d always get us to help. It was a lot of fun. When she went back to work, I was about 12, and I was told that from then on it was my job to have dinner ready for everyone when they got home. I loved it, and my parents still rave about the meals I used to have ready for them. Now my mother learns from me how to cook, I taught her how to make real BBQ last year, how to brine and properly roast chicken/turkey, and my dad just laps it all up!
There is a commercial running in Canada lately with a guy in a kitchen saying, “it is your turn to cook, but everyone wants something different. Plus, who wants to be trapped in this CAGE of a kitchen? You need to finger cook! That’s right, get online, go our restaurant’s website and click on the items your family wants with your finger and we’ll deliver it right to your door.” It just makes me sick.
I have one friend who only eats plain hotdogs, plain baked pizza subs from this one restaurant in town (just pepperoni and mozza), french fries, coke, and KFC. THAT’S IT. And he dumps salt on everything. He tells me that fruit and vegetables make him sick.
I worked with another woman who only drank coffee and coke. She told me that water “tastes icky.”
My wife and I are good cooks, we rarely ever eat out and that’s how our kids were raised. We also always had a veggie garden so from the time my kids could crawl they were eating straight from the garden-literally. I have pictures of my 8 month old daughter eating tomatoes still on the plant, and my son would pull carrots, wipe some dirt off and start eating. We never harvested enough broccoli because once the head got a couple of inches across a kid would eat it. To this day they love veggies.
Which of course is your peragotive. I however think the subject is fascinating.
Am I being judgmental? Certainly. Hard not to be in some circumstances.
Ever see a toddler staggering around like drunk with a bag of Flaming Hot Cheetos in one hand and a bottle of Big Red in the other? Face and hands stained an artificial crimson?
I see it nearly everyday. Hard to not judge when their obese elder siblings have developed health problems and already have silver caps on their milk teeth. Hard to get a kid to eat anything conventional and halfway healthy after lavishing junk-food upon them from the start!
I care where it applies to my family. Its really good for a kid to grow up in a house where there is cooking. In fact I think cooking goes hand and hand with having kids. It not only provides healthier meals it makes family bonding time. Not only are you preparing and sharing a meal together you are creating a family environment that kids will remember in their adulthood.
Plus being around that they will learn skills that will last their whole life. Learning how to cook and eat right will make life less expensive, tastier and probably healthier.
Two rules for our grocery list.
Whole foods.(some things organic like milk and the problem produce)
If not whole food then nothing with artificial colors / flavors or lots of other crap. Short Ingredient lists basically.
The triumvirate goals of good cooking. Great taste, economy, and good nutrition. I have kind of gone in that order. First started being able to cook things that were tasty, then figured out how to do so efficiently without triple digit grocery bills, and more recently I’ve been trying to retain the first two while improving the third.
I dislike many types of raw veggies. But I love cooking with them, and a few of them raw are nice. I’m partial to thinly sliced cucumbers and spinach.
