Never Eaten That! Whaa...?

Not long ago, Pie Dude was making breakfast, and asked if I wanted fried eggs with him. I said, sure, I'd try it. WTF? You never had a fried egg in all your 20+ years?

Nope. I did that day, and it was all right. I'm more of a scrambled or poached (as in Eggs Benedict) kind of gal. This was also the response I got when I said I'd never eaten at White Castle or had an olive. So I womaned up and tried those too (experiences I'd be glad to forget, although the WC Broccoli Casserole is pretty tasty).

To this day I've never had a brat, fish taco, fresh apricot (which I find to be a rather pointless fruit) or chili dog. One of these days I will, I'm sure.

I can't be the only one who has never eaten some very standard foods. Anybody else out there as crazy as me?

Before Pie Dude, I also never tried Indian, Middle Eastern, Thai, or Sushi. He has made me more well rounded and more rounded. Now I love all four, unless they contain olives.

Pie Lady wrote:fresh apricot (which I find to be a rather pointless fruit)

Why?

OMG - you must get to the farmers' markets and have a fresh apricot or 12 NOW before they are all gone. Trust me, they are nothing like the flabby, insipid, sugary things you get canned or dried in the grocery store.

leek wrote:OMG - you must get to the farmers' markets and have a fresh apricot or 12 NOW before they are all gone. Trust me, they are nothing like the flabby, insipid, sugary things you get canned or dried in the grocery store.

I agree. Pie Lady, I actually had fresh apricots for the first time a few weeks ago. I picked some up after reading Kennyz's (?) post about Green City. I always thought they were pointless, too... I need to think about that some more, can't explain it. Anyway, I ate the entire container of apricots I bought in one sitting. I don't think I could ever go back to dried, and I'm afraid to try fresh ones from a regular grocery store...

happy_stomach wrote:I always thought they were pointless, too... I need to think about that some more, can't explain it. Anyway, I ate the entire container of apricots I bought in one sitting. I don't think I could ever go back to dried, and I'm afraid to try fresh ones from a regular grocery store...

As with peaches and nectarines, you need to take care that you get ripe fruit. I have had excellent apricots from H-Mart, among other places. Good apricots are often easier to find than good peaches.

But dried apricots have their place, too. Much like raisins and prunes, they serve a different role from fresh fruit.

I still remain puzzled as to why anyone would believe any fresh fruit, let alone one they had never tried, is pointless. I can understand not liking something, but pointless?

I wish I could endorse the fresh apricot commentary but I have to say that everytime I've tried one -- it's been mealy and flavorless and as the Pie Lady says...Pointless. And I picked up a whole pint of them at the Green Market and it must have been too early or something -- they were really wretched. I chalked it up to another bad apricot experience. I wish I could understand the epiphany you talk about -- but I seem to have a bad luck of the draw when it comes to apricots. I do like dried ones. And I'm mostly a fan of ripe stone fruit.

I've never had lots of things -- most mushrooms because the ones I've tried have filled me with such disgust. At a party once my friends tried to talk me into trying the grilled portobellos and I needed to wipe out my mouth with a towel, it was so foul.

Oysters fill me with terror -- a great deal of my fear has to do with texture -- texture seems to get me more than flavor. I know they're supposed to be delicious and sexy but man...they just look goopy and awful and I run away from them as quickly as possible.

Please don't hate me.

as I noted in this thread, there is a HUGE difference in taste between a really ripe apricot and one which is just almost there. Most at the market need at least a day on the counter. Wait until the fruit has plenty of give when pressed, and has a strong apricotty aroma you can smell from a foot away without cutting it open.

Kennyz wrote:Most at the market need at least a day on the counter. Wait until the fruit has plenty of give when pressed, and has a strong apricotty aroma you can smell from a foot away without cutting it open.

And don't buy them unless they have at least some give and aroma when you pick them out at the market or store. Then, don't refrigerate them until they have achieved optimal ripeness on the counter.

That goes for most stone fruit. If they are hard and have no scent when you buy them, you can set them out from now till doomsday and they won't improve. Peaches, in particular, will just rot rather than ripen.

Well -- in my case I can assure you that there was scent, there was give, there was ripeness on this fruit but there was also mealy texture and no flavor. It was a bummer. And it's always been a bummer. I can buy decent peaches and nectarines (usually) but sometimes they get ya. I have just never had any luck with them. Maybe I have a bum-apricot gene.

I've never had a milkshake.

As for stone fruit, I have a peach tree in my back yard and the peach I ate today was mighty good.

Yes, bad apricots can be bad - wooly and pointless And oh, I have been disappointed by some awful ones.

But right now, the local ones are just heading over their peak and starting downhill. There won't be many next weekend, and probably gone after that. The ones you see in Jewelnick's now are generally either old ones from California (peaked back in May, I think) or ones that were picked to ship, and as LAZ says, hard and never gonna get better.

There are two types I see mostly at the market, the all-one-color ones, and the smaller ones with a beautiful blush. I like the all-one-color ones, I think they have more acid, and I don't think I saw any of those last Saturday. The ones I got this week are the blush ones, which are good, but sweeter, so I don't think they "pop" as much.

But my favorite stone fruits are apricots and sour cherries. The BEST pie is apricot with just a few cherries sprinkled in. Heaven. Tomorrow for dessert I will be serving apricots macerated w/honey, layered with greek yogurt and walnuts - a sprinkling of lemon juice and zest - mmmm.

LAZ wrote:

Pie Lady wrote:fresh apricot (which I find to be a rather pointless fruit)

Why?

They're so small and rather high priced, considering I'd need about a dozen to qualify as breakfast. Gimme peaches and nectarines any day!

I didn't mean my comment to be snooty. Maybe it is that I haven't had a really good one, but my tastebuds never enjoyed the taste of anything apricot. I feel it's a subpar cousin to the peach or nectarine. Whenever I go to a bakery and see tarts, cookies, etc. with jam filling, I'm so disappointed when it's apricot and think, boy, that would be ten times better with raspberry/strawberry/blackberry, etc.

However, after seeing Leek's recipe, I may have to give apricots one last shot. It sounds great (and if it doesn't work out, I probably can substitute a peach, no offense)!

Pie Lady wrote:

LAZ wrote:

Pie Lady wrote:fresh apricot (which I find to be a rather pointless fruit)

Why?

They're so small...

How 'bout cherries? Grapes? Raspberries? Sometimes great fruit comes in a small package.

just goes to show ya, for some people, size does matter.

janschher wrote:I've never had a milkshake.

Dude.

I've never had czernina which upsets me. My grandfather loved it, but he died when I was 12.

Pie Lady wrote: They're so small...

How 'bout cherries? Grapes? Raspberries? Sometimes great fruit comes in a small package.

just goes to show ya, for some people, size does matter.

Wow!

To answer your question, cherries make me angry. Damn little pits. You bite, you break your tooth on a pit. I love cherries, but I can't enjoy their delightful flavor, because you're constantly spitting out pits or pushing them out of the way. It's distracting! GRRRR!

However, grapes and raspberries you just pop in your mouth. No work! You buy a bag or box, and chow away. Raspberries I don't even rinse. Pesticides, come 'n' git me. Two boxes of those or two handfuls of grapes and I'm set 'til lunch.

Apricots have to be washed, eaten in tiny little bites around the stone, and still you're hungry. It's almost as pointless as the chicken wing. (Please forgive me!) You have this cute little wing, fried, bbq'd, whatever, one scrape with the incisors and you're done. Before the party's over you've eaten ten pounds and you still have to raid the pantry.

I really don't mean to offend anybody, honest!

Pie Lady - you're not offending anyone, you're just wrong!

It's not my recipe, by the way, it came from the NY times... They mix the honey with the yogurt, and sugar and lemon with the apricots. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/06/dining/06appe.html

And they have a lovely article from 2003 about the elusive appeal of apricots

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.h ... =permalink

from the article

For me, fresh apricots are on a par with the Red Sox. I root for them at the beginning of the season and curse them at the end. (Where anticipation is high, disappointment can be keen.)

Pie Lady wrote:Apricots have to be washed, eaten in tiny little bites around the stone, and still you're hungry.

If you had ever eaten a fresh, ripe apricot, you would know that you don't have to bite around the stone. If it's fully ripe, you just tear it in half and flick the pit out -- easier than freestone peaches, and less drippy.

And if you aren't worried about washing other fruit, you don't have to wash these. But given all of the various concerns about E. coli and other stuff in fresh produce, I would wash everything, even berries.

If you think cherries and chicken wings are too much trouble to eat, Pie Lady, don't even attempt blue crab.

If you want to ease into apricots, try a pluot....plum & apricot combo. I've gotten them at Stanley's, ripe enough to eat right away. Yummy. I think I've seen them at Jewel, too.

& for what it's worth, I know there's a lot of Jewel bashing around here, but I've been getting some delicious, spot-on white nectarines at my local J all summer long!

I'm with you on the chicken wing thing, too....total waste of time & effort for too little meat.

Really, try a pluot (75% plum), then a plumcot (50% plum) and then an aprium (25% plum).

Plumcots and pluots are a bit easier to find than apriums, though.

I've never eaten a burger at McDonald's.

earthlydesire wrote:Oysters fill me with terror -- a great deal of my fear has to do with texture -- texture seems to get me more than flavor.

I totally understand texture fears! Most of the foods I avoid I don't eat because of texture. My general rule is that I'll try any food twice (and many things I'll revisit a few years later to give it another try), but if I can't get passed the texture I will never be able to eat that food regularly. Even seeing posters for those fruit smoothies at various Asian food restaurants, the ones with the tapioca balls at the bottom, makes me want to flee in terror. Oh, that texture...*shudder*

As for never-tried foods, I have since had them but I had never eaten a tomato until I was in my early 20s. My Mom has such a strong texture aversion to them that she didn't want them in the house. I had them in pre-made sauces and such, but I had never eaten a regular tomato. And I've never eaten eggplant, lobster, duck, or a radish. Most foods on my never-eaten list are for lack of exposure. I grew up in a household very averse to culinary creativity, so it has taken me a while to build up enough knowledge of food and build up my kitchen skills to even figure out what to do with some foods. My self-teaching is a bit random in the kitchen as well, so I do things like learn overly-complicated dishes with a million ingredients - and skip right over eating a simple radish.

teatpuller wrote:I've never had czernina which upsets me. My grandfather loved it, but he died when I was 12.

Yummy! My maternal grandmother made this (us kids called it chocolate soup ) and my father fortunately kept the recipe alive by learning from her. I'm pretty sure my older sister also has the recipe. When you were old enough to be trusted to use a fairly sharp knife, you were given the task of cutting the homemade kluski noodles. Thinking that this should be on the list of winter comfort foods to be made this year.

Anyone know where you can get fresh duck blood? I think my dad would get at least a quart or so.

leek wrote:Pie Lady - you're not offending anyone, you're just wrong!

I get that a lot.

LAZ wrote:

Pie Lady wrote:But given all of the various concerns about E. coli and other stuff in fresh produce, I would wash everything, even berries.

If you think cherries and chicken wings are too much trouble to eat, Pie Lady, don't even attempt blue crab.

Generally I do wash everything, but raspberries are usually so delicate. Plus I like them a little overripe, so they nearly disintegrate. Is blue crab more difficult to crack than any other crab? I guess all I've had is Snow.

And I've never eaten eggplant, lobster, duck, or a radish. Most foods on my never-eaten list are for lack of exposure. I grew up in a household very averse to culinary creativity, so it has taken me a while to build up enough knowledge of food and build up my kitchen skills to even figure out what to do with some foods.

Annabelle -- get thee to a seafood restaurant! Lobster is one of the best things on earth -- and I have to say, I'm a bit envious of that first bite experience -- because it was so profound to me when I was growing up. Duck can be very good if prepared well and scary if not. Radishes are crunchy and while they're not unpleasant -- i don't get the french deal about eating them with butter as sandwiches. Eggplant---well...i have about the same reaction to eggplant as i do to mushrooms, although not as violent.

My food "palette" growing up was very midwestern -- although I do remember my mom venturing into the exotic (to a midwest girl) occasionally -- Chicken Kiev -- various asian dishes -- she had that cookbook series from Time-Life that explored a different cuisine and had a big picture book accompanied by a little wire bound recipe book -- (i will never forget the Rigo Jansi experiment), but I applaud you trying to overcome your lack of exposure. I actually try to add a food to my repertoire every year -- come to think of it, I'm not sure I've done that this year. Need to figure out something to try. But it won't be mushrooms!

earthlydesire wrote:Annabelle -- get thee to a seafood restaurant! Lobster is one of the best things on earth -- and I have to say, I'm a bit envious of that first bite experience -- because it was so profound to me when I was growing up.

Oh, I haven't been avoiding it for any "I don't want to try that" reason, I just have an aversion to dealing with food still attached to a shell without someone to show me how in the world I am supposed to extract food from said shell. Thus never having tried lobster, clams, muscles, etc., unless they have come in already-shelled-and-probably-fried forms. I haven't met seafood I didn't love, I'm sure lobster would be no exception. I just need to find me a teacher.

I've been working on learning to cook (and, honestly, learning to eat) for a few years now, and I've made good progress. I learned to bake early on from summers with my grandparents, but dinner at home the rest of the year was more the fish sticks and frozen french fries variety, and that was on a good night. My biggest cooking skill by the age of 18 was that I could cook any frozen pizza without a timer set and just "know" when it was done perfectly, without fail. I recently horrified a foodie friend by admitting I used to often eat a pint of green beans for dinner, and nothing else. From where I started, there was no where to go but up! If you would have told me four years ago that I'd be making my own taco seasoning and homemade pizza sauce and reading cookbooks for fun and using dozens of different seasonings on a weekly basis and contemplating starting an "if I can do it, so can you" sort of cooking blog...I would have thought you had lost your mind. But here I am.

OK, I'll 'fess up. I've never had a Chicago-style hot dog. I grew up outside of Chicago, and long before moving here I stopped eating beef and pork. Although I now eat these meats (somewhat infrequently), I never particularly enjoyed hot dogs even as a kid, so I've had little interest in trying a Chicago dog. However...if I were with a friend who ordered one, I'd almost certainly ask if I could take a bite. (I can also say with certainty that I've never had canned pork and beans!)

Re. Pluots, etc.: I've bought these a few times this summer, and have finally come to realize that while they have a great flavor, the ones I've tried have zero aftertaste. Part of the pleasure of foods is the finish, and there's just no finish to the apricot-plum hybrids that I've tried. (Disclosure: All of these were purchased @ the Santa Monica Farmer's Market, from a variety of vendors, so maybe Midwest pluots have more flavor.)

In contrast to Pie Lady seeing baked goods and thinking, "That would be so much better if made with anything but apricot," I think just the opposite! My holy grail of flavor combinations is apricot-almond. Ice cream, pie, tart, cookie, crumble...you name it, if I see the combo, I'll buy it.

For years I would have told you that I'd never tried lamb. My Dad didn't like it, so my Mom never served it when I was growing up. Then we moved to Saudi Arabia and I fell in love with shawarmas. I assumed they were made with beef. What did I know? Yeah, most were made with lamb.

I also might say that I've never tried beef liver and kidney. In general, I'm not an organ meat eater (*except pate and foie gras). (Although I guess this topic is about "common" foods and some would argue that these aren't common in the US.) However, I know I've had dishes that contain small amounts of liver and kidney. I lived to tell about it.

Lobsters and blue crabs: If you're a first-time eater, persuade an experienced eater to cook these up at home for you! The problem with these crustacians is that they can be messy to eat. And a lot of people have an aversion to getting messy at restaurants. I'll often get up from the table 2 or 3 times while eating a lobster to wash my hands, etc. Plus, by eating with an experienced eater, they can talk you through the process of efficiently and effectively getting the meat out. My Mom and I walked my BF's son through the process of lobster eating a few weeks ago. And I lived in Maryland as a kid, so for years I've known how to get every ounce of meat out of the blue crab. (mmm...blue crabs!)

There are a number of foods that I will retry ever few years to see if I like them: any type of melon, pickles (or cucumbers for that matter), lobster, oysters. I still don't like any of those. I recently tried green olives for the first and last time. I don't think I'll be retrying those.

I agree with earthlydesire that food texture plays a key role in what I do and don't like and greatly influences what I will try. For the longest time, I would not eat refried beans because of their texture. It takes a lot for me to get over the initial mouthfeel if it's not appealing to me.

12345ne wrote:There are a number of foods that I will retry ever few years to see if I like them: any type of melon, pickles (or cucumbers for that matter), lobster, oysters. I still don't like any of those.

My friend! I hate melon too! Yes, even watermelon.