The Nause-AA: Round of 64, Flight Barf
Today’s write-ups by Keckler. To vote, scroll down; to see the bracket, click here. We’ll leave these open a few days, so tell a friend (or queasy enemy).
Remember: This time, you’re voting for the food or taste you like the least. Against, not for, Survivor-style.
1 cilantro vs. 16 garlic
I get the cilantro hate, but I don’t have the hate. I have the dislike. I dislike abundant piles of it. I brush its wilted mass off my pad thai, but it won’t ruin a dish for me. I’m okay with it in reasonable amounts in my guac, in my raita, and even in this amazing pea dish from a local Greek restaurant. However, you won’t see me sipping a cilantro-infused cocktail (they exist. In San Francisco.) ever. Garlic, however, I adore beyond belief and would add it to almost anything. Cilantro is far more famous for being hated than for being loved, so it’s clearly beating garlic’s lily-white ass.
1 cilantro vs. 16 garlic
- cilantro (89%, 770 Votes)
- garlic (11%, 92 Votes)
Total Voters: 862
Loading ...8 veal vs. 9 coleslaw
Ew and EW! Okay, so the veal thing with me is less about ethics (I know! I know! Stone me later!) and more about not thinking it’s any great shakes in the taste department. I’ve had it as a pureed soup (don’t ask; I found pureed veal between my shoulder blades after making that) and as osso bucco, and I still don’t get the hype. Coleslaw is just flat-out nasty. I really like cabbage but not when it’s all bound up in some gloppy mayo sauce that’s just a bowl of botulism waiting to happen. [“In my family, it’s made with not one but TWO other top-seeded barf bombs: blue cheese, and raisins. …I need to lie down.” — SDB] I think that there are a lot of ‘slaw haters, but there are also rabid ‘slaw lovers. Additionally, I think there are way more vegetarians and ethical persons who will vote against veal for their various reasons (and who are waiting to stone me now), so veal will get out of the pen. This time. (Okay, you guys can stone me now.)
8 veal vs. 9 coleslaw
- veal (57%, 526 Votes)
- coleslaw (43%, 403 Votes)
Total Voters: 929
Loading ...5 scallops vs. 12 licorice/anise
I do love me some perfectly cooked scallops, all crispy golden on the outside and juicy, firm meat on the inside. Even Dr. Mathra, who is allergic to them in a gastrointestinal, rather than anaphylactic, way, loves them and has a bite every now and then to see if he’s over his allergy. But licorice?! BARF. Still, scallops are seafood, and there are more fish flouters out there than licorice-a-phobes, so scallops swim on.
5 scallops vs. 12 licorice/anise
- licorice/anise (68%, 619 Votes)
- scallops (32%, 294 Votes)
Total Voters: 913
Loading ...4 mussels vs. 13 coconut
I know Glark calls coconut “the devil’s pubes,” which is an awesome description even if never fails to bring to mind that Sex and the City episode when Samantha found a grey hair Down There, but I love coconut to distraction. Mussels, well, mussels I used to love until I food-poisoned myself with one and now am off them for life. I think enough people love coconut and hate seafood as a group — especially bottom-feeders, like mussels, which are the scrubbing bubbles of the ocean’s toilet — that mussels will muscle through to the next round.
4 mussels vs. 13 coconut
- mussels (72%, 647 Votes)
- coconut (28%, 249 Votes)
Total Voters: 896
Loading ...6 lobster vs. 11 bologna/olive loaf et al.
We had to have bologna even if I STRENOUSLY disagree with its inclusion, because it’s one of the very few foods Dr. Mathra hates so much, I can’t even say the word “bologna” without him clapping his hands over his ears and yelling, “STOPITSTOPITGROSS!” I’ve never had olive loaf, but I do know how Bunting feels about it and also how I feel about any food except meat and bread being appended with “loaf.” (Midwestern sandwich loaf, anyone? HURL.) (Also, “loaf” kind of sounds like the sound you make when throwing up. LOAF! LOOOAAAF! [“Also also: ‘pinching a loaf.'” — SDB]) All that aside, as many people hate lobster for being in the fish category and also for basically being an insect — a delicious, wondrous, butter-loving sea insect, but an insect all the same — lobster will pincer out bologna/olive loaf.
6 lobster vs. 11 bologna/olive loaf et al.
- bologna, olive loaf, et al. (84%, 776 Votes)
- lobster (16%, 149 Votes)
Total Voters: 925
Loading ...3 organ meats vs. 14 tofu
All in this category are repulsive: tofu for trying to be like meat, and organ meats for being too much like meat. Also, I feel about organ meats the way others do about bottom-feeders: they are the body’s garbage can and sewer system. All bad stuff goes in there. I’ll take my meat as God intended: chops, ribs, steaks, legs, and breasts. Not livers, hearts, kidneys, tendons, pancreas, brains, eyeballs, and lungs. HAWARF. There are more vegetarians who swear by the sweaty, suspiciously wet tofu than there are meat-eaters who love organ meats, so hearts and lungs and brains will soldier on. (Seriously, tofolks, what’s with all the water?!)
3 organ meats/offal vs. 14 tofu
- organ meats/offal (87%, 808 Votes)
- tofu (13%, 121 Votes)
Total Voters: 929
Loading ...7 cottage cheese vs. 10 egg yolk
I used to hate cottage cheese and in fact, I still kind of do. Unless it comes from Cowgirl Creamery. No joke, their Clabbered Cottage Cheese is the awesomest. Firm of curd, light in the mouth, and not at all watery, it’s craveable. All other cottage cheeses can go dump themselves, but that one stays. Egg yolks are weird. They’re either too runny or too chalky, and for some people – devilled, fried, or Scotched – egg yolks will always have the whiff of poop or farts. And that’s not unusual, by the way. It’s a scientific fact that some people lock into that sulfur scent and others don’t note it at all. Crazy genetics! I don’t totally hate egg yolks, but it’s because of them that I no longer enjoy lemon curd. It just always tastes of raw yolks to me, and I hate that because I used to adore lemon curd and make it all the time. I think we underestimated the yolked power in this one, and I’m going to call it for egg yolks running through.
7 cottage cheese vs. 10 egg yolk
- cottage cheese (61%, 537 Votes)
- egg yolk (39%, 344 Votes)
Total Voters: 881
Loading ...2 mayonnaise vs. 15 parsley
This is where I’m going to be a picky foodie. So, I hated any evidence of mayo on my sandwiches as a kid and I wouldn’t allow it, especially when white bulbs of it ballooned through the holes in my sandwich bread. (Also, my mom made herself PEANUT BUTTER AND MAYO SANDWICHES! I mean, there’s not enough gagging in the world to rid yourself of that image.) And don’t get me STARTED on Miracle Whip. (Crap. We forgot Miracle Whip.) Anyway, the foodie thing is that I love homemade aioli, especially when I don’t break a wrist doing it myself, so you might think that makes me a snobby picky foodie, but it really doesn’t because there’s something way more revulsive about processed egg and vinegar and oil than what you make at home. Also? Homemade doesn’t quiver and shiver as much. (MORLFF.) Parsley, however, is the anti-MORLFF for me. I find its flavor soothing and cleansing when I’ve overdone it on richer foods. I know people hate it, but they don’t hate it as much as mayonnaise, so the condiment will quiver-shiver to the next round.
2 mayonnaise vs. 15 parsley
- mayonnaise (55%, 487 Votes)
- parsley (45%, 392 Votes)
Total Voters: 879
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Tags: barfing Dr. Mathra food Glark punches another baby hew Keckler Survivor the food/poo Venn diagram The Nause-AA
“even worse are the well-meaning folks who think it’s an acceptable substitute for lovely, creamy ricotta in stuffed shells or lasagna (thanks, Mom… NOT).”
Now see, I can only eat lasagna if it’s made with cottage cheese, because ricotta looks (and tastes) like something that comes out of a giant abscess on a YouTube video. :)
It’s weird how licorice/anise is actually a great big Kennedy-like dynasty running the gamut from flawed-but-brilliant to total irredeemable screwup. Like, Good & Plenty should be renamed “Awful and Too Many.” I ate one anise cookie at age 10 and I’m still having traumatic flashbacks 20 years later.
But has anyone ever had the Callard and Bowser licorice toffees? I don’t even know if they make them anymore. They were kind of crumbly and waxy and they had little seams from whatever machine pooped them out, and the seams cut your gums if you weren’t careful, but they were really, really good.
…I know. Good thing I never went into marketing.
Tofu skeptics, try this: http://eatbaconbernstein.blogspot.com/2009/12/baked-seasoned-tofu.html
I can eat a whole block in one sitting when this comes out of the oven. Notes:
1) it calls for the dreaded anise…I am firmly in the anti-anise/licorice camp but this doesn’t make it taste anisey…just, somehow, delicious. Don’t skip the anise! I buy in the bulk spice department so I can just get a little because this is the only recipe I use it for.
2) Turn the tofu every 10 min while in the oven
3) PRESS THE TOFU. This is really the key to 90% of tofu deliciousness. It takes some annoying forethought, but it is worth it. I used to be all “oh, I’ll just press it really hard for a minute and that’s fine!” Turns out that this makes the tofu fall apart and surprise, doesn’t really get much water out. At least twenty minutes, put a plate below and another on top of the ‘fu and then several heavy books on the top plate. Drain off the excess a couple times. You’re not making it crazy dry, just getting out what you can.
4) Extra-firm. ‘Nuff said.
Who else here had foods ruined for years by grade school cafeterias?
Seriously, the first concious exposure I had to coleslaw was my grade school cafeteria, and it was a fetid swamp of decomposing, orange-stained mayo, rubbery carrot shreds, and RAISINS. No blue cheese, but bad enough.
It wasn’t until my husband made fresh, delicious coleslaw with fresh, delicious cabbage and carrots, just enough mayo to bind, and served as a side dish to delicious pulled-pork sandwiches.
Damn you, grade school cafeteria. DAMN YOU TO HELL.
ARRRRRGH, I just went into a pulled pork trance and didn’t finish my third sentence!
It should end with “…that I learned that coleslaw could be a worthy dish OM NOM NOM NOM PORK.”
@Maura: I can’t say I’ve ever actually TRIED tartar sauce, since it falls under the “if it looks like barf, don’t eat it” rule, and it doesn’t smell so great, either. See also: Thousand Island dressing. (“Make your own cat barf! Just add hairballs.”) Yuuuuuuck.
Amen, Maura. What is cold chicken without mayo? Or any sammie, really. However, it looks like I will be the sole voice to speak out FOR Miracle Whip – it’s tangy and delicious!
And does no one else enjoy a box of Good and Plenty at the movies? Bueller? Bueller?
My mom used to put parsley in mayo, in her tuna and potato salads. And JC, I agree with you regarding crab and lobster…I’ve never been able to like lobster, and I love a good crab salad.
Although, now that I think about it, Mom put parsley in everything.
“Like, Good & Plenty should be renamed ‘Awful and Too Many.'”
Is this just based on the licorice, which is revolting in and of itself, or are you also factoring in that the pink ones are colored by dead female beetles? I REALLY wish I were kidding: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_%26_Plenty
Relevant part: “The pink candies are colored with a red dye called K-Carmine, produced from the crushed bodies of the female cochineal insect.”
@Lisa – It’s not really abscess-related, but if you prefer cottage cheese to ricotta, please do not go on YouTube and look up “tonsil stones.” Seriously, DON’T DO IT.
Eggs were never my favorite, but after reading Georges Bataille’s “Story of the Eye”, well, even all these years later, I just don’t eat eggs.
@Maru, funny you should mention Miracle Whip. My homies and I were talking recently about tuna sandwiches, and how everybody grows up with a different recipe because of all the variables, and the first time you try someone ELSE’S family recipe, it is inevitably DISGUSTING AND WRONG. Miracle Whip vs. Mayo was the HOTTEST controversy, let me tell you. (We were a butter-top wheat/albacore/Miracle Whip/cheddar cheese family; my white bread/chunk light/mayo/chopped pickles friends might as well have been victims of brainwash, as far as I was concerned.)
You would not believe (or maybe you would) the abuse I got growing up for loathing mayo. Everyone I knew told me I was a complete deviant for turning down the potato salad or for making sandwiches without the revolting white spread. I have a family member who *still* gripes about my not eating her potato salad when I was a kid (I’m 52 years old! the relative is 75!).
Anyway. Thanks to the marvel that is the interwebs, I have discovered that I am not alone in my mayo-hate. And I want that glop to go far in this contest.
Good & Plenty should be renamed “Awful and Too Many.”
That is the best thing I’ve read all day.
As for this set of brackets, only about half the contenders really make me think HOOARRFFF…but this thread is killing me, and making me look back tenderly at my white-trash childhood. Velveeta bricks and canned peaches bleeding into a hillock of cottage cheese, ahoy! My dad put mayo and/or PB on everything–often to bribe us into trying something new–and so I must whisk away a fond little tear.
Ahh, poor misunderstood tofu. Here’s the thing: Organ meat is always gross, IMO, while tofu can be delicious if properly prepared.
The other thing that always mystifies me about the anti-tofu camp: I know people who will create a complicated marinate, carefully trim and butterfly or perform whatever-the-hell surgery on a cut of meat, marinate it for a day, and cook it for hours and hours while carefully tending it… who still tell me tofu is too much work. huh?
The only way coleslaw is acceptable is if you stomp out to the garden/farmer’s market, get a cabbage, shred cabbage, and then add the dressing — which should NOT just be a glop of mayo. The cabbage should still crunch. If it does not it is compost, not food.
Ack, marinade, not marinate.
Just have to say that the various phonetic spellings for the act of hurling are killing me.
Also, I love Dave P. too. The mental picture I got from that comment, especially mayo’s coach with his jacket off, made me laugh for 5 straight minutes.
I second every one of Carrie Ann’s comments. Parsley adds nothing, while at least mayo has some useful applications.
Miracle Whip is evil, and it would go for the win if it were in the brackets. (Miracle Whip is disgusting and gross, and I have literally spit out sandwiches when I took a bite and learned that Miracle Whip, not mayo, had been applied as a condiment.)
As for the seafood/shellfish options, I love all of them except oysters, which are just solidified slime. I’ll be rooting for oysters to make it to the finals.
I love mussels, but I still had to vote for them, because they are just inherently disgusting. The fact that I enjoy them says more about my stupidity than mussels’ edibility.
Ditto mayo. I use it on a regular basis, and enjoy it mightily, but anything I’m going to put in my mouth shouldn’t… quiver… like that.
My family had this awful kind of take on a Waldorf salad that involved peas, RAW onions and raisins just slathered in mayonnaise. It’s kind of like a self-contained Final Four.
Can I ask what you guys are doing, exactly, with your mayo that it’s got THAT much movement? Are you sure you don’t live on a geological fault of some sort? Because mine doesn’t move much.
@Bunting
IT JIGGLES AND JOGGLES IN THE JAR WHEN YOU KNIFE IT OUT!
NO IT DOESN’T. STOP DRINKING SO MUCH COFFEE.
@JC: Oh, I know about carmine and cochineal. If you want to ruin several more candies for yourself, check out “resinous glaze” and “castoreum” while you’re at it.
I maintain, however, that G&P could be dyed with organic beet juice and/or organic angel tears, and they wouldn’t taste a damn bit better. They always seemed a candy of last resort — like, “damn, it’s either this or chocolate, and I’m allergic” or “maybe something in this vending machine will cover the garlic on my breath before Hot Jerome gets here — oh, hell, who bought out all the Red Hots?”
G&P’s are the candy equivalent of drinking your own pee to survive in the desert.
My dad use to make peanut butter, cheese and Mayo (Miracle Whip) sandwiches. Mayo on one side, peanut butter on the other and a slice of kraft american as a formidable boundary between the two. And I loved them.
Another gross thing that I use to love is jello cottage cheese ‘salad’. You take your cottage cheese and you dump a packet of your favorite jello flavor right on top and mix it together. Chill, and serve. It was a staple at family gatherings. Remember that episode of How I met your mother where lilly has to make this Ericsson family salad and it involves layers of jello and other weird stuff? This salad is that salad’s slightly tamer cousin.
So happy to see licorice doing so, um, “well” — it’s the only thing in this flight that I truly hate with a white hot passion.
Everything else, I either voted for the meat (I’m now a mostly pescatarian/vegetarian, though I’ve eaten most of the meats in this flight in the past, and I would again if I were hungry/hard-up enough, or if I were a guest who did not wish to give offense), or I picked the thing I would choose to live without if I absolutely had to, say on a desert island. Some of those choices were tough, like cilantro versus garlic, ow… Still, I won’t be surprised to see cilantro go far in this competition, as I know many who hate it, and many more who’d give it up before they ever gave up garlic.
Anyway, if it were up to me anise would make it to the final round, along with raisins. And anise would win. Didn’t help as a kid who already detested any and all black candy/licorice to then be prescribed anise-flavoured penicillin syrup one time (WTF?! the artificial banana-flavoured stuff was bad enough, but compared to the anise-flavoured one, the banana version was nectar) for a flu. Of course I promptly threw it right back up. Anise-flavoured vomit! YUCK! I had an ex who used to love pastis and I’d be like, don’t even kiss me after you’ve been drinking that vile stuff, EWWWWW!
I love, love, L-O-V-E LOVE licorice, but as soon as I saw where it’s placed in the standings, I was like, “Woah, that’s way under-seeded.” Looks like the poll is proving me right. It has so many haters — all the more for me!
@Bunting HEEEE!
Re: firming up the tofu (heh, “firming”) (heh, “up”) – I’ve also had good luck with buying the extra-firm to begin with, dropping it into a Tupperware, and leaving it in the fridge with the lid cracked slightly for about a day. Tasted like diced dried tofu I’ve had at Szechuan restaurants, and was awesome.
As a child, I loved my cottage cheese with some kind of jam (strawberry, grape etc.) mixed into it. I do not think I subjected my children to that taste treat. My peanut butter sandwich combination is made with Miracle Whip only, sometimes with a little shredded iceberg lettuce.
I hate cilantro SO MUCH. The sight of it sitting on top of my perfectly-good-until-the-FUCKING-CILANTRO-pho just sends me into rages. …Obviously.
@Erin in SLC – Now I have visions of a beaver raising it’s tail, and with Monty Python-esque sound effects, spraying out a stream of those raspberry-shaped jelly-filled hard candies.
@Sars: Maybe it was growing up with my dad that leaves me with an impression that mayo jiggles like jello? He has this tendency to hold stuff out on a spoon, or a fork, or his bare hands, and sort of, like, quiver it at you. His main goal appears to be to horrify the viewer. He thinks he’s funny.
Also, I have been told that for people who mildly dislike cilantro, it tastes like soap (this has been my experience, and I see that many upstream comments bear it out as well), but for people who really HATE cilantro, it tastes like corpse. No one has mentioned this yet – any thoughts?
Get out.
I hope I don’t skew the results of this highly scientific poll, but some of these choice are agony for me. I don’t hate most of them (I love cilantro – in some things – scallops, garlic, lobster, even licorice!) And the ones that I hate are matched against each other! How can choose the lesser of two evils between revolting egg yolk and pustular cottage cheese? Agh. Mayo is fine. Miracle Whip is good. Homemade mayonnaise? Yum!
The onomatopoeia effects are killing me. Also, the Bunkler Twins are the most hilarious sister act ever.
To quote my late father, “Mayonnaise is poison. Causes cancer.” Everything he hated “caused cancer.” But about mayonnaise, I think he might be right. HURL.
The comments on this thread may be the best ever. Holy funny.
@Jenny- Dude. I hear you. Only mine was more how many of these combinations (or invidual items) made me gag. Not a good list to read in the morning. /endoffirsttrimester
I debated just not voting between garlic and cilantro, because I am such a fan. I just couldn’t live without garlic, though. Also, cilantro has taken a rare demotion in my book lately. (again…pregnant)
@tadpoledrain I’m curious about this supposed corpse-taste. See, when I describe something as tasting like something I’ve never eaten (for example, lemon Starburst tasting like lemon Pledge), I mean that the one tastes like the other smells. How many people out there are that familiar with the smell of a corpse?
If anyone on this thread is familiar with the TASTE of a corpse, you need to KEEP THAT SHTEEZ TO YOURSELF, YOU FEEL ME.
YES. Lemon Pez = Lemon Pledge.
Also, we’re “lucky” enough to have a corpse/carrion flower here in town. Maybe one day I’ll go and see it in bloom, just to get a whiff of what all the cilantro hate is about…
“If anyone on this thread is familiar with the TASTE of a corpse”
Even if you had it with fava beans and a nice chianti?
Yes, cilantro tastes like soap to me. Like whatever food it’s in has been stirred with a soapy spoon, is how I describe it to cilantro-lovers. There was an article in the NYT that confirms it. SCIENCE.
@MizShrew: word. That’s why my grandmother’s coleslaw was so good, because she didn’t overdo it on the mayo (and the dressing was more than just mayo) and the coleslaw crunched.
Completely agree on the Cowgirl Cottage Cheese. It is amazing.
1. Too bad Glark is already taken, because “coconut is the Devil’s pubes” is my true North.
2. Dear Tarn, I am very sorry about the banana/mayonnaise thing that’s in your family. Mine has alcoholism. Yours is worse.
3. Keckler, as a Tofutarian, it doesn’t really have a flavor. What it’s very good at if cooked properly is absorbing a lot of flavor from herbs and sauces, so if you can get used to the texture (or just fry the heck out of it) you can have yummy buffalo tofu, or garlic and oil tofu!
Awww, some coleslaw sure is vile. I like raisins, but in coleslaw? Surely that should be classified as some sort of personality disorder. I make a rockin’coleslaw – very thinly sliced fresh cabbage (green and red), grated carrot, grated apple, finely chopped spring onion, finely chopped red and green capsicum, use a good quality egg mayonnaise thinned out with good quality white wine vinegar (or make your own). Otherwise, BLEURGH.
cilantro vs. garlic is not fair.
Sarah D. Bunting says:
August 15, 2012 at 12:12 PM
I love Dave P.
And my life, it is complete.
I love cole slaw. It is wonderful to love cole slaw because so many people do not love cole slaw, and when you are at a diner, you get to eat their slaw.
I dislike most cole slaws, but FoodWishes’ apple jicama coleslaw is delicious; crispy cabbage, fuji apple and jicama with a mayo/hot sauce/pineapple dressing. Yum!