The Nause-AA: Round of 64, Flight Hurl
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 zucchini vs. 16 avocado
(PSSST! Bunting really hates zucchini, y’all!) To be fair, zucchini was high up on my Stephanie’s Most Hated list until a few years ago. I actually didn’t mind it raw, speared, and digging up dip, but I hated it cooked. UNTIL we got a grill. Then I had those spears grilled and topped with shavings of Parmigiano-Reggiano, and we also learned how to grill, oil, and salt long, thin zucchini strips so they don’t mush up and are pretty tasty. (I also have a genius raw-salad recipe I’ll share if zukes sticks it out; Bunting has promised to try it and record her reactions. [“My mother did find a way to get me to eat it without maximum drama, finally; it involved a cheese/zuke ratio of something like four to one, but it worked. I’ll eat it raw, but any cooked format that makes it gooshy is no go.” — SDB]) I do recall a time I hated avocado — because, let’s face it, it’s kind of a weird fruit — but I believe the zucchini haters will hate on through to the other side.
1 zucchini vs. 16 avocado
- zucchini (73%, 615 Votes)
- avocado (27%, 224 Votes)
Total Voters: 839
Loading ...8 Brussels sprouts vs. 9 green peppers
One of my greatest loves against one of my greatest hates! Actually, I can tolerate raw green peppers at times (but never cooked!), but it’s only occasionally, and I don’t seek it out. Beloved Brussels sprouts are like a stray cat: they just need to be treated right to be sweet and wonderful. They’re not trying to be bitter and punishing, they just want to be loved! Green peppers, however…I don’t know what your excuse is for grossness, but it’s just not on. Brussels sprouts are the misunderstood brassica of the vegetable kingdom, so they’ll push forward.
8 Brussels sprouts vs. 9 green peppers
- Brussels sprouts (51%, 443 Votes)
- green peppers (49%, 428 Votes)
Total Voters: 871
Loading ...5 string beans vs. 12 broccoli
In the middle of his SNL “chopping broccoli” sketch, Dana Carvey heaves a “hwaugh!” that ably illustrates how a lot of people feel about the Lilliputian tree. Just like Brussels sprouts, broccoli was one of my Great Overcomes in my quest to de-pickify myself. And just like Brussels sprouts, you gotta roast that shit! String beans, however, need to stay the hell out of my kitchen. [“And off my teeth. What’s with that infernal squeaking they do?” — SDB] They just taste so bland and how I imagine the color green would taste (and not in an earthy, crunchy, hybrid-engine clean-happy-world way, either), just green and nothing and bleh. That’s it! String beans taste like bleh, so you can count on them bean there for the next round. (I know, I know: I’m fired.)
5 string beans vs. 12 broccoli
- string beans (67%, 541 Votes)
- broccoli (33%, 262 Votes)
Total Voters: 803
Loading ...4 kale vs. 13 succotash
Suck-o-tash! It is a tash of SUCK! I don’t know what a tash is, right at this moment, but I’m willing to coin it as “big nappy purse that contains a wet mass of narsty veggies.” To be fair, the bag of frozen succotash I grew up eating and hating is probably now called “mixed vegetables,” but this is what made it up: lima beans, cubed carrots, corn, short cuts of green beans, and peas. The only thing I liked was the corn, and it was SCARCE. Traditionally, succotash is a Native American dish comprised of corn (maize) and lima beans with the option of some red peppers thrown in (hoarf). Meanwhile, kale, which is the newest food that will make you immortal, is incredibly bitter, and so rough and hearty you can actually feel it toilet-brushing your insides as it goes down. (All the way down.) (And out.) BUT I’m trying to love kale. Not in the oven, though. I’ve had and liked the kale chips I’ve made, but I’m lazy. Instead, I eat it raw after it’s soaked in really garlicky-lemony vinaigrette for at least 30 minutes to soften it up. (Even then, it’s still pretty toilet-brushy.) As much as kale is preaching, most are not the choir. It’ll kale succotash and keep on being grosser to the next round.
4 kale vs. 13 succotash
- succotash (63%, 532 Votes)
- kale (37%, 317 Votes)
Total Voters: 849
Loading ...6 melon vs. 11 peas
Melon bugs me. It’s out there for me to like it with the sweetness and being a non-banana fruit, but they all totally miss for me. I hate the flavor of cantaloupe and its slippery-slimy texture, and watermelon is SO wishy-washy! Is it water? Is it melon? CHOOSE A FREAKING SIDE! Honeydew is a honeydon’t, and for some ungodly reason the name “Crenshaw” makes me think of a cranium burst open. Also, it’s impossible to know when they’re ripe — I can thump and thump but I don’t know to what end — and do you know how easy it is to get deadly food poisoning from a melon rind? You’re supposed to wash the cursed things with BLEACH! But peas for me are like green beans. They’re meh. The only way I truly like them is during the few spring days when Evvia makes fresh ones up with super-special feta, lemon juice, dill, olive oil, scallions, and cilantro. It says a lot about Evvia that I don’t like dill, cilantro, or peas, but I adore that dish. I think more people like melon than we’re predicting. Peas will come out as more hated.
6 melon vs. 11 peas
- peas (51%, 431 Votes)
- melon (49%, 412 Votes)
Total Voters: 843
Loading ...3 chard vs. 14 olives
This is tough. People who hate olives REALLY HATE OLIVES, whereas chard is often something people don’t bother trying. Like, they know they dislike other veggies or greens, so they just don’t go there. But olives get SUCH a huge reaction from people. Tannic and tough as bad chard can be, I think olives will push through here. [“I’ll take that bet, because the ‘you can’t spell “olive” without “love”‘ people are just as passionate.” — SDB]
3 chard vs. 14 olives
- chard (56%, 482 Votes)
- olives (44%, 374 Votes)
Total Voters: 856
Loading ...7 asparagus vs. 10 spinach
I really want to like asparagus, I do. I even had a passionate, long-term affair with it not that long ago, but then I started ducking out of dates and avoiding its long, green gaze at the grocery store and farmers’ markets. I enthused along with everyone else when spring and the purple spears rolled around, but in my heart I knew I was living a lie. The other night, I had it over for dinner and I finally had to come clean and admit that I just don’t enjoy it overmuch. I don’t hate it and I will always respect it, but the love has gone out of the relationship. Spinach and I are friendlier — distant, but friendlier. I like it raw in salads and barely sautéed with lemon juice and garlic. Asparagus will move on to the next round.
7 asparagus vs. 10 spinach
- asparagus (56%, 430 Votes)
- spinach (44%, 341 Votes)
Total Voters: 770
Loading ...2 celery vs. 15 lima beans
I think we were smoking crack with these rankings. Is celery REALLY that hated? I had no idea. Personally, I do love its innocuousness, and strings really don’t happen anymore, so tell me: what’s up, folks? Why all the celery hate? Lima beans, however, are so famously foul, they were one of the final nails in the coffin of Alexander’s “woke up on the wrong side of the bed” day. I think lima beans will advance, and celery will crunch into obscurity.
2 celery vs. 15 lima beans
- lima beans (68%, 595 Votes)
- celery (32%, 279 Votes)
Total Voters: 874
Loading ...
Tags: barfing Dana Carvey food Keckler The Nause-AA
Celery is boredom in vegetable form.
Chard vs. olives – I can tolerate black ones in teeny-tiny amounts on a pizza and that’s it. I loathe green olives, which is very problematic for me as a martini-lover. My grandmother, on the other hand, loves them – her drink of choice is a brandy Manhattan with THREE olives. IN A MANHATTAN.
Having said that, though, I was at an Italian market that had an olive bar and saw some bright green Castelvetrano olives in one of the bins. The label said they were milder than regular olives, so I took a deep breath and tried one. And my mouth was like “This is… not very revolting? This is… actually sort of… good?” They have a nice, mild, buttery flavor to them that makes them, unlike all their other brethren, edible to me. If you don’t like olives, give Castelvetrano olives a try. This is my roundabout way of saying that 100% hate of chard vs. 95% hate of olives means chard advances for me.
Celery has a horribly strong taste. When it’s in a salad, it ruins the whole thing. Never eaten a lima bean, but I know I hate celery.
There were surprisingly few things I hated in this flight! But the ones I did hate? Haaaaaaaate. Go right to hell, lima beans. I actually voted against kale, that is the strength of my hatred.
I’m learning more and more that there are people out there who just cannot stand cooked vegies. I thought my husband was just weird. He likes raw tomatoes, not cooked. Raw carrots, not cooked. Etc. Steamed is usually fine, though, and I totally get that. Vegies are MUCH BETTER steamed than fully cooked, and there are very few that anyone should cook. Which brings me to broccoli. I thought I hated it as a kid, but turns out, I just hate it raw. I LOVE it steamed.
I grew up in the national capital for asparagus (we even had a festival, people) and have been completely spoiled. Grown locally and cooked correctly? Amazing. Shipped in or frozen? Blech.
I voted for melon, even though I like watermelon and honeydew, because of the foulness that is cantaloupe. The smell alone is enough to put me off. It just smells musty to me.
I can eat asparagus, but I really like spinach, at least cooked the way my mom makes it–fried with bacon grease, a little flour (to thicken), and onions. When done, add sliced hard boiled eggs. Lots of hated food elements in there, based on your brackets, but if you like all those individual ingredients, pretty tasty! And of course, everything is better with bacon.
If black olives don’t make it to the next round, I’ll be so hurt and lost and confused.
I still remember the first time I learned about kale: Woody on “Cheers” was drinking some vile green “healthy” blended concoction that involved kale, and nobody had heard of it before.
And I recently described the scent of my hockey gear as “rotten cantaloupe,” and though I don’t mind melon too much, associating it with the foulness that is my gear made the decision easier.
Taste is utterly personal, and this is mine: When there are so many truly loathsome foodstuffs around, I don’t get what some of this flight is even doing here. Brussels sprouts? great. String beans vs. broccoli? both tasty. Melons/peas? very different but both yummy. Asparagus and spinach? both things I hated when I was 8 and was sure all “weird” green things were icky, but that was ages ago. Celery and lima beans, both utterly inoffensive if not exciting.
I don’t get the point of things like zucchini that are talked up as “good for you” even though they don’t really have a lot going for them nutritionally (I love the site that touts it as a very good source of protein even as the sidebar says “0g protein”) — celery would be another, being largely water — but I find nothing to hate. OK, those strong greens like kale and chard won’t get any love from me, they have to be cooked to be consumable and preferably in lots of fattening stuff to make them palatable at all. Fine; I had no problem voting against those. But in general… I may have to revise my self-rating as a fairly picky eater when it comes to today’s fashionable cuisines. I would eat anything on this flight, though not all of it with love.
Ugh, olives. How is this a contest? They taste like mold!! It’s the worst feeling to order nachos and bite into what you think is a speck of black bean, but is actually a speck of black olive. I shudder at the thought.
What a relief it is to see others who don’t like green peppers. It’s a hard world out there for a vegetarian who doesn’t eat green peppers.
Oh man, I’m a notoriously picky eater, but I happen to love both zucchini and avacado. It made me so sad to choose one! (I went with zucchini.)
But thankfully this round also includes two of my most hated foods of all time: green peppers and celery.
Green peppers are one of the ONLY foods that absolutely can’t be “picked off” in any reasonable fashion because their obnoxious taste poisons everything they touch. Almost anything else can be removed and forgotten, but not green peppers. Ew ew ew. Other peppers like red and yellow can go about their business, but green peppers should be extinct.
And celery? It’s defenders like to say “how can you hate it, you can’t even taste it?” Which, first of all is totally untrue, but second of all, if you can’t taste it, why are you putting it in there?!?! And don’t tell me “for the crunch” because crunch in an otherwise soft dish is the start of a whole other rant for me (water chestnuts make me shudder for that same reason). At its best, celery is crunchy, bland and stringy. At its BEST, people!
And before you suggest to me it is good with peanut butter or cream cheese? Absolutely not. That’s what crackers are for.
Taste is utterly personal, and this is mine: When there are so many truly loathsome foodstuffs around, I don’t get what some of this flight is even doing here.
Then you’re not required to vote, which is nice. These foodstuffs are in fact “truly loathsome” to some people, and we have 64 slots to fill, so.
A belated “sorry, Tarn!” for last round’s description of guacamole. But oh, I hate avocados. And I love zucchini, ever since I had a fantastic zucchini casserole my best friend’s mom made. Yum, yum, yum.
I can take or leave green beans, but I HAVE to have something covering raw broccoli or I won’t eat it. Veggie dip or ranch works best. Cooked is okay, but prefer it smothered in cheese.
I have hated green peas since I was two. Mushy and gross.
Cooked spinach is my FAVORITE, sprinkled with hot pepper juice. Heavenly. I like asparagus tips a lot, too, but the stalks are hell to get soft, so it moved on.
I really do not understand people to whom celery is “innocuous” or “bland” or “boring.” I am not saying this to be rude — I really don’t understand. Because, to me, celery has the strongest, nastiest flavor of all the flavors in this competition. I can taste even the tiniest little pieces of celery that my mother-in-law tries to sneak into the Thanksgiving casseroles. I hate it. I hate hate hate it. I cannot get my husband to understand, because he is one of the “bland” people.
Taste buds, they are weird.
I can taste celery salt when it used as a seasoning, and I will not proceed with any dish containing it.
One time, my preferred flavor of triple sec was not available at the liquor store, so my husband brought home its shelf neighbor. Stuff has a celery aftertaste (I swear), and I cannot stomach it, even amidst an otherwise perfect margarita.
The thing with cantaloupe is that you have to have it fresh. Cantaloupe that’s been sitting in a plastic tub in a grocery store for three days is no longer cantaloupe. And cantaloupe that’s been sitting in a plastic tub in a grocery store for three days mixed with honeydew, pineapple, and grapes is completely inedible. It’s a sponge that’s been soaking in evil.
Keckler, we ate that same “succotash” when I was growing up, and I have a strange fondness for it now, minus the lima beans.
But despite all the lima beans I left on my plate from that “succotash,” I voted for celery in that match-up, because celery ruins everything.
DIE GREEN PEPPERS, DIEEEEEE!
There is no single foodstuf I hate worse. The smell, raw or cooked, wil drive me away alternately screaming and hurling. I’ve boycotted perfectly good diners because they deign to put them in hashbrowns.
They pollute every food around them. They are vile, vile, vile. They personally offend me.
I remember refusing to eat my mom’s chili when I was four due to their presence. She made me eat it anyway, and I promptly hurled it back into the plate. I was sent to bed without supper, which, although understood to be a serious punishment, felt like victory.
Whew. I was waiting for this flight, just to get that off my chest.
HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAATE olives! Why do they have that nuclear half-life of an aftertaste?! It lasts so long that it makes me want to rinse with tequila.
But Paul Reiser once said “There are exactly the same number of people in the world who hate olives as there are who love them. So it all works out.” It’s true. I just give them to my best friend.
@Hannah, I remember the Cheers episode too. Hypnotized Woody takes a swig and says “Wow, you can really taste the kale!” Hee.
Last night we ate at my in-laws’ home, where my mother-in-law is very dictatorial in her mission to eliminate picky eaters from the world. Unfortunately for her, I am too old to be intimidated and I won’t let her do it to my son. There were raw onions AND green peppers in the pasta salad, green olives on the condiment tray, and mushrooms in the green salad. As I picked things out of my food, creating little piles of onion and mushroom on the rim of my plate, I amused myself internally by thinking of the hilarious descriptions I’ve read here (“chewing on an earlobe”). Thanks, everyone.
Heh, Keckler, you summed up my feelings on melon perfectly. They are sooooo bland. They can’t express any opinions. Their favorite band is Air Supply. They’re that guy at the office that’s worked there for five years and you cannot remember his name.
But as for succotash–if I try your recipe for brussels sprouts, will you try my husband’s for succotash? With the cream and nutmeg and the liguica sausage? Yuuuuuum.
I must have been one weird kid because while my food hates were legendary, I never minded limas or celery. Not even as a five or six or seven year old. Just ate ’em up.
Kale is the asshole you dated that you can never make like you, no matter how much you tried. Die in a fire, kale.
This whole thing is so fascinating! The only face-off I could vote on here was green peppers (huuuuuuurfgh) (seriously, why???); the rest had lots of favorites. Kale!!! I can eat buckets of heavenly oily garlicky kale, or kale salad, or chips. Love.
I love hearing people’s reasons for hating what they hate! Great perspective on how everyone’s taste varies.
Can’t vote in the melon/peas hate-off (love ’em both), but olives are NASTY. Green olive are farts given physical form. (Well, another one.) This was the easiest bracket so far for me.
It’s interesting to me that the gateway to liking formerly despised vegetables for many seems to be roasting. I still don’t really like cauliflower, but I’ll eat a roasted piece before a boiled one; I got to like roasted asparagus first. I think it must be the sweetness that comes from browning that makes things more palatable. (Maillard reaction FTW!) Stir-frying seems to be good too; either because strong flavourings like garlic, ginger and soy tend to go along with that method, or the short cooking time limits the potential for gooshiness, especially in softer vegetables like zucchini.
My people! Green pepper is horrid. I actually loathe RED peppers worse, especially when I think I’m getting some delicious tomato and blam! Horror in my mouth! But I avoid both as much as I can. I love other peppers – love! I am certain bell peppers are the worst thing ever.
I actually enjoy celery, but I get the hate. I think the “bland” impression must come from off-peak celery or something, because I have definitely had some that tasted like…nothing. Other times, it has a very strong almost spicy flavor.
I had no idea people hated olives. I have never met an olive I didn’t love.
Not much that’s really gross here, other than avocado, which is a whole flight’s worth of gross all by itself. That stuff is never darkening my palate. I remember my mom making her legendary homemade guacamole, and trying to foist that horrible green slime on me. It looks like something that would come out of a gut-stabbed alien in a movie.
Choosing between chard and olives would be like choosing between sunshine and water for me, though.
I really enjoyed voting on this flight — it allowed me to express my hatred for so many vile green things: olives, green peppers, celery, honeydew, and my all-time most-hated food ever and ever amen, ASPARAGUS. All of that crap can die and go to hell. Like some others said, neither celery nor green peppers can be ignored. They are poison!
The only tough choice for me here was zucchini vs. avocado; I happen to love both, especially in mushy form. I guess I’m in the minority here because I find most raw vegetables inedible. They’re too strong, and they don’t… leave me alone… the rest of the day, if you know what I mean.
Speaking of things that are weird on the teeth…spinach. I can’t tell if it coats my teeth with something, or strips them of all natural gloss. I love spinach, both raw and cooked, but what it does to my teeth kind of ruins the fun.
Is knowing that snapping stalks of celery is used in movies’ sound effect Foley art to mimic the sound of breaking bones helpful in making you hate it more or less?
Or did I just gross you out some more? ;)
And there it is, finally, my hated green peppers. The one food I hate enough that I will bother to actually tell people if they ask if there’s anything they shouldn’t cook for me. The food that I can taste if there’s even a tiny bit somewhere in the meal.
When I was little and didn’t like onions, my dad used to blend them to put into things, because if I couldn’t see them, I didn’t care if they were there. Totally doesn’t work with green peppers.
@MaryBeth- I’m married to an olive hater and we balance perfectly in that regard. Whenever we end up at Olive Garden, I get all the olives out of the salad, and he gets all the hot peppers. Perfect marriage. LOL
Come on, olive haters! We can do this. Chard is pretty inoffensive compared to the overpowering brininess of olives. I just don’t like them, but I eat plenty of things I don’t love. The thing about olives is that if you have one tiny piece on a bite of pizza, it is the only thing you taste. See ya later, tomato, cheese, red pepper. You just got Kalamata-bombed.
On another note – I don’t hate spinach either, but I think it should handily beat asparagus because of the texture. Oh god, the furry teeth feeling. It makes me shudder. I eat it in many contexts, but when I get that sandy, furry feeling on my teeth, I just have to stop.
“Why all the celery hate?” I’ll tell you why all the celery hate-BECAUSE WHEN YOU ORDER A DELICIOUS BLOODY MARY THEY TRY TO CHINTZ YOU OUT OF THE ALCOHOL YOU ARE PAYING FOR BY FILLING HALF THE GLASS WITH THE BIGGEST DAMN CELERY STALK THEY CAN FIND!!!!!!!!!!! If I specify no celery when I order, I have even had some of the chintzier bars try to serve me the glass less than 3/4 full on those grounds. Ahem. Ok, I’m calm now.
I cannot believe zucchini is beating avocado. Zucchini makes delicious zucchini bread. Avocado makes chip boogers, er, I mean guacamole.
And green peppers and asparagus are beating brussel sprouts and spinach???? Well, I’m just not sharing anything from my garden with y’all.
I don’t even know what the hell chard is, but olives are awesome so I voted for it.
For this flight, it was all about what has the potential to be more disgusting, given the wrong (or right, depending on your perspective) preparation. Perfectly ripe and well-roasted Brussels sprouts? Amazing. However, 95% of the Brussels sprouts consumed on any given day? Taste like nothing so much as cabbage marinated in earwax. See also: zucchini, kale.
String beans which would be fine, except for the constant threat of the squeak, which is like someone running their fingernails down a chalkboard in my mouth. It’s not always there, but when it is? Hkkkggghh.
Spinach vs. asparagus was no contest. Though both delightful at their best and hurl-worthy at their worst, there is no way to prepare asparagus that approaches the horror that is canned spinach.
What the hell, people? Green peas and brocco and Brussels sprouts ALL start to smell bad the moment you cook them; I will seriously dry-heave if I’m in the kitchen when that happens. It’s like Satan farted in a poorly-ventilated nail salon. The taste? Exact same.
Olives, on the other hand…I have eaten Black Pearls straight from the can, as a meal, and I’d do it again. I’ve been known to drink shots of Extra Virgin, straight, no chaser. Mouth’s watering just thinking about it.
Interesting – this flight had most of my truly loathed items up against more appetizing ones (avocado, broccoli, asparagus, lima beans, olives), making it one of the easiest to get through without a lot of hemming and hawing. The only one I had to pause on was melon vs. peas, since I actually like both well enough.
I voted for asparagus purely because of the pee-stink factor. Sure, it tastes fine roasted, but it is OBVIOUSLY made of evil if it yields that sort of immediate physical response.
My favourite asparagus factoid, c/o Discovery Channel, is that “Early investigators thought genetics had divided the world into stinkers and nonstinkers. That was until 1980, when three researchers had the presence of mind to wave pee from the nonstinkers under the noses of the stinkers. Lo and behold, the problem proved to be one not of producing the stinky pee but of being able to sniff it out.” (http://dsc.discovery.com/guides/skinny-on/asparagus.html)
(Sniffing someone else’s pee for science. God bless research subjects.)
Succotash is delicious, if you painstakingly separate the vegetables and make sure they don’t touch each other while your mother looks on with contempt.
I actually like every single choice in this flight, so I voted based on which I could do without more. Sorry, zucchini, I really really like you, but my love for avocado is unholy.
Celery. It got my vote, because yes those strings can be a pain in the ass, which is why when I use it, it’s usually diced up really frickin’ tiny. Except for that once when I made the “chilled celery log” from the 1972 Weight Watchers Recipe Cards. Talk about horrifying celery, that was just a nightmare. But celery was only a small percentage of the horror in that dish.
I should have given ants on a log its own entry. First of all, the ants are raisins, fuck off. Second of all, the log is celery, fuck off. Third of all, fuck off.
“Avocado makes chip boogers, er, I mean guacamole.”
THIS! The sight of folks eating guacamole sends me to a fainting couch.
Peas taste like feet. That is all.
All you people who hate green pepper are wrong. WRONG. They’re probably my favorite vegetable. Not only do they improve a chili or stir-fry but when I’m hungry I eat raw ones whole, like apples.
Brussels sprouts are the worst. I was never anti-vegetable even as a kid, but they were always the one veg me and my siblings just refused. True story: when were were little I was playing with my sister and she accused me of farting and not saying “Excuse me.” I said I didn’t fart. We fought about it until my mom called us to dinner and we went downstairs and OMG THE SMELL. My mom was boiling the evil sprout. My sister turns to me an apologizes.
Besides, even though Brussels sprouts are the current foodie favorite, no one eats them plain. Even the best, trendiest, restaurants and chefs have to cover them in bacon fat, cheese, strong oils or vinegars,or anything that will mask the taste. So, yeah. Brussels sprouts taste good as long as you can’t actually taste them.
Agh, yes, the weird tooth-feeling after eating spinach!! I forgot about that. (Because 98% of the time I use kale instead!)
Re. Asparagus pee: I wish I could remember what chef-memoir talked about serving asparagus at family meal and then the tiny unventilated staff bathroom became a toxic waste dump health hazard from everyone stinking it up all night. I adore asparagus but that is legit foul.
Carrots and string beans in succotash – really? The hell? This recipe for succotash has been the one I’ve used at Thanksgiving for the last 5 years, and it’s pretty damn tasty.
http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Autumn-Succotash-236536
If you won’t eat succotash on account of the lima beans (I actually don’t mind them), do as the recipe suggests and use edamame. I LOVE edamame and was so happy to find stores selling it frozen nowadays.
I can’t vote on anything this round; I love them all. Just you wait until later, though, raisins and eggplant. You’ll get yours.
My daughter hates string beans and peas and somehow, looking at those vegetables through eyes, I’ve really started detesting them as well. My husband always requests to have peas in our Macaroni and Cheese, which I grudgingly make but I tell you it messes with a perfectly lovely plate of macaroni and cheese, those wrinkly/pruny bastards are not fun to eat.
Also, regarding olives. I use to hate them and thought they were the devil’s pubes on pizza and salads. But I’ve grown to love them. When they are good they are great, but when they are bad, the are a briny horribleness that is detestable.
Oooh I was wondering when my most hated foods would show up and here they all are.
Olives (ball pickles) are a picky eater’s worst nightmare because they contaminate everything they sit beside and can’t be picked out clean from a salad or pizza like mushrooms and tomatoes.
Green peppers are so weird. I think I hate them raw most, cooked second most… but I can eat them on a pizza. Only in that partially cooked state are they remotely palatable.
Cantaloupe, I loathe you but I love your brothers water and honeydew even as they threaten to murder me with their bacteria.
Yeah, we finally got to the round that contains my two most hated foods – peas and lima beans. I used to sit at the dinner table for two hours until my mother finally let me go, rather than eat my peas. Disgusting.
But I also have to side with the green pepper crowd. I actually love the smell when I am cutting it. And I don’t mind it chopped small in stuff. But those big flaccid hunks of red and green pepper that seem to show up everywhere? Belong in hell.
Do you remember the Calvin & Hobbes strip where C’s mom tries to get him to eat stuffed peppers by telling him they’re actualy cooked Monkey Heads? I think she was inadvertently telling the truth.
Why olive oil is so inoffensive and olives so deeesgusting is a mystery to be pondered.
Oh, God, green peppers – even walking past them in the produce section makes me shudder sometimes. Totally agree with haras that they’re the only thing that absolutely can’t be picked off a dish; they contaminate anything they touch with their loathsome vile disgusting loathsomeness. True story: ordered a pepperoni pizza once, took one bite, and said, “There’s peppers on this”. Turned out a tiny sliver had fallen on the other side of the pizza. Ruined the whole thing.
And my mother put them in EVERYTHING – casseroles, mac and cheese, you name it. WHLORF. My grandmother gave me raw green pepper slices to chew on while I was teething, apparently, and my mother just couldn’t understand why I didn’t like them. Go figure.
First off, I can tell y’all aren’t Southern, because if you’d ever had lima beans the way my granny makes ’em, with bacon grease and bacon, you’d never speak so ill of such a lovely foodstuff. I LOVE YOU, LIMA BEEEEEANS.
That being said, green peppers and olives and zucchini can die in a fire. You too, Every Member of the Melon Family.
Do y’all remember the plain gray can that peas used to come in in the grocery store, La Seuer brand? When I was a little kid learning to read, I sounded it out as you are supposed to do, and came to the conclusion it said La Sewer. So it became a family joke that peas come from the sewer. It explained a lot.
In several of the earlier rounds there were two things I LOVE pitted against each other, but now we get to celery vs. lima beans! How can I choose between these for grossest? I can’t even look at a lima bean but on the bright side they come up almost never. I can’t remember the last time I encountered one. Meanwhile people insist on ruining perfectly simply classics like tuna or chicken salad (I know, mayonnaise people, I know) with celery. Why is that a thing? A bitter, bitter, nasty thing?
@ferretrick you totally made me snort with laughter at work. Well done. I suspect my local Japanese fast-food place does the same thing with their chicken teriaki and huge slabs of sliced onions.
Not much to be passionate about here. This round I think I voted for the items I preferred less, not actively hated. I’ve developed a new wariness for melons lately though. I had five vines volunteer in my garden, and they seem to be cantaloupes. One of them went bad before I could pick it, so I chucked it in the compost. You guys I…I’ve never smelled anything that bad. Rotten fruit is pretty unpleasant, but I had NO idea it could get THAT horrible.
And now I’ve fanned the flames of the melon-hate. You’re welcome.
Man, some of these are nail-biters, unexpectedly!
And I’d forgotten how intense you pepper-haters are about it.