The Nause-AA: Round of 64, Flight Spew
Today’s write-ups by Sarah D. Bunting. 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 raisins vs. 16 tomatoes
I freely, proudly admit to cooking the rankings on this match-up — but I don’t know what y’all expected. As I told Joe R on Twitter yesterday, “Ain’t called ‘Raisin Nation,’ ain’t gonna be.” However: 1) while I believe many of you share my exhaustively documented hostility towards the dried grape, I believe just as many of you find them inoffensive or even enjoyable; and 2) really really a lot of people hate tomatoes, and I completely understand it. That seed glurge is quite disgusting, and it’s my opinion that there are few more heavenly bites on earth than a good Jersey tomato…but there are few more miserable bites than a grainy, pale pink, midwinter tomatoid that comes apart in your mouth like a handful of (Mon)sand(o).
In other words, you know I had to rank them this way – but I actually don’t know who’s going to make it out of this showdown alive. We may have an upset on our hands. An upset Sars, that is. BECAUSE RAISINS ARE HORRIBLE.
1 raisins vs. 16 tomatoes
- raisins (69%, 617 Votes)
- tomatoes (31%, 277 Votes)
Total Voters: 894
Loading ...8 cooked carrots vs. 9 eggplant
I like eggplant when it’s cooked properly, but that can be a challenge for a lot of people, and I should probably admit that my definition of “properly” involves a rollatini preparation that makes the eggplant almost an afterthought to the big old wad of ricotta. Eggplant also has a slime factor, although that doesn’t bug me that much. Cooked carrots, however: feh. I don’t loathe them, but they make the house smell like feet for hours afterwards, and they’re total filler. Proof that a given restaurant doesn’t know squat about Italian food = carrots in the primavera. I dislike them more, but I think eggplant carries the day here.
8 cooked carrots vs. 9 eggplant
- eggplant (61%, 555 Votes)
- cooked carrots (39%, 351 Votes)
Total Voters: 906
Loading ...5 fake cherry flavoring vs. 12 banana
(I did a poll once, I think, that proved fake banana is more loathsome to the general population, so if you want to include fake banana in your banana vote, feel free.) I hate fake-cherry stuff. Hate it, hate it, hate it. All the sourness of a real cherry, but none of the balancing tastes or textures, and it’s always so violently pink, too. But I can sympathize with the banana hate – they smell quite strong; they have gacky strings clinging to them; there’s a mushiness happening that texture-phobes can’t cope with (I like mine medium rare, so I get it); and listening to someone else eat a banana is untenable. This will be a closer race than the rankings suggest.
5 fake cherry flavoring vs. 12 banana
- fake cherry (66%, 607 Votes)
- banana (34%, 314 Votes)
Total Voters: 921
Loading ...4 squash vs. 13 mushrooms
Another match-up that may give us an upset. People have so many reasons to skeeve ‘shrooms – soil-y taste, fungal status, the squeaking on the teeth, the resemblance to penis heads – but I love ’em, and as a reluctant vegequarian, I’m grateful for the portabella’s portability as a meat substitute. Squash, meanwhile, has no reason to exist. It’s a serious hassle to prepare, requires pounds of seasoning to make tolerable, and has an onomatopoetically accurate name. Squaaaaashhhh. No thanks! Trying to cut down on stringy, seedy orange things that are gross! [“All I have to add is that prepping squash turns my palms orange and makes the skin peel off them. Oh, and that childhood trauma I detailed in Suffering Succotash. Yeah.” — Keckler] But that’s just me. Mushrooms grow in poo. We’re probably done here.
4 squash vs. 13 mushrooms
- squash (59%, 511 Votes)
- mushrooms (41%, 352 Votes)
Total Voters: 863
Loading ...6 dates/figs vs. 11 beets
My father hates one food. Beets are that food. I never had them growing up as a result, and when I finally tasted one, it was like, “…And?” I’m not going to put on shoes and a bra in the middle of the night and run out for one or anything; I just don’t see the big whoop either way. Dates and figs look like testicle sacs to me and do not taste good enough to merit the metaphorical tea-bagging.
6 dates/figs vs. 11 beets
- beets (56%, 491 Votes)
- dates/figs (44%, 380 Votes)
Total Voters: 871
Loading ...3 okra vs. 14 cauliflower
We had a family friend who used to bring us okra from her garden, and my mother heroically tried every possible non-fried variation because she didn’t want to be rude, or lie about it to our friend — until Mr. Stupidhead literally ran to the kitchen sink and garked up the mouthful he’d just forced down, then muttered over his shoulder, “Ma, I can’t do this anymore.” This is not an isolated reaction, I feel. Cauliflower can smell like an armpit when it’s boiled, but you can put cheese and mustard on it and bake it; you can puree it with a shit-ton of garlic; you can dip it in ranch dressing. Love it. Also, it’s a cruciform vegetable, and that’s just fun to say/show off with at the table. Okra wins easily. [“Everyone who votes against okra has a standing invitation to have it at my house any time to experience a conversion. I love both these veggies, but have a soft spot for okra and how it won me over, as well as became my three-year-old’s most-requested vegetable.” — Keckler]
3 okra vs. 14 cauliflower
- okra (79%, 693 Votes)
- cauliflower (21%, 184 Votes)
Total Voters: 877
Loading ...7 prunes vs. 10 sweet potatoes/yams
Is anyone else kind of sick of sweet potatoes with booze in them? Yeah, me too. I like sweet-potato fries, though, and a roasted yam with red onion is quite delish. Prunes…I don’t know, you guys. Even if the prune is unbelievably awesome – and I’m okay with dried prunes, but “awesome” is off the table – the association with constipation is just too much for me. Prunes move ahead here.
7 prunes vs. 10 sweet potatoes/yams
- prunes (85%, 751 Votes)
- sweet potatoes/yams (15%, 131 Votes)
Total Voters: 882
Loading ...2 turnips/rutabagas vs. 15 onions
I had a really good turnip side dish the other day, but I’ve never reached a détente with the rutabaga, which remains resolutely unresponsive to, well, anything. Cheese doesn’t help, garlic doesn’t help, acids don’t help, sugar doesn’t help…I give up. It has a bitterness that somehow is the more off-putting for its faintness (see also: radishes). If anyone has a strategy, let’s hear it, but in the meantime: ixnay. I think the roots beat the onion handily, but enough people hate either raw onions (too “spicy”) or cooked onions (too slimy/mealy) that they could make a horse race out of this.
2 turnips/rutabagas vs. 15 onions
- turnips/rutabagas (85%, 754 Votes)
- onions (15%, 135 Votes)
Total Voters: 889
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Tags: barfing food Joe R Mr. Stupidhead shut up raisins Team Tomaaaato fuck yeah the food/poo Venn diagram The Nause-AA
I am not a fan of rutabaga, because it sort of tastes like a potato that never got washed. However, it was never served at home because of one fateful time in the 70s when my mom decided to experiment with rutabagas. The results were inedible, and for some unknown reason my mother thought the best way to dispose of it was to try and flush it down the toilet. A clogged toilet ensued, and my mother had to spend Christmas Eve searching for a hardware store that was still open so that she could purchase a plunger. She’s never purchased a rutabaga since.
@Lis YAYYYY! I feel the same way about onions about you, and I eat French Onion soup JUST LIKE YOU!!!! ***fist pump*** My family thinks I am weird for this, and now I have a French Onion soup buddy.
I’m so sorry I had to vote against turnips. I thought I didn’t like them for years, and it was because I’d never had a fresh one (I live in the tropics). Now I love them, but only if I can buy them fresh from the farmer’s market. From the supermarket, they may as well be cardboard.
Beets was the easiest choice I have made in this poll. Beets are, to date, the only food* that I have ever thrown up solely due to the horrifying taste. (*I’m not sure the sketchy candy corn I gorged myself on that one Halloween and barfed up for two days counted as “food” so beets are still the winner.)
However, after reading the first comment on this thread, it occurs to me that my mom, bless her heart, who was at best an uninspired cook, never served us anything except canned beets, which may or may not have been pickled. I am not sure if a fresh beat ever crossed the threshold into our home. So maybe I would like fresh beets?
@Krissa, your comment is one of the saddest things I’ve ever read, because fake cherry flavoring and actual cherries taste nothing (NOTHING!) alike. There is no other fake fruit flavoring that tastes so unlike the fruit it is meant to emulate. In fact, I was just discussing that fact with someone today. Fresh, sweet cherries are delicious, and fake cherry anything is vile. I don’t even like bananas, but the choice in that bracket was a no-brainer.
My dad grew up in a family where if you didn’t clean your plate at dinner, that was breakfast in the morning. He would have 3 day hunger-strike standoffs with his mother over okra, until she finally threw it out.
As such, it was never allowed in the house, and no one knows how to cook it. Keckler, I would love love love to hear a good, not-slimy way to cook it, if there’s some magic trick you know. I don’t expect to convert my father, but I’d like to try it, and I think my mom misses it.
They don’t make Beet Newtons, I’m just saying.
“Raisins are Satan’s candy” made me laugh, because I grew up in the 70s and my mom would occasionally flirt with the wheat germ/yogurt/Nature’s candy hippie shit. But everybody needs that one neighbor who hands out raisins on Halloween–how else would you know whose house to egg?
Hooray for “warriors drink” references. I heart you people.
I had a few tough choices on this one, for once. Maybe it was the lack of seafood options.
I have nothing against fake cherry- even like it, at times- but bananas got me through my first trimester mornings this summer, so I can’t vote against them, even if I can only eat them in a particular window of ripeness.
And again, raisins and I are cool, but tomatoes are just awesome. They don’t always like me back, but I refuse to stop eating them. I will agree, though, that there is such a thing as a bad tomato. Getting a pale pink, mealy looking tomato on a sandwich or burger makes me angry. You might as well not put it on, because it tastes like water, anyway.
Oh, Keckler, you reconstitute dried fruit because you want an excuse to soak them in booze! Non-dried fruit are too juicy to do that (in confections, anyhoo). Booze introduction!
@scout1222 I spent years of my life trying to like mushrooms because you’re right, everyone assumes vegetarians enjoy every food that can be used as a meat substitute. Tofu is okay I guess, if you want to eat weirdly textured blandness, but all TVP products can go die in a fire.
I had trained myself out of my mushroom issues, but reading the comments today I can feel the sauteed mushrooms and garlic on sourdough I had for breakfast rising slowly back up my throat. Ack.
I’m curious, Sars. Did anything ever, er happen, to houses that gave out raisins on Halloween when you were a kid?
Sars, you almost certainly would not approve of one of my favorite pasta salads, which involves both fresh tomatoes and golden raisins (but no mayo, blech). It’s one of those combinations that doesn’t sound like it should work – the other ingredients are in the basil/pine nut/olive oil family – but it really, really does. But I like raisins anyway, so I don’t expect you to take my word for it.
@Rick, we started skipping them after a while.
I once ate what I thought was a spiced apple ring but it was a beet and I died.
There are a number of “ifs” in this flight for me.
I took raisins in little boxes when I went to India to have a safe, high-energy snack that wouldn’t melt in my purse while sight-seeing. And I like raisins in pilau. But generally I’m not for the raisin cooked any other way, and certainly not in cookies!
I like a banana raw in my hand when it is in the Chiquita song peak “flecked with brown and with a golden hue.” But what is with the bananas cooked into every dessert that doesn’t have bacon (!??!) in it? No cooking of the bananas! Or mixing them in anything raw or cooked. Well, maybe sliced on Snap, Crackle, and Pop.
I like rutabaga tempura. Other good tempura veggie? Sweet potato! But I love the sweet potato happily plain–baked in its skin served with butter, or rudely oversweetened baked in brown sugar and butter, or french fried. My dad likes them pan fried.
And I don’t really like most squash (zucchini? summer squash?) but I’m with Jordyn in loving acorn squash. Still, I had to vote squash because of the non-acorn squashes. And I love mushrooms in many ways.
My only experience with okra is Campbell’s vegetable soup. I don’t think they put it in there any more. But they did when I was a kid and I HATED the slimy things. Bleargh.
Krissa, we have the same philosophy RE: sweet potatoes. Spicy is the way to go! I’ve never ever understood the whole marshmallow thing in sweet potatoes. Ew! But, with a bit of olive oil, salt, pepper, and cumin? Oh yeah, good stuff. And well-prepared sweet ‘tater fries are fantastic.
Also second the HATE of the fake cherry flavor. Anyone else remember cherry Sucrets cough lozenges as a kid? They tasted metallic, and evil, and… ick ick ick. I do enjoy regular fresh cherries in season, though, but I probably only tasted them because we had a cherry tree. I totally understand how someone who had fake cherry first would avoid real cherry thereafter.
Oh, and that goopy canned cherry pie filling people bring out for bad cheesecake topping sometimes? Blarf.
Raisins are the fruit of the devil.
On the other hand, mushrooms? Loooove the ‘shroom. I’ll eat ’em raw, right from the veggie rinse.
Occasionally, I’ll sneak my cats daily pill into a cherry tomato. I have no idea why he likes them, but if it gets him to take the darn thing without a fuss, I’m not complaining.
You guys, whoever posted the comment on the previous entry about goat cheese tasting “like a goat” has ruined it for me. I had a turkey burger with goat cheese, avocado, and sun-dried tomatoes, and…. I just couldn’t. I usually love that combination and all I could taste was goat. Nause-AA indeed.
And raisins, just, no. I can’t even describe the hatred. My boyfriend bought a huge container of gourmet chocolate covered ones and I can barely even look at it.
I feel totally justified in my hatred of raisins based on a treasured memory from when I was about ten. One of the few memories I have of a very awesome aunt who passed away young involved raisin hatred (it is genetic! It is!). After a tiff with my (otherwise amazing) grandmother over my refusal to eat oatmeal raisin cookies, my aunt pulled me aside and explained that it was perfectly ok to hate them, and that they CERTAINLY do not belong in cookies ever. She went on to say that even though they are disgusting, other people like them so they may appear sometimes, and if grandma used them, we still have to love her. But we don’t have to eat them. Best advice ever. I wish my aunt could see this thread cause she would have gotten a kick out of it!
If you don’t like beets, you should try golden beets. Yum!
I’ve learned to like cooked carrots if prepared properly. Properly means not reminiscent of the way my Mom does. Mom always served cooked carrots as a diarrhea remedy…
I found myself very confused by dates/figs vs. beets. I love figs, whether stuffed with a tiny piece of blue cheese and wrapped in prosciutto, or in their traditional Newton form. Fig Newtons will always remind me of my grandfather, for whom we always kept them in our house. Dates, on the other hand, are just nasty- too sticky and weird-tasting.
I am a recent newcomer to beets, having tasted them for the first time a year ago at my then-future mother-in-law’s house. They are also delicious, especially with goat cheese.
In sum, figs > beets > dates. I’ll vote for beets, just to keep my beloved figs safe.
I’m allergic to bananas and I still voted for fake cherry flavoring because it’s just that disgusting.
And people need to stop putting raisins in things. I went to Whole Foods the other day and half their deli salads were infested with them.
Oooh, best way to eat beets: roasted in the oven (or grilled on skewers) and sprinkled with. . . goat cheese! Yum. Even though it apparently tastes like goats smell — since I haven’t ever smelled a goat, I’m able to get past it, I guess.
I don’t understand why fake cherry flavoring is in this tournament at all. It seems like a fugitive from the N-Candy-AA. I mean, it’s gross, but isn’t it pretty much confined to nasty hard candy and cough syrup? And, I guess, soft drinks? It seems as jarringly non-foodlike here as fake sour apple flavoring would have in the cheese tournament (except that cheese is delicious.)
Where are you people encountering fake cherry flavor in actual food? I grew up eating–and making–cherry-based desserts, but they were and are always made with actual cherries and no artificial flavoring. Sometimes fake red dye was involved. Never any foul industrial flavorings.
The Nause-AA FAQ: https://tomatonation.com/culture-and-criticism/the-nause-aa/#more-11794
If an inclusion, or classification, doesn’t seem to make sense, please remember: there are 64 slots; we have to figure out That/Not That subdivisions to build the “east-west” sides of the brackets; do we collapse X kind of thing into one master Y category and leave ourselves with 55 items, or not do it and come in at 72, etc. etc.
I suppose we don’t have to use the bracket format; the winter-holiday polls worked fine Olympic-heat-style. But we used it here, and the bracket format has certain structural issues we can’t always resolve perfectly.
I’m with Empress: I really want Krissa to give fresh cherries a chance! Fake cherry flavouring really has nothing to do with the flavour it’s meant to “replicate.” A bowl of juicy, sweetly ripe, dark red Bing cherries is a bowlful of summertime.
The problem with okra is that it’s actually pretty good fried (because all you taste is the fried), but inevitably, your last bite will be that rogue stalky piece that sets up a gag-teepee in your throat and you’re sitting there in Furr’s or your Mimaw’s house, hurking up little okra-toothpicks into your paper napkin. After too many of those episodes, I’ve given up altogether.
As for the fake cherry haters, send me all your Mrs Baird’s fried cherry pies and cherry Starburst and cherry Diet Dr Pepper! I will consume them with glee! In fact, that sounds like a perfect lunch for today…