The Nause-AA: Round of Thirty-Ew, Flight Ugh
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 cilantro vs. 8 veal
Two very different icks-periences here: one a soapy-for-some ruination of perfectly good salsa; the other a baby cow that’s difficult to prepare unslimily. [“Veal is also the only food I have known that turns grey when cooked. That’s just not right.” – Keckler] I don’t hate either of them, myself; back when I still ate red meat, I liked a veal chop well enough. So, as it often does in a snacket, it comes down to a desert-island choice: which would I want if I could only have the one, forever? It’s not veal. That said, I’d say more people hate cilantro, and it should “win” here.
1 cilantro vs. 8 veal
- veal (69%, 601 Votes)
- cilantro (31%, 265 Votes)
Total Voters: 866
Loading ...12 licorice/anise vs. 4 mussels
Licorice upset scallops in the last round, and I’m not convinced it’s through overthrowing single-digit seeds. While I like the flavoring, those who hate it will physically flee from it, whereas mussels don’t seem to engender the same intensity of fear/loathing. The mussel is a pain in the ass to eat and clean up after, however, and I love me a black Chuckle. I’ll vote mussels, but they may not inspire enough hatred to get through. [“Here’s some hatred for you; the Red Vines company recently recalled their black licorice because of dangerous LEAD levels!” – Keckler] [“Fuckin’ Red Vines.” — SDB]
12 licorice/anise vs. 4 mussels
- licorice/anise (53%, 463 Votes)
- mussels (47%, 406 Votes)
Total Voters: 869
Loading ...11 bologna/olive loaf vs. 3 organ meats/offal
Believe it or not, this is a tough one for me even though I can’t eat any of these things anymore — and it’s because I liked these things! Well, not olive loaf, because olive loaf (and pimiento loaf, bllrrrrggle) is fucked up. I always liked bologna, though, even though it’s kind of damp and weird and made of lips and dicks, and I loved my mom’s chicken livers in white wine over rice. I’d probably vote off the loaf (…LOOOAAAFFFF), but O-S-C-A-R M-A-Y-E-R has enough nostalgic pull to protect it. Offal moves on(-al).
11 bologna/olive loaf vs. 3 organ meats/offal
- organ meats/offal (72%, 629 Votes)
- bologna/olive loaf (28%, 243 Votes)
Total Voters: 872
Loading ...7 cottage cheese vs. 2 mayonnaise
According to the comments from the Round of Sixty-Hoarf, y’all have some seriously active mayo. Or live in the San Andreas Fault. Or should visit a neurologist? I can completely see how mayonnaise is off-putting for other reasons, but this whole watch-it-wiggle problem is a new one on me. Anyway: mayo is pretty gnarly, I guess, but cottage cheese is soooooo so much worse. Curds. Watery runoff with little flecks. [“And yet, you defend tofu!” – Keckler] The “diet plate” at the diner, starring a sandy slice of melon and a gelid bolus of cut-rate Breakstone’s, is the most depressing circle on earth. I want CC to win, but it’s too close to call.
7 cottage cheese vs. 2 mayonnaise
- cottage cheese (58%, 490 Votes)
- mayonnaise (42%, 349 Votes)
Total Voters: 839
Loading ...1 blue cheese vs. 9 creamed vegetables
I love both! I love each with the other! This totally isn’t the point of the bracket at all!
…Okay. What will voters consider more disgusting: the presence of the word “cream” (hew), and the fact that said creaming (…HEW!) is generally trying to disguise some of the more reviled vegetables (spinach, asparagus, et al.)? Or veins of blue mold that smell like a litterbox of the damned? I see a close race, with blue cheese squeaking through to the Sweet Sicks-teen.
1 blue cheese vs. 9 creamed vegetables
- creamed vegetables (61%, 529 Votes)
- blue cheese (39%, 338 Votes)
Total Voters: 867
Loading ...12 tarragon vs. 4 clams
Tarragon’s upset is somewhat surprising, and at 59% of the vote, it wasn’t a trouncing. Clams should dispense with the seasoning easily, and I won’t vote for them (chowdah = heaven), but I think most of you will (Clamato = henh?).
12 tarragon vs. 4 clams
- clams (61%, 503 Votes)
- tarragon (39%, 317 Votes)
Total Voters: 820
Loading ...6 crab vs. 3 raw oysters
This is quite possibly raw oysters’ tourney to lose — the oyster is very salty, very slimy, and drew comparisons to everything from loogies to eyeballs in the comments, and at a dollar a pop (if you’re lucky and/or actually live in Wellfleet), the cost can get revolting even if you like the taste. Or, you know, the sensation of swallowing a sea slug. Oysters, easily.
6 crab vs. 3 raw oysters
- raw oysters (91%, 765 Votes)
- crab (9%, 72 Votes)
Total Voters: 837
Loading ...10 egg whites vs. 2 mayo-based salads
Whoever cited the carrot/raisin/Miracle Whip “salad” in the comments last round basically did my work for me here. For every mayo-based salad you can think of that you like, with about a hundred qualifiers (“IF it’s kept ice-cold,” “IF it’s my mom’s recipe,” “IF it doesn’t have cabbage bits,” e.g.), you can think of two others you wouldn’t eat if you got paid. [“If mayo-based salads squidge through, trailing their botulism, I have recipes for non-mayo’d potato salad and coleslaw and a restaurant rec to share with my fellow haters.” — Keckler]
But at least I can think of mayo-based salads I would eat. The quavering, flop-sweaty expanse of yarf surrounding the yolk of a fried egg? No. The boring beige whiteness intended to justify the cheese in an egg-white omelet. No again. A slippery hard-boiled egg half? No and forever. No, no, a thousand barfs no.
…It’ll lose, though. Macaroni salad claims another victim. Sigh.
10 egg whites vs. 2 mayo-based salads
- mayo-based salads (68%, 569 Votes)
- egg whites (32%, 270 Votes)
Total Voters: 839
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Tags: barfing food Keckler The Nause-AA
You said bolus! I’m dying!!! I haven’t stopped being grossed out by that word since I first learned it in college ten years ago!
BOLUS.
High-fiving Sars over the black Chuckle love! I’m also fond of the black Necco (hmmm…wonder where I can find those) and I love to get all the black jellybeans from the Easter baskets of the uninitiated!
All y’all that haven’t tried mayo on french fries (like they do in Belgium and at my non-Belgian house) have simply not lived. Yum-mee. Salty enough to season the spud, but creamy enough to avoid Oversalt. Gotta vote cottage cheese, even though I like that fine. It’s just not indispensible, like mayo so very much is.
Yeah, sure, bologna has its place, but olive/pimento loaf is the devil’s upchuck, so that gets my vote.
Any foodstuff that inspires one of my favorite goofy-dance songs of the 80’s has to ‘lose’ here. Squeeze didn’t bother with “Pulling anise from a jar”, people! Vote Licorice!
“Gelid bolus” is motherfucking poetry, and I will fight anyone who says otherwise.
I love, love, love raw oysters, while still understanding why people don’t. But to me, they taste like a clean breeze off the ocean–and a key tip: you only chew twice.
Egg whites. Slimy remnants of the Devil’s sex-having. Gahhhh. Disgusting.
And crabs! Crabs make lobster look like George Clooney inviting you to his Italian villa and here, he’s bought you a whole new wardrobe! Hideous creatures that run sideways at you with their horrible legs. Not now, not ever.
And I haven’t actually spelled out my vomiting-ess yet, so here goes: HUYUKKKK-blatsplat (that last part is when you’re futiley spitting out the last strings of bile as your eyes water and your nose burns burns BUUUUURRRNS…)
Heccchhhh. Your description of bologna almost did me in. I don’t hate many foods, but I hate bologna.
Cottage cheese vs. mayo was a hard one for me, because I love them both.
Cottage cheese looks like infected wounds. It is terrible. If it loses to mayo, which makes the BLT perfect and harmonious, I will no longer believe in a just universe.
I actually like bologna, though touching it makes me feel grody, and cow heart tastes fine. But cow heart is the limit of my offal experience, so on it goes.
The only creamed vegetable I’ve had experience with is creamed corn, and once I got past the fact that it looked like it had already been eaten (blorb) it wasn’t too bad. I want to like blue cheese, but it just punches me in the face flavor and smell-wise, and I just can’t deal.
*urp*
This was, in retrospect, the wrong post to read while eating lunch.
The description of bologna made me think of scrapple, actually, which is about ten times as gross as bologna. Scrapple is the plywood of meats.
I’m getting to the point where I refuse to eat either competitor. Bologna or organ meats? BLECH, all of it is disgusting. I have a feeling that at some point, I won’t be able to vote anymore, as most of this stuff makes me gag. (except nummy, yummy crab! I want a crabcake!)
Egg whites are what they say your cervical mucus looks like when you’re most fertile, ladies. I’ll eat a bucket of macaroni salad any day over that visual.
Also? THEY MAKE MERINGUE WHICH IS VILE. Cow slobber on pie? NO THANK YOU.
As someone who’s family actively fights to get the last black jellybean, it never occurred to me that there are people who hate licorice.
I could list many reasons why I love it, but I just discovered another one today…Stash’s licorice spice tea works AS WELL AS Alavert for allergies. I drank one cup with two teabags, and my runny nose cleared right the hell up, without any help from OTC drugs. LOVE.
Whose. Not who’s. It’s glaring at me.
Does that mean pork chops aren’t supposed to turn gray when they’re cooked? Who’s going to tell my parents?
Ew, scrapple. AND EW, HAGGIS!
Mmmmmm, licorice spice teeeeea. /Homer
OK, this was easier because in most cases, there’s a thing I like and a thing I don’t, or at least like less. (I skipped tarragon vs. clams. I love clams; tarragon doesn’t bother me.) Loaves vs. organ meats, though … both of those things are completely foul. Foul, foul, foul – either of them could win the whole thing and it would be legit.
Crab is delicious. Raw oysters are Poseidon’s loogies. At 91 to 9 percent, I’m surprised the match-up is as close as it is, honestly.
Tarragon vs. clams – love chowder, but only New England-style. Clamato is just Manhattan-style sans heat, and NO THANK YOU to either. Plus, I love me some Béarnaise and some tarragon roast chicken. Clams revolt on to the next round.
@Lisa: fertile cervical fluid looks like *raw* egg whites and I thought we were playing with cooked egg whites here, but point taken. Shudder.
This was tough because things I love (cilantro, veal, eggs, mayo, cottage cheese) andd things I can’t handle (offal, bologna, seafood) are paired against each other!
Ooh, this bracket was much easier for me because the choices all came down to either Something I Love (blue cheese, mussels, cilantro) vs. Something Else, or Two Things I Hate, where I don’t lose either way.
Also, can I just say that the way “licorice” is spelled only adds to my hate? I read it as “liquor-isss” and it makes me crazy.
Keckler and Lisa, you know WAY too much about cervical fluid. Just sayin’.
What happened to all the barfy onomatopoeia today?!
The bologna vs. organ meats seed is just genius. It’s the perfect match of mystery meat and little-mystery-left meat, and I support the later. There’s a reason that people say “that’s baloney” and it’s because a eating a bologna sandwich is like eating a LIE. And it’s always associated in my mind with Wonder Bread, Satan’s pillow. It’s sweaty, it’s FLESH-COLORED (hunf), and it deserves to move on. Live a little, eat a brain.
Ugh, I’m campaigning. This bracket had to happen during a presidential election year, didn’t it? I just vigorously defended OFFAL.
i love crab but raw oysters are pure joy! No votes for either!
Hello, my name is David T. Cole — you may know me as Glark — and this is my story.
One day when I was 5 or so my Dad asks if I wanted to go to Fonthill with him to pick up a piece of furniture he had stripped. Fonthill is a town near my childhood town but more importantly it was shorthand for going to the Avondale Ice Cream place. That’s what we went to Fonthill for. For ice cream.
We arrived at the furniture stripping place which was confounding in the back of a local truck stop diner. For whatever reason my Dad decided we’d eat here while we waiting for the chair to make it’s way out of storage.
And again for reasons that will never be known my Dad decided I would have cottage cheese for lunch even though they had things like grilled cheese and fries. I got to choose my drink and being 5 or so I made a bee line to Grape Fanta.
My Dad never took me for ice cream ever though it was just one block down.
Karma smash cut to 15 minutes later driving along Beaverdams Rd. and I tell my Dad “I don’t feel good.”
Dad whips the car (brown Granada!) to the shoulder but it’s too late! It’s TOO LATE!
At this point let’s take a moment to recall what’s in my stomach. It’s gooey small curd cottage cheese and ultra-purple fizzy grape soda.
My Dad tries to reach across me to open my door so I can throw up on the roadside but he’s too slow or maybe I’m too fast. A torrent of lumpy lavender viscera hit the tan dashboard, shrapnel landing on the windows, my Dad’s bare arm, and finally falling with a goopy, muted plop on the brown shaggy floor mats.
The moral of the story is to never give your kid cottage cheese and grape soda when you suggested they were getting ice cream.
Or any other time. WTF, Glark’s Dad.
I know about the cervical mucus too, since it COMES OUT OF ME every month. Despite that, and it indeed does look like egg whites, I’m okay with egg whites!
This was a fairly easy round, as I most of the time voted for the non-lacto-ovo-vegetarian option, and when that failed, there was something I actively didn’t like. (or like Carrie Ann, hated both, so whatevs)
This is really such an enjoyable contest, mostly due to all the commenting.
I have a grape soda story, too!
The whole time I was growing up, my mom played softball. I loved hanging out at the ballpark and playing in the red TX dirt. One day, it got well over 100 degrees. My mom had given me a couple bucks, all of which was spent on Grape Crush to beat the heat. 100+ degree heat, plus red dirt, plus jumping around on the bleachers all day = fizzy dark purple barf. Needless to say, I’ve never had grape soda again.
I’ve also never had cottage cheese. It already looks like barf. ‘Nuff said.
So I guess it’s bad that after reading Glark’s story, I totally have a plan for the next time I see my sister’s kids? “They’re not hungry, I gave them a snack just before I brought them back!”
Please tell me why I am obligated to read about cervical mucous when there are multiple actual gobs of feculuent sputum in this round (variously named oysters, clams, and mussels, but come on folks it’s all the same!).
I humbly request that our dear moderator allow me to state for the record that I do know how to spell “feculent.”
Egg whites are fine with me, though I do see the resemblance to cervical mucus. My vote came down to this: I honestly don’t mind mayo-based salads if they are made with ACTUAL MAYO. It can never, ever be Miracle Whip, which is the product of an unfortunate one-night-stand between a bottle of vinegar and a raw egg. And WTF Mother-in-law, with your lime jello/cabbage/green pepper/Miracle Whip concoction?
As long as Miracle Whip counts as mayo, those salads will get my vote every time.
I had to abstain from the last one, as there are very few mayo based salads I don’t like and I love love love egg whites.
Cottage cheese is my nemesis, it makes me gag just thinking about it. I still to this day do not know how I managed to choke down an entire serving of my sister-in-law’s seafood lasagna (starring cottage cheese) without vomiting. If it doesn’t “win” I will be very disappointed.
Glark’s story, and Lisa’s “cow slobber on a pie”, had me choking I was laughing so hard.
And Sars, your description of bologna as being “damp” was so disgustingly perfect that I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep tonight. Also bologna has a certain smell that I can’t abide. Errrlppp ooghhhh.
Crab v. Oysters is settled immediately for me… See, I associate oysters–which I already do not like– with the even grosser Rocky Mountain oysters. I can’t separate the two in my mind, despite knowing that all they share is a name. As a result, when I see the word “oysters” a big alarm bell in my brain starts shrieking “bull balls! bull balls! bull balls!”. It’s horrible…
I didn’t think this much about cervical mucus when I wanted to get pregnant, y’all.
And while I actually like bologna–fried! In a sammich! With MAYO! In my trailer!–that “damp” descriptor has put me off indefinitely, Sars.
So, even though I voted for the Other Guy, I have to point out that crab (besides sharing a name w/ “Crabs”) is… SEA SPIDERS!!!! Ok y’all?!? Omg!!! All arachnaphobes should be all up in this!!! Also, also… (and I know this because I have a small skiff and my husband and I go out once a week or so to catch them for… “fun”.) Did you know that the way to process them involves pulling their shell off while they are still alive, then breaking them in half? Then you thread your hand in their claws so you can get a good grip while you pull out their guts?!? THEN! sometimes, when you’re almost done they give a squeeze to your hand that requires screaming at the top of your lungs while dancing around the kitchen trying to shake it loose, but the motherfucker has your hand TIGHT then it suddenly will let go, and it flies across the room, and the rest of the family just looks at you in dumb silence while you try to explain, then they say it’s “just a spasm” but you know the bastardo was doing it on purpose.
Anyway… Thought you should just take that into consideration, too
The dubious allure of cottage cheese was forever ruined for me one day in high school when my best friend and I were walking out of the cafeteria and we passed a table of girls, one of whom was eating cottage cheese drizzled with French dressing. (Bleargh.)
My buddy leaned over and said, “Topping off the old cellulite tanks, eh Julie?”
almost lost it over the mayo vs. cottage cheese bracket. those two entities should not be mentioned in the same space and time.
excuse me, gotta run….
Kim, I just made a fried bologna sandwich. On cheap spongy white bread, with fried onions and Velveeta. And the outsides were spread with mayo for better frying. It was so, SO bad it rocketed past good, circled the globe back to bad, and passed it back into good again.
Also, I may be dying – it was worth it.
I cannot believe that cilantro is “losing” to veal. Veal is morally gross. Veal is tortured baby cows. Maybe veal tastes gross too, I don’t know, I never eat it. But how often do you see veal? Not nearly as often as you see cilantro, which gets everywhere and ruins perfectly good food, sometimes surprising you when you don’t expect it, and you can’t pick it out, and it tastes like SOAP AND/OR CORPSE.
Ugh, MAYO. I can’t handle mayo based salads just because of the mayo. Blergh. I had a grocery-store bought ham and cheese sandwich (with TONS of mayo on it) as a child~field trip to the zoo, running late on the way to school so mom picked up my lunch on the way, blah-de-blah) and 5 hours later, after having sat in its little plastic wrapper in my bookbag on my back as I walked in the early-June heat through the entire goddamn zoo, I ate The Sandwich From Hell. And spent the bus ride back to school throwing up. And, you know, the next day and a half explosively ill. I don’t know if it was the combination of hot mayo and too much walking in the heat or what, but I haven’t eaten mayo on a sandwich since…and this was 20 years ago.
Re: bologna. I once spent a summer as a door-to-door salesman in Georgia. I was poor so my lunch generally consisted of a slice of bologna and 2 slices of white bread. Sometimes I would have to leave my lunch in the car all morning while I walked around the neighborhood. The Georgia heat did not do it any favors. I would open the car door to be hit with a wall of hot damp bologna scent.
One day, I was trudging down a dusty back road when I smelled that scent. I was confused, because I had not packed a lunch with me that day. I looked around, and eventually tracked the scent to a dead armadillo on the side of the road. That’s right, bologna smells JUST LIKE leprosy-carrying roadkill.
I have not eaten bologna since.
@MaryBeth: “jello/cabbage/green pepper/Miracle Whip concoction” — what the holy hell? While I don’t eat jello anymore anyway, I liked it fine on its own, but vegetables belong nowhere near jello, ever. And I don’t know what miracle is involved in Miracle Whip, but you can for sure bet that I will not be subscribing to that religion anytime soon.
@Georgia, she brings it to parties. And expects us to thank her.
I agree about vegetables and jello – they should never inhabit the same serving dish. I can’t stand cabbage or green peppers, but I wouldn’t put the veggies I do like into jello either.
Oh, how in the holy hell is veal STOMPING cilantro? Sure, veal is morally wrong, blah blah blah. But we’re not working our way through a bracket of the most morally reprehensible foods, people – it’s about the NASTIEST things people eat.
And veal, for all its PR problems, just isn’t nasty. Its flavor is entirely inoffensive – the worst thing you can say about it is that it’s bland. Cilantro, on the other hand… well, let’s just say that ever since I heard that porno movies sometimes use dish soap as a semen substitute, I’ve always thought “Those poor women – having to wash the taste of cilantro out of their mouths.”
Come ON, people! Like that one guy on Top Chef, if I ever get rich I’m going to buy a plot of land and raise a crop of cilantro just so I can firebomb it.
I cannot believe finned seafood/tuna fish did not make it out of the first round! It smells and tastes like douche, people!
People who bring mayo based salads to parties go to a special place in hell where there’s a picnic laid out of nothing but salmonella and botulism laced mayo salads and YOU HAVE TO EAT IT.
I think it must be hard for the cilantro haters to realize that, to the rest of us, cilantro tastes like a fresh breeze on a spring day. Moral repugnance causes way more up-chuck than a refreshing herb.
Armadillos carry leprosy? And dish-soap semen substitute? I am learning SO much today…
@MaryBeth: You forgot the shredded carrots. Or your mom did. Because that “salad” canNOT be made without shredded carrots.
Oh, and blergh.
Hee, Kate Monster’s “bull balls!” alarm is the best thing ever. And speaking of, where does one categorize Rocky Mountain oysters? They’re offal AND oysters!
Gah. I tried RMO’s once, when I was in Denver, thinking “When in the Rocky Mountains…” The thinly sliced ones actually were tolerable, just like a little taste of deep fried meat. But the thicker sliced ones got more chewy and tasted metallic (from, y’know, the BULL BALL BLOOD!) and I saw a vein and…hmmmmmmarffffgggggg!