My Personal Food Biases: Can You Trust Me?

I promised this last week, and since I haven't done much cooking this week (that happens sometimes, much as I wish it were not the case), I thought this was a good time.

We all have things--food things--that we just love.  Those things we seek out when they're in season, or must order when we see on a menu.  We also have those things that make us scrunch up our faces when we mention them, those things we push to the side of our plate, and those things that we can't even smell for fear of our stomach turning.  That's what this post is about.  I figure if you know my biases, you'll better be able to tell whether or not you can trust my judgment on all things food-related.

I'll start with the negative and work to the positive.

Vegetables:  Lima beans, beets.
As a little girl, I was forced to sit at the table by myself to finish my peas and lima beans.  Peas I [mostly] got over with age, but lima beans linger.  I will eat around them in vegetable soup.  I will pick them out of succotash.  They are mealy and bland and just...ew.  Beets are both better and worse.  In recent years, I have encountered a bite or two of roasted beet that did not completely gross me out.  But in general, I avoid them like the plague, as they mostly remind me of those foul purple pickled beets of my childhood.  *shudder*

Meat and seafood: Mussels/clams/oysters, sushi.
It's the texture of mussels, et al., that I cannot get over.  If I happen across a fried clam, I'm usually okay.  As for sushi, I can tolerate a California or salmon-cream cheese roll when the need arises...but in general?  Not my first choice.

Dairy: Milk, French cheeses.
As a little girl, my mom had to add strawberry or chocolate Quik to my milk to get me to drink any.  To this day, I don't think I could drink a glass of plain milk if you paid me $100.  (Oddly, I love pretty much all other dairy.  I would bathe in sour cream if I could.)  The French cheese thing surprises me, too, especially considering how much I like other cheeses...and how much I like pretty much everything else French.  But the French keep their cheese at room temperature, allowing them to get extra ripe.  And they really like them ripe and stinky.  On my two trips to France, I have tried all varieties of French cheese (even some very fine ones at a Michelin-starred restaurant in Provence).  I have only found a few I can handle: Comté, which is basically French Swiss cheese, Boursin, and the occasional bit of Saint-André.  I actually detest both Brie and Camembert.  Yes, I really feel that strongly about cheese.

Other: Chocolate combined with citrus flavors, licorice, eggs (hard-boiled or poached)
Chocolate with mint, yes.  Chocolate with peanut butter, please yes.  Chocolate with coffee, anytime.  Chocolate with raspberry or cherry, okay.  But with lemon or orange?  PASS.  Also, there are two kinds of people in the world: people who like licorice and people who think those people are crazy.  I'm the latter.  The only way I eat eggs is scrambled or in an omelet.  I cannot think of much that is grosser than the solidified sulfur-smelling yolk of a hard-boiled egg.  But the runny yolk of a fried or poached egg is a close second.

Okay, onto my food obessions!