I am a big fan of food and I know what I like. I am by no means a foodie in that I like
normal food. I have never had quail eggs poached in Hungarian spring water, served with shaved kale sprouts and crushed monkey nuts, and I don’t want to.
I prefer food that I recognize, like steaks, chicken legs, and Coco Puffs. In fact, I will eat almost anything that I recognize with a few exceptions. For instance, I recognize the existence of beets but I opt to stay as far away from them as I can. My mother loved beets and made them quite often. I tried them once and threw up red. Never again. The Russians make a cold soup out of beets called borscht, which I believe they invented to feed to prisoners in the gulags.
I also steer clear of sardines. I know they are seafood – which I enjoy – but they taste more like the bait used to catch real seafood. I also don’t eat avocados. They are quite delicious, especially when transformed into guacamole, but if I eat any, it’s off to the emergency room to deal with a sever allergic reaction. It’s the green food that actually turns me green.
Poi, the Hawaiian side dish is off my personal menu. I’ve tried it in Hawaii and found it to be very aptly named because after the first taste, you spit it out and go “Poi.”
I am not fond of lamb. I don’t care for the taste no matter how much mint jelly you use to disguise it. I confine my feelings about lamb to the lovely wool they produce but I wouldn’t want to eat that either.
Perhaps the worst array of barely edible foods of which I want no part are offals. Offals – which taste awful – is the name given to otherwise unrecognizable internal organs of animals. This includes things like the liver, kidneys, spleen, bladder, stomach, appendix, and pituitary gland. Once, while visiting Germany, I ordered offals off a menu written in German and wound up with fried cow teat. There was not enough beer in the country to get rid of that taste.
I have often mused about what I would have for my last meal on death row, if I were ever wrongly convicted, like The Fugitive. It is said that a prisoner on death row is allowed to order anything they want as a last meal. If that was the case, I would order a filet, ribs, lobster, french fries, a few burgers and a 5 gallon bucket of tapioca pudding. I probably wouldn’t finish it all but I would eat until the point where I was so full that I would grasp my sides and yell, “Just kill me.”
Coincidentally, Just Kill Me is the name of my new podcast. subscribe for free on iTunes.
Follow