You all will say Yuck I am sure but my Dad loved a peanut butter/Miracle Whip sandwich. And I do too!

Mom regularly served hours-long cooked chicken gizzards in gravy with noodles and I LOVE them to this day.

Mom was an adventurous cook and being raised on a farm in South Dakota, grew up eating many things a lot of people wouldn't dream of eating. And because the family wasn't affluent, a sense of waste not, want not was instilled in her. I never set foot on a farm, but you know what they say: You can take a gal off the farm, but you can't take the farm out of the gal.

Mom and Dad moved to California before I was born. When I was 6 or 7 we moved to a town that had been founded by Italians and Dad made friends with an old Italian whose son had a restaurant. He introduced us to urchin, calamari, salmon pizza, and froglegs. When he gave Mom a bunch of squid (uncleaned), Mom had no idea what to do with it. So, she cleaned it and put it through the meat grinder and made squid burgers with it, LOL. I loved them!

It wasn't unusual for me to come home from school and find a quart jar full of chicken testicles or a bowl of chicken feet in the refrigerator when I was looking for an after-school snack.

After I got married my husband and I were visiting my parents and DH mentioned that pigeons were just everywhere at the paper mill he was working at and they didn't necessarily scatter when someone got close. Mom asked if he'd do something for her. She went and got a gunny sack and told him to fill it up for her. He took her seriously and brought her a bag full of pigeons. Now, our Italian benefactor had given us stuffed squab before, but Mom had other ideas. I watched her break their necks and skin those birds at the service tub in the garage. Then she simmered them and made the most delicious gravy to go with them.

Maybe my parents didn't pass on their love of certain foods, but they did pass on the interest in trying everything. I am fearless.

Mom hates cottage cheese. I love it. Daddy wouldn't eat lamb. I love it. They both liked black-eyed peas. I can't abide them. Mom loves anything lemon. I'm right there with her.

Barb, DH had his fav sandwich for lunch yesterday: peanut butter mashed up with a banana with a glob of mayo stirred in. DOUBLE YUK!!!

Hah Barb! We grew up on peanut butter and Miracle Whip sandwiches! I was mortified in the school lunchroom because none of my friends ever heard of it: they all had jelly! I thought my mother was very weird.

My dad ate liver on occasion and the smell of it cooking still makes me ill. My mother liked limburger cheese and always had a small stash in the fridge: it too makes me ill to even think about.

My Mom would sometimes make liver and onions for Dad. She hated them. When Dad would ask, "Where's Patty? Dinner's ready." Mom would retort, "She's outside. Ladies do NOT eat liver and onions. We are having chicken sandwiches in the garden."

No wonder I loved Mom so much. The smell even today gags me.

/tricia

My love of hot peppers came from my dad and my intense like for eggs (except in cakes and cookies) come from my mom.
My grandpa and grandma taught me to be an adventurous eater.

My Dad loved Limberger cheese..a certain kind..it was made by Mohawk foods and was a soft spread in a jar. Well the plant burned down and you can't buy it anymore. So I found some limberger in a kind of a block but my dad deosn't like it that way! Now I dislike it but I sure wish I could find it again for my Dad. I like almost anything and don't really hate anything..My favorite food would have to be ice cream though...especially a hot fudge sunday with wet nuts and whipped cream!
Joann

My mother was mostly absent and a very odd eater. She didn't like milk, although I still love it. She never ate an egg yolk, and I think it's the best part. She always peeled the skin off chicken. I do too.

I did learn to put an egg between two pancakes, I learned that from Dad who learned it from Grandpa. I learned about peanut butter and Miracle Whip from my Aunt Beatrice, I still like them and occasionally eat one.

I learned to hate bananas and jello from my Grandmother. She loved the red jello and always added sliced bananas. The bananas would turn black and become slimy and jello has that horrible texture anyway. To this day I cannot eat Jello or bananas without gagging.

Grandma also put milk on saltine crackers or toast, and I won't do that either, so I think I learned about a lot of things I don't like from my family, LOL.

However, I grew up poor and we ate whatever was available or went hungry, many times Dad would come home and ask what was for dinner and Grandma would say "whatever you can shoot". So we had porcupine and squirrel, rabbit and turtle, lots of foraged greens and wild berries. Lots and lots of cornmeal mush. Ugh. When I was about 9 or 10 we moved to the farm and then we ate beef and pork, lots of vegetables and fruits, eggs and milk. I thought it was heaven. Hmmmm. I still do.

So, although I'm probably the pickiest person I know, mostly because of texture, I am also extremely adventurous and will try nearly anything once.

Annie

My dad loved p-nut butter and dill pickle sandwiches...still one of my favorites.

I was interested to read about hot cereal with a fried egg that someone here loves...I was babysitting once for a neighborhood family and slept over- in the morning she made some kind of hot cereal and put a fried egg on it and poured milk all over the whole thing...I, to this day remember how mortified I was about how to get out of eating that. Same for milk toast at my grandmas...yuck...or toasted or creamed tuna sandwiches... any kind of hot, creamy fish. I love it any other way.

Dad loved shrimp and crab. I wasn't a fan of either as a kid, but when he wanted shrimp for dinner... that's what it was... and always HUGE ones. My taste buds mature and now love both crab and shrimp.

Dad always cooked steaks medium rare to rare, I I always like it that way, as long as it was HOT in the center... it could be red.

He NEVER liked liver, though his mother did. One or 2 times a year my Grandmother would decide that dinner would be liver and we'd CRINGE!! Unless you were really SICK, you couldn't NOT eat what was cooked. Luckily, we knew Dad would only take 2-3 bites and we would not be subjected to more than 4-5.

My mom always ate peanut butter sandwiches with lettuce and to this day I can't imagine anything other than lettuce with peanut butter (jelly? are you kidding me?) :)

Well I haven't had this in years - my mom and dad used to make it a few times a year -- kocsonya!! Also known as, pigs' feet kind of like in an aspic - it was like a wonderful rich soup all jelled with perfectly cooked tender pigs' feet in it but you eat it cold with rye bread. My dad used to "burn" the feet - really just toast them a lot - on a little burner thing he had in the garage so mom's pigs' feet and aspic were a beautiful amber color (she also used lots of paprika). My husband's father used to make it but all he did was boil the feet and his pigs' feet dishes were a very unappetizing grey and he didn't season his nearly as well as mom did. I've never attempted to make it but maybe I will this winter. Mom used to store her soup dishes of it, covered, on our attic stairs where it was quite cold in the winter. I'll have to use the garage. She always said it wouldn't taste the same if you refrigerated it and mom was always right.

"Don't yuck my yum"- love that.

My parents grew up with a very narrow range of foodstuffs available, particularly in winter. Mom was a good, but simple cook. We used to say, when she wanted to spice things up, she added salt and pepper. My generation is much more adventurous, as produce from around the world, plus restaurants featuring international cuisines, are now relatively cheap and local.

Dad never much liked fish, but as a good Catholic, we always had it on Fridays - usually tinned salmon or frozen fish'n chips. He wouldn't eat it any other day of the week, but I'll eat it whenever.... He also never like Chinese food, although Mom did, and always deferred to him. In his final years, he was hospitalized a few times, and it wasn't unusual for Mom to phone us and say, "They're keeping Dad in for another day. Any chance we can do Chinese?" In her last months, when she lived with us, and proclaimed that all food tasted terrible, she would still sometimes ask, "Any chance of Chinese?"

I remember my paternal grandmother as always making out like a Proper English Gentlewoman, and declaring her superiority compared to continental Europeans, especially the ones who consumed GARLIC!! My brother and I visited her grave a few years ago, and noticed that the ground had settled and her marker was a bit crooked. We determined that it must have been caused by her spinning around in it for the past 30 years, as most of the surrounding plots were occupied by Hungarians, Italians, and Poles!

I don't remember any particular foods disliked by my parents because we ate a variety of them and I didn't notice any missing category.

They did like fish and seafood of all types, probably because my dad and some of my uncles had boats and they really enjoyed fishing. I learned how to clean fish and pick blue crabs before I learned how to ride a bike. To this day, I like cooking and eating just about any kind of fish.

One custom both my grandmother and mother followed was not to serve dessert with dinner but to postpone it for later in the evening. After dinner, we'd do the dishes and clean up the kitchen and finish up any outstanding chores. Then we'd have a pot of tea and a treat of some sort (most often pie or cookies).

That way, we weren't full from dinner and didn't snack in the evenings. I continued that tradition in our household.

countrygal,
Try mixing some honey with that peanut butter. I had peanut butter and honey with lettuce sandwiches for my school lunch everyday for two years!

maxmom,
I don't want to "yuck your yum", but I can't do sweet on my peanut butter sandwich--just lettuce, please. :)

My mother ate a lot of things that made me cringe....hog's head cheese, brains and eggs, for example, but she loved sardines and saltine crackers. I liked them too, back then, but they just don't taste as good now. Too strong or something.