The cooking shows and contests are about the only thing I can watch. I did have ONE show I liked, but Fox cancelled it and I don't know if I want to pay for Netflix, who took it over.

I do get a laugh out of all the judges that rip the contestants for "lumpy mashed potatoes", since I LIKE some lumps and texture in my potatoes. Evidently they think mashed potatoes should be like thick soup.

ETA: Marilyn_C, the commercial, egg whites are runny, because they are old the first day they hit the store shelves.

" I mean, food prep as entertainment? "

And why not?? I don't think it has anything to do with an 'obsession' :-) We all need to eat and most of us cook our food......or most of it anyway.....so why not offer shows that focus on food prep and cooking? If watching televised sports is considered entertainment by those who enjoy sports, why are televised cooking shows any different for those who enjoy cooking? I personally find the Great British Baking Show one of the most entertaining offerings on TV! I may never make anything that they prepare myself, but watching them do so and the pitfalls they encounter and the successes they enjoy is vastly entertaining!!

And judging by the popularity and frequency of posts about meal planning, recipes and posted photos of finished dishes that appear on the Cooking forum as well as KT, not to mention the plethora of cooking and food blogs that are everywhere online, cooking and food prep is a pretty avid pasttime for a major portion of the population!!

There was no one I enjoyed more than Julia Child on a roll, she obviously enjoyed creating her menu and that joy was infectious.

I'm playing catch-up so haven't read all the comments, but just want to say I enjoyed reading your post, TXSkeeter. :)

Speaking of Julia Child and also of lumpy mashed potatoes....she was a fan of 'rustic' mashed potatoes, lumpy and unpeeled. She was so right in declaring them to be much more flavorful. That's how I've been fixing them ever since I listened to her PBS radio interview many years ago.

Julia's blessing, after all. ;-)

Cooking shows are enormously popular. I prefer those that involve real cooking as opposed to most of the competition programs. My little ten year old neighbor is a huge fan of cooking shows, especially those she finds on Youtube. She has become a grand little chef.

Try not liking cheese in this era of putting cheese on everything from appetizers to desserts. One of the reasons for the obesity epidemic, I feel. Mozzarella I can tolerate as it tastes just like butter to me. But the slightest whiff of hot cheese actually turns my stomach. Eternal vigilance is required as it's liable to be slipped into anything---I'm always questioning the server in a restaurant. I had a friend who looked upon my aversion as a character flaw so whenever I asked about cheese she would pipe up and mention that I was allergic!

TX, I really enjoyed reading your post and the question posed. I haven’t had time to read all the responses, but will comment with my opinion.

From a personal standpoint, I eat to live, rather than live to eat. I do love good food, and will go out of my way to investigate and eat at a good restaurant when traveling. Not necessarily expensive restaurants, just good food. It can be a bowl of soup or a fresh salad, I don’t have to eat a 3 course meal and usually my requirements are for a small plate. I cook a good bit and consider I am an above average cook. My brother is an exceptional cook and DD and another brother are not far behind. My mother was adventurous and excellent, even though she often had limited resources in a small town, we had fresh vegetables, fresh fish and seafood, and rarely ate anything from a can.

As I grew older, my food horizons expanded. I can recall certain things I did not enjoy as a child I will eat now. Examples are avocado, brown rice, sushi, Thai food, and others I’m sure. And vice versa. I just don’t eat them now because I don’t make the effort, or my tastes have changed. Meat loaf is one I don’t eat. I wouldn’t refuse it if served at a dinner invitation out of respect to a hostess, but I don’t prepare it. Liver is another, although I ate calves liver with onions as a child. I don’t even enjoy a hamburger much unless I prepare and grill it myself, and then rarely, and without a bun. No hot dogs, sausages or processed meat except bacon now and then. And I am southern and drink unsweetened tea, horrors! My mother couldn’t believe I started doing that back when I was in high school in the 60’s. (She never made sweet tea, we had always added sugar to our preference at the table.)

So preference for food is like preference for cars, colors, decor, clothing, and most anything. And those preferences can change over time. Or my preferences have anyway.

As some one with seven children my mother dealt with food aversions in what I think of as genius. We were never forced to eat anything we didn't like. Whether or not you liked something rarely came up. You just weren't allowed to fill up on other stuff instead. You got a share of what was on offer and that was that. As southerners we had a lot of choices and I know my mother actually took likes and dislikes into consideration, there was always something to chose from but hunger is a good sauce and most of us would eat practically anything.

Bland foods for children was a standard for Victorians. they believed children had delicate digestions so could only have bland foods, Bread and milk, white puddings like Blancmange, gruel. It is a wonder they survived. If you ever try the muck that comes out of jarred baby food, most of it is utterly tasteless-no wonder babies go for the jarred apricots.

For many of us, Mother's cooking still influences much of our cooking habits and memories. As a child of WWII when sugar, meat and coffee was severely rationed those cooks had to be very creative. Basically only organ meats such as chicken/beef liver and lamb kidney were readily available. My mother devised many tasty ways to cook and serve these throughout my early 1941-1945 days of rationing. I loved them then and still look forward to a plate of liver and onions every once in awhile. Living on the east coast my duty before dinner was to carefully lower the blackout curtains on each window so no indoor light could be observed by the enemy outside. German submarines ventured very close to shore. We often dined by candle light and Mother always made it a fun and festive occasion. On Sunday afternoons in the winter it was a heaping bowl of popcorn and sitting around the radio listening to the old radio shows. The voice of Orson Wells who performed often on those programs still haunts me.

Vivid memories of 'making do' in the kitchen during that period of food rationing.

i have never liked eggs but when I was a kid my grandmother used to pay me to eat a soft boiled egg. So I managed to choke ithem down for twenty five cents per egg, until one day she made a mistake and sugared the egg instead of salting it. I still remember it as the most disgusting taste I have ever experienced. She also used to make snails which I had absolutely no problem with. Go figure.

I cook with eggs, but can only eat them if they are super hard boiled or fried to a crisp (and that just never happens in my world). And I have a bone to pick with restaurants who think Pasta Carbonara is supposed to have a moist sauce. The only Carbonara worth eating imo is if the egg is dry and clinging to the pasta. It's the butter and cream and pancetta that creates the moisture.

Another thing about eggs - they need a a lot of salt to be palatable, at least in my world. I can eat hard boiled eggs, deviled eggs or egg salad, but they HAVE to be salty. And, heaven forbid if there is the slightest bit of under cooked yolk in a hard boiled egg.

Oh, and the egg booger has to be removed prior to cooking, although I do realize that's not possible when making hard boiled eggs. Those things are nasty!

Whoa!!! Egg boogers??? I remember when I was a kid seeing a tiny circle in an egg, and asking my mother what it was, and her exact words were, "that is where the rooster got the hen"....meaning it was a fertile egg, but we raised our chickens, but commercial hens never see a rooster. So you don't see it in commercial eggs. Is that what you are talking about???

What I can't stand is when eggs are boiled too long and get that greenish tinge.

Ha Ha, Marilyn!

I'm talking about that stringy, slimy white thing that is attached to the yolk when one cracks open an egg. I fish those out of eggs before ever making an omelet, scrambled eggs, fried or even eggs that are going into cake batter.

>>And I have a bone to pick with restaurants who think Pasta Carbonara is supposed to have a moist sauce. The only Carbonara worth eating imo is if the egg is dry and clinging to the pasta. It's the butter and cream and pancetta that creates the moisture. [jerzeegirl]>>

I don't think that's a Carbonara. You're describing a pasta Alfredo. A true Carbonara has no butter or cream. We have noticed many restaurants in the last couple of years mislabeling an Alfredo as a Carbonara.

A Carbonara is made with eggs, pancetta, and cheese. A little black pepper, a touch of salt; toss, twirl onto heated plate and serve. The only fat comes from the browning of the pancetta.

Restaurants are using an Alfredo sauce as a "cheat". A Carbonara will not hold. The timing is critical - once it cools it congeals. But with a dairy/cheese sauce, you can stick that under a heat lamp and timing is much more flexible.

HTH!

I love eggs! I like them nearly anyway they can be cooked, fried being my least favorite. I fix an omelet for dinner a couple of nights a week, and yes, I adore a salad with a soft poached egg on top - the yolk IS creamy - only undercooked white is slimy. I had a salad at a museum in Paris that I still dream about. It included warm lentils and bacon topped with a poached egg. It was nothing less than fabulous.

I like eggs too. Jakkom Katsu is spot on about the Pasta Carbonara, there should be no cream or butter involved.

The “egg booger” is the chalaza. The yolk itself is wrapped in an almost microscopically thin sac that keeps it all together (that’s what tears when you break the yolk in cooking) and it’s all gathered up at one end and twisted together to seal the sac and so that bit is visible to the naked eye. It anchors to yolk in the shell to keep it surrounded by th cushioning white so it doesn’t roll all over the inside and possibly get damaged.

Tastes do change. When I was a teenager you couldn’t pay me to eat a vegetable. I left home and started travelling, and ate vegetables at other people’s tables out of politeness. Soon I loved vegetables, especially broccoli (which I remember as a teen telling an adult broccoli was the most disgusting vegetable of all because it had little “bits” on the top of the stalks) which is now one of my favourites.

As an adult, I hated olives, blue cheese, feta, and anchovies. Exposure to all in the course of working in commercial kitchens changed that. Now I love them all. DH was the same. He’s still not fond of blue cheese in the raw, but quite likes it cooked in things.

One of our favourite annual activities is an olive picking day at a friend’s olive grove. She starts off the season with a couple of weekends of inviting all her friends to come and hand pick olives for the morning with a sumptuous morning tea (provided by me) and a huge long lunch with lots of great food, wine and conviviality. We pick about a ton of olives before knock off time (it’s not hard work, and we all chat and laugh as we go), watch them pressed at the local press into olive oil (which we all get to take home) then head back for a shower and lunch, which always includes the oil with bread for dipping and home pickled olives for eating. As a youngster you couldn’t have dragged me there but now we eagerly look forward to olive harvest time.

There are many different ways to make Carbonara and every Italian restaurant seems to make it differently. Alfredo sauce is more like bechamel and that's exactly what I don't like. The pasta should be coated with egg mixed with cream, and parmesan but there should be no "sauce" that sits on the bottom of the plate. Here's what it should look like. Pretty Carbonara. (The way I make it is pretty close to this (except I use butter instead of olive oil and I learned how to make it from my friend in Firenze) . My DH got a carbonara at a restaurant last week and it look like a blob of scrambled eggs at the bottom of the plate, actually kind of like an alfredo with eggs, but he liked it. I thought Yuck. My favorite pasta is aglio e olio. My grandmother made it with raw garlic, olive oil and parsley, which is the way I still like it, but many restaurants saute the garlic which seems very strange to me and I've had it with breadcrumbs added which is even stranger.

I love eggs and I have my own laying hens, so mine are fresh and I know (mostly) what those hens ate, but for an occasional bug. I'm the opposite of some here, though, I'll mostly eat them soft, with a runny yolk. I do not like boiled eggs, or scrambled eggs, or even omelettes. I'll occasionally eat quiche or frittata, but it's not my favorite by a long shot. I do put hard boiled eggs in potato salad and I'll eat deviled eggs, but my breakfast every single morning is an over easy egg with a slice of toast and a cup of black coffee. It's one of my favorite meals and I'm as likely to eat eggs for supper as I am for breakfast.

A pancake topped with an over easy egg and a drizzle of real maple syrup is an amazing treat for me.

On the other hand, I don't care for cheese. Or cheesecake or macaroni and cheese or various other cheese laden foods. I'll eat it occasionally, I don't detest it, I just prefer not to eat it, I'm very apathetic about it.

Annie

Sorry jerzeegirl, classic carbonara should not have cream

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbonara

The article does say a _few_ Italians use cream but in Rome where it was invented I suspect they would be laughed out of town.
I agree it should not be swimming in sauce and that the egg should not appear scrambled.

" it’s the strong fishiness of the mussels. I’m not a fan of really fishy tasting fish. "

Fresh mussels that have been properly handled should not smell or taste fishy at all but more usually with a fresh ocean smell, like other fresh fish. I don't know if in your region the mussels are cold or warmer water varieties but in North America and Northern Europe, what's commonly available is mostly cold water dwellers and to have an aroma at all usually means they're spoiled. Or at least not fresh.

Well there’s mild fish and strong tasting fish, which I think has more to do with natural fish oils than age or handling. I find mussels are in the stronger taste bracket.

Another one for no cream in carbonara!

We eat very differently in Europe. It's what fascinates me about the forum....the differences.

I think we all grow up liking what our Mum's cooked for us. I was lucky growing up as Mum was a very good, adventurous cook and my best friend's dad was italian and had restaurants so i always ate well. Holidays in france gave me a taste for French food from a very young age. I've always loved food and learning new things. Some hates.....not many. Mexican food always looks to me as it someone had already eaten it......and brought it back up. Can't face okra, frogs legs or snails.

LOVE fried okra - you can keep the stewed - disgusting to my palate. I adore frogs legs - have loved them since I was a child. There was a time when I loved escargot (snails), but that ended when we lived in LA and my agapanthas was covered with enormous snails. Just couldn't eat them after that. Also, I can no longer eat garlic, and snails without a lot of garlicky butter, would not be very good.

It took a trip to Baja Mexico before I could learn to eat re-fried beans. I love Mexican food but due to my GERD, it's on my No-Eat list now. I do miss it! I can still eat Cuban black beans with rice and especially love it in the summer.

I understand what you're saying, colleen, but I see it a bit differently. I break down the mild category in two directions - not strong but with a pleasant flavor, and then as the alternative = bland. For me, mussels have a flavor (certainly) but a pleasant and light one. I could see some thinking it strong. Bland fish lacking flavor I avoid.

I was also a picky eater when I was little. Didn't like many vegetables and could find the smallest piece of lettuce or onion and pick it out. lol Onions are the food I absolutely do not like. People keep trying to convince me otherwise. I have been with my husband for 20 years and he still tries to get me to eat them. :\ My mom put them in everything. I just don't like them.

I'm still somewhat picky about vegetables but am willing to try new foods. I like trying new flavors. There doesn't seem to be many good restaurants where I live. 80% are fast food or chains it seems.

I prefer dipping my fries in mayo over ketchup. :D And I have a weird thing about fruit. I love fruit (except pears ew!) but don't like it cooked into things. Except peach cobbler and blueberry muffins. I like chopped black olives but not whole or sliced. I guess I have a thing about texture too. I don't like iceberg lettuce but will eat romaine or spinach after I take the stems out.

My mom would make deviled eggs with milk, sugar and salt I believe. They are soooo good :D And she would make pickled beets which I love. I'll eat beets straight out of the can. She'd also make green beans with apple cider vinegar, onions and bacon. Good except for the onions. bleh!!

I prefer dipping my fries in mayo over ketchup. :D

Well, the Belgians would agree with you 100%.

I never heard of deviled eggs with sugar before, though.

I've seen that dipping fries in the mayo thing in England, Poland and Amsterdam as well. Thought it really odd the first time I saw that, but then I realized those folks might think dipping in ketchup odd, so there ya go.

I like my fries in tartar sauce.....

But only if it's made with dill pickles...NOT sweet pickles .

What fries get dipped into in my world varies with the fries. Ketchup is perfectly fine for fast food fries that come with burgers but not up to snuff for something like truffle fries....those demand a good garlicky aioli!! And for fish and chips, I prefer to dose with malt vinegar but a good tangy tartar sauce will work just as well. I also like fries dunked in blue cheese, ranch or thousand island dressing but that also depends on what I am eating them with. And sometimes I just eat them plain.....but they have to be very superior, double fried fries with just the right seasonings.

I'm pretty much a ketchup girl when it comes to fries. If they are really good fries, then there is no need to dip them period.

One thing about fries that I don't get is covering them with things like chili, melted cheese or curds and gravy such is done with poutine. To me, the entire point of french fries is their hot, crispy, salty goodness. Putting stuff on them that results in soggy fries boggles my mind.

I grew up with ketchup, but it is too sweet for me. I'd only ever use it to mix with loads of horseradish, for a shrimp dip. That's it. I bought some last year for a few folks (the smallest bottle I could find) and it turned out no one actually used it! I hadn't bought any for at least 12 years before.

My deviled eggs would NEVER EVER have sugar, never heard of that until now.

Totally picky about mac and cheese. I am turned off by that dish unless it is laden with veggies and other real food, not just that high starchy pasta part.

I love okra.. but if you cut it into 1/4 inch segments and bread the whoosits out of it, and deep fry it, … you can keep it. Don't foist that high starch thing on me... I am fine with okra slime, and far prefer this format to that.

The only eggs I will salt are hard, soft boiled, or poached. Not a speck of salt goes into my scrambled or omelet eggs. I don't like loose whites, but runny yolks are excellent.

My mashed potatoes are lumpy, and I prefer by far to use Yukon or other gold potatoes for just about any potato dish you can consider. Russets require SALT to the extreme. Yukons have enough intrinsic flavor they can get by without salting, although I do usually add a little to those.

Textures I cannot tolerate: cottage cheese (but it is okay if cooked into something). Gummy bear textural type things. This overlays into dried dates, figs, and many other dried fruits. Limp meringue such as in lemon meringue pie.

Hey, but I eat all manners of offal (heart, kidney, tongue, brain....) snails, and a variety of other foods you might not expect me to enjoy.

I love all okra, especially in gumbo, but I make it several different ways, including fried, which is what I had most often growing up.

My grandmother was Alsatian, and she taught my mother how to cook, and so that is mostly what I had as a child - not sure whether it is German or French, but my grandmother spoke German and considered herself German. However, the way she cooked is more similar to French. Since we were in Texas, I also had a lot of Tex-Mex food and always liked that. Italian food was not common, and we did not have a pizza restaurant when I was growing up. My father's mother was French, but she rarely cooked for us and generally had servants do her cooking. They made soul food, and so that is what my father preferred.

I have a duck liver in my refrigerator that I need to cook or freeze, and I'm not exactly sure what I will do with it. I do like liver paté, but I've never made it, and I do not like liver on its own. I'm probably also going to make some duck soup since I have a duck carcass, and I'm not sure how that will turn out either. I'm going to start that today.

I Iike tartar sauce too...if I make it, and I make it with dill pickles. As far as I am concerned Claussen dills are the only one. Bottled is too sweet and oily tasting. I don't like deviled eggs but will eat one if it is expected of me but not sweet. Also potato salad with sugar, can't go that.

When I was a kid, even though I was picky about a lot of things, I loved canned sardines with saltine crackers.

My husband loves Spam and Vienna sausages. I have eaten them when I was a kid, but I think they are gross now.

I don't eat very many sandwiches. I like hamburgers, especially made at home. I like everything on them now, but went from mayo and tomato, to pickles and mustard, to everything but onions, and then to everything including onion. I like cheese but not on everything...including hamburgers.

I like steak extra rare...cold in the middle. Cooked past that, I would just as soon have cardboard.

Mostly though, I eat what I happen to be hungry for at the time. Whatever I want, as much as possible. I don't eat as much now as I used to. I eat smaller portions, but it isn't health related. I just eat less.

I think my mom put apple cider vinegar in the deviled eggs too. I'll have to ask her. I guess it's an acquired taste but man are they good. Come to think of it my family put vinegar in a lot of things haha maybe a German thing :D

When I was a kid, even though I was picky about a lot of things, I loved canned sardines with saltine crackers.

One of my first memories is sitting in a high chair in my grandmother's kitchen eating anchovies on a piece of Italian bread.

That reminds me - I'm also making pickles today, which I use for making tartar sauce, but also for sandwiches. I'm making them with Persian cucumbers, and so I will make refrigerator pickles instead of fermented ones.

Liver pate is really easy to make Lars, I used to do it once or twice a week for the cafe I worked in.

(I was going to say “liver pate is a doddle” but I wasn’t sure you’d understand it:-). )

I found this recipe that I think I will try tomorrow. I don't have time to make this tonight. I have all the ingredients for this. I did not get around to making the pickles today either, and so I'll make them this evening or tomorrow.

Sounds good :-). If you’re not going to eat it straight away you can seal it up with a layer of melted butter over the top.

I also like sardines and crackers, they were always "camping food" and so they have good memories for me. Plus, I like fish and seafood, so there's that.

Olychick, I meant to say that I have actually changed the way I install the toilet paper roll. At home it was always "over", and so I did that for years. Then we had a cat that would sit on the lid of the toilet and "spin" the roll with both front feet and watch it unroll. Being unable to convince my girls to just close the darned door, I switched to the "under" method of installing toilet paper and then when the cat spun that roll it just went around and around and did not unroll. So, I changed it, but I changed it for a reason. Now I automatically install it "under" and Elery tells me it's wrong. I told him that he never owned my particular cat, LOL.

Annie

I usually prefer “over” as well, but we had a holder once that if you loaded one of the double length rolls in it with the loose end over, when you pulled the toilet paper it would pull the roll closer to the wall and make it drag against the wall and hard to get the paper off. Installing it under, you would pull the roll away from the wall and it would unroll easily.

Under is correct ;) lol

There is no TP controversy. Just the right way and the under way. I thought everyone knew that.

^ ^ Nope ^ ^

Over. But I'd never change it at anyone else's house, not even my own daughter's. If you want to be wrong, that's your right. (LOL.)

This thread has gone right down the toilet. :)

Anytime I go to my cousin's house I always tell her, "don't worry crisis averted!" That's after I change her roll to under (aka the correct way) :D

Correct way is over, and that is how I have always placed it! :)

The 1891 patent for the toilet paper roll literally states that the end of the roll should be hanging off the exterior.

Of course, it's however you want to "roll" and if it makes you happy! :)

Do you folks like rock with your roll ... or are you too old for such appreciations?

o j