I am not a foodie, nor do I like to cook...at all. I agree with the person who said she is just "over food". I'd like to take a pill to get the nutrition I need and be done with it. I like very plain and basic things except for salads where I am more adventurous. I am annoyed when people who know me try to plan around me when choosing a restaurant (responding to the comment above about accommodating other picky folks). I can find something to eat on almost any menu and if I can't, well, that is my problem!

My younger son who only ate pasta with butter, fruits and a few veggies and mac and cheese for YEARS is one of the most adventurous eaters and cooks I know. I think he is a foodie. Total surprise!

I didn't hate it, Zalco, but I would not seek it out. : )

And apparently no one else would, either. I googled the chef, John Tovey, and simply cannot find the recipe!

I would love to have a vacation where I did a diner drive-ins and dives road trip.

I sought out one well-known Mexican place in Phoenix and had some stuffed poblano pepper dish with chicken and dried fruit in a cream sauce with pomegranates and it was amazing and then I went home and recreated it. I saw the whole thing on guys show though.

Bumble? Um …. do you need a roommate? I’m very clean and not weird.

(Everything you make is what I need in my life!)

(I lied about being not weird.)

I made Chicken Marbella last week. The perfect marriage of meat and fruit.

Bunny? I was just wondering … do you need a roommate? Don’t give me an answer yet! Just think about it!

Here's the thing, Jinx. I have cats and they kinda rule my life. Oh wait...

Nope. Not interested in food. I like going to great restaurants for the fun of it…but honestly just happily eat something like grilled swordfish with vegetables. 😂 And happily sip my Makers Mark with it. 😂

And absolutely NO interest in cooking. I cook healthy stuff, but only bc I am always conscious of not wanting to gain weight. For entertaining, I will literally kill myself making one epic thing (ex. a super complicated many layered shrimp dip in a trifle) but then hire out everything else. 😂 Pitiful, really.

Bunny, I actually did just LOL. 😂😄😆

I hate to be the one to break it to y'all, but most "vegetables" are fruits.

mind ...BLOWN?

(kidding, of course.)

Do people actually find it odd to have fruit combined with meats? I think it's been a a combination for many, many millennia. While bananas and cod might be unusual, some combinations are quite common across the world, from pork and apples to ham (prosciutto) and melon. The most popular commercial steak sauces include raisins -- they would not be the same without it. I've had lingonberries on reindeer, huckleberries on salmon, apricots in tajines, mangoes in curries and all sorts of delicious combinations.

I remember veal with grape (Veronique?) being a regular special at one of the places my parents used to go to, in the 1970s. We frequently eat apples with pork, especially in fall and winter.

Ham and Pineapple pizza anyone?

I have a pork chop recipe that includes yams and raisins.

ETA - It also includes sliced green apples.

Sole veronique, I think. And chicken and veal!

Love apples and pork. I also make an chicken in cream with mustard and apples from Philly's The Commissary cookbook!

I love some savory and fruit combinations -- such as preserves with cheese, apples in a salad, bacon wrapped dates.

But what I cannot stand is raisins in savory food -- like Indian food or certain types of Italian pastas. blegh. Maybe it's because I hate raisins though.

I love curry with apples and raisins.

Avocados, olives, feta = life.

I am with you on that Seattle-- even though i like raisins in chicken and sometimes tuna salad.. .. I don't like them in warm savory dishes. The only exception (so far) is in Thai Pineapple Fried Rice.. but its not like they MAKE the dish. I would be fine without them.

Mtn.. I have that Commissary Cookbook somewhere. It's the Frog Commissary, right?

I especially love meat with fruit recipes! Fruits might just be my favorite food group. Olives are something I’ve never developed a taste for- but I wish I liked them. Whenever I travel, I love to visit local farmers’ markets, grocery stores and specialty food stores. I do extensive research about what to eat, and where to go to eat it. I would hate to miss anything delicious! I usually have at least a few restaurant meals planned in advance. Food is a huge part of traveling, for me. Mmm I’m going to France in October…
Picky eaters were not allowed in my family of origin :) nor my husband’s. When my DS was about 4 or 5, when asked to name his favorite food, his answer was always, “Bouillabaisse!”.

I made all my daughter's baby food by either grinding up scraps of what the adults had eaten or made up batches to freeze. I always fixed things like zucchini, fish, tofu, and avocado (not all at once). While she could be a serious PITA at times, she always relished fish and veggies, and does till this very day.

It's a funny term, "picky eater;" since many use it to mean unsophisticated eater, but to me is sort of the opposite.

All of my kids are picky in that they are used to really good food. One DD was famous for fainting at customs in Lima because she refused to eat airline food (duh). DS always asked for broccoli instead of fries as a toddler, and my other DD is a brussels sprouts addict.

At the same time, they can kick back Doritos and Twix ice cream bars with the best of them.

I actually have to eat most fruit cut up. I will often cut grapes in half with a sharp knife. I will only eat a banana sliced up. Part of this goes back to having braces. Part of it goes way back to my Japanese baby sitter. My dad said she would dissect most of my food into perfect slices.

I like many combinations of meat and fruit (tomatoes are fruit.) We often grill pineapple spears to have with salmon or ham. Apples and pork are a natural. Mango salsa on fish or chicken, mango chutney with curry...

Pal

I cut a lot of things up. I do cut donuts up usually, but partly because I start out pretending I will be eating half.

I dated someone who had gone to boarding school who had atrocious table manners, probably because of, well, eating with no supervision in boarding school.

Finally I said "your table manners are. . .prehensile." (I guess meaning if they had a tail they would be snatching up food with that too, I dunno) "It's like watching a hyena rip apart a carass".

My SO eats pizza with a knife and fork...we get along great.

I like eating pizza with a knife and fork.

I don't think eating pizza, at least not hot pizza, with a f 'n k is really workable. The crust and cheese tend to separate.

Table manners should be learned well before Americans go to boarding school.

As for eating pizza with a fork and knife, there is no other way.

My youngest eats tortilla chips and other snack foods with chopsticks. He does not like getting anything on his hands.

Oh, just watched that Seinfeld clip. Sending it to my youngest. Not sure he'll get the joke 🤣.

I eat bites of leftover fish or steak or chicken with my breakfast oatmeal that has apples and walnuts in it. And a little chocolate bar too. And lattes, all together. Tres bien!

When we were in Rome, DH and I went into a cute little take-away pizza place. The variety was incredible. I was like a kid in a candy store. DH on the other hand wanted his pizza the only way he would eat pizza - Italian sausage and pineapple. Much discussion ensued over ”Italian sausage.” To the guy behind the counter, all of the sausage was ”Italian sausage.” In a quite disgusted voice, he told the pizza maker to put some sort of sausage on the pizza. Then DH asked for pineapple. The counter guy threw his hands in the air and screamed ”NO.” DH had a sausage pizza without pineapple that night.

P.S. DH would only eat pizza with a knife and fork. Same with french fries. He hated touching his food.

The counter guy threw his hands in the air and screamed ”NO.”

lol

I love to cook. I love food history and Anthony Bourdain's food politics. I'd rather stay home and cook, although I do enjoy trying new restaurants when traveling.

I'm also big into "food as medicine," and cook and eat mindfully. Quality is important, and my kids have picked up on this, fortunately, as well, and are, for the most part, healthy eaters.

French fries with forks should be standard.

well they are eating them w mayo, french style, (shudder)

It's aïoli, Mtn!

Oh yes of course, pardon-moi

I don't mind fruit with meat as long as the fruit is not in any way sweet. I do not like any kind of sweet sauce on meat either, and the worst offender is Memphis style BBQ sauce. I never put any kind of fruit on pork either, except for citrus fruit, and it must be tart. I can tolerate some Chinese sweet and sour sauce, but it had better be more sour than sweet.

I also do not like salty food.

I’m surprised by the aversions to olives — they’re practically a food group for me.

Kalamata, the dry cured black Italian olives, anything from an olive bar — yum!

Also, avocados are divine, and I have to keep them out of the house because they disappear quickly.

I was once put in a situation where I was offered lardo — in Colonnata, in the Apuan Alps above Carrara where the delicacy originated — and didn’t know what it was. Making a guess at to what it might be, I didn’t know how I was going to manage to eat the stuff, and eat the stuff I must so not to offend our host, especially since his grandparents had lived in Colonnata.

Served on a slice of crustly bread, with local red wine, I took a bite thinking that the wine would kill the flavor if it were truly horrendous. Lardo is wonderful in taste and texture! The lard — yes, the name is a give-away — is cured in marble vats, only made in Colonnata, and much prized, at least by Tuscans.

A year or so later lardo made it’s North American debut, with an explanation the being cured in marble negated the lard’s cholesterol. (Not true at all, my Italian friends say.)

Lars, i am with you on most bbq sauces.. and ketchup.

Years ago, I went to a work meeting in NYC , and pizza was ordered. EVERYBODY except me, lol, immediately folded their slice into a little square package then ate it. I have tried that, I still like to use both hands until I can use one hand.

@Jilly, you found a picture of the pizza guy in Rome!

The Laws of Cooking and How to Break Them by Justin Warner is very interesting. It starts off talking about why peanut butter and jelly work and how it is similar to a pizza.

From an interview on The Splendid Table:

Take for example a great pizza from some Neapolitan place. Why does it always work? Why does pizza almost always work? You have something fruity, tomato, you have something rich and fatty, cheese, and then you have something to spread it on.

If you look at peanut butter and jelly, it's the exact same thing. This combination of fat, fruit and something to spread it on is an archetype. It's a law. The reason I call it the law of peanut butter and jelly is because peanut butter and jelly is really the first complex dish that we learn to make as children in America.

His recipe for Foie Gras Doughnut Holes:

https://www.splendidtable.org/story/2016/01/22/foie-gras-doughnut-holes

I think I would like them. I’d eat foie gras on bark!

I think the "order" of the food matters. If you fold the pizza, the first taste you get is dough. If it is unfolded, the first taste is cheese. I vote cheese! For a similar reason, i sprinkle cheese on top of my scrambled eggs, because I think the flavor is more prominent than if I fold it in.

BBSTX, very interesting about PB&J. Most foie gras I've had is pretty darn close to PB&J now that I think of it!

Mtn, along with your cheese on eggs theory, I’ve read that if you salt at the table rather than add it as you cook, you will eat less salt. The theory is that salt sitting on food hits your tongue and makes you think there is more than there is.

The best foie gras I’ve ever had was in a tiny restaurant down an alley in San Francisco. It was served with ripe pears and toasted baguette. OMG! Of course, the next time I went to SF, the little restaurant was no longer there.

Speaking of fruit in meat dishes. There is family lore in my husband's family of that one time his mother added raisins (for no known reason...I think she was bored) to otherwise family favorite Shepherd's Pie. There was a mutiny...which was a big deal as there were 11 kids who all rebelled. She never lived it down.

I don't know that I've ever really identified with the term "foodie", but I am very interested in trying new foods and recipes. I love interesting foods and am particular about high quality ingredients. That said, I am also a vegetarian and have been for a very long time. So my adventurousness has that limit.

I think the "order" of the food matters.

I agree. And the way you eat it affects the taste -- like how you need to slurp ramen. The aeration impacts the flavor (there are actual studies on this!).

Another study talks about how the type of cutlery affects perceived taste: https://flavourjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/2044-7248-2-21

I found that eating pizza with a fork and knife doesn't taste as good. It's common knowledge that the smell of food impacts the flavor. So for pizza, you get the full aroma when the whole slice is right in your face.

...I wonder if this means steak or a salmon filet tastes better if you hold it too? LOL. I'll try it next time we're at a fancy restaurant, see how that goes.

BBstx, if you can taste salt the cook has used too much….ditto using it atop already cooked foods. Salt enhances the food’s inherent flavor, or does when used at the right stages of cooking and in the proper quantity. In that regard it is like MSG, which when used properly is a flavor enhancer that can cut the use of salt in recipes by three fourths.

No. I like to cook and we enjoy good food. I'm very particular about quality ingredients and cook from scratch for the most part. We eat clean and healthy most of the time, although we do have the occasional treats! We eat out often but no fast food.

Depends on the pizza — the style, crust, toppings. I used to make a whole wheat Thai pizza (1990s) that had a lot going on — layers of cilantro-fish sauce-oil, chilis; a layer of satay sauce (first layer), then shrimp,, and cheese.

Cold the next day — finger food