Food which makes your heart sink

[GnomeDePlume]

Do you have a meal/food which when suggested just makes your heart sink?

For me it is boiled bacon. It just sounds so dreary. Whenever DH suggests it for dinner I am instantly thrown back to childhood and salty boiled bacon cooked in brine served up with boiled to death sliced carrots and fallen boiled potatoes.

DH actually cooks it really well, he rinses the joint thoroughly and cooks it with apples and sometimes cider as well. He serves it with crushed roast potatoes and peas or beans.

But the words 'boiled bacon' take me back to childhood and the dreary, salty meal.

Does anyone else have similar instant responses to certain foods?

I know this is a first world problem and I am lucky to have choices and a DH who cooks most meals.

As a child of the 70's, school dinner peas, hard and chalky in texture if you had the misfortune to bite one, had to swallow them whole with a glass a tepid water.

As a grown up, not keen on offal whole, can quite enjoy it if it is made into something else, like pate.

Love the fat on chops/steak/crispy chicken skin/roast pork and lamb.

Oh god I hated pork chops as a child! Vom! Served with boiled potatoes with no seasoning etc and cabbage .

Also agree with pp who described risotto as savoury rice pudding! Vile stuff!

Mum used to make corned beef hash 🤮 even thinking about it turns my stomach.

MILs roast dinners: meat like a leather boot, potatoes, boiled to death veg. Dessert: shop bought frozen strudel

I love a fish pie. Rarely get it as no one else in the house likes it.

What I don't like is most fast food. I cannot understand people regarding McDonald's or KFC as a "treat". It's the kind of thing I only eat if I'm starving and there's no other option - long car journeys with limited options at the service station, for example. It's certainly not a "treat" then. 🤢

Oh, and I love risotto too.

Carvery. In my experience these always equate to undercooked or overcooked potatoes/veg and gravy that's either congealed or watery, no in between. No thank you.

Tinned fruit salad (last time I encountered it was about 15 years ago but they still sell it).

I can't believe no one has said marrow yet.

Bleurgh.

Roast dinners. Particularly my MIL’s: she puts the broccoli and carrots on to boil at about 6am to ensure they’re soupy and devoid of nutrition by midday.

When DP says he’ll make hummus, doves cry. Flavourless wallpaper paste, but more liquid. And gallons of it! Oliver Twist would beg not to have more. See also DP’s salad – he chops cucumber slices into dice, like a pub garnish. The less said about his lentil curry the better.

Do you mean gammon? Love it. Put it in the oven with a glaze on the fat for 20 minutes once it’s “boiled” (should be simmered) delicious.

Those salad plates made up of cold ham, boiled eggs, lettuce, cheese, coleslaw, beetroot etc. Hated them as a child when my mum would make them in the warmer months. Still a big no from me 😂

Cous Cous

Chickpeas

Mediterranean vegetables

All three cooked by my brother in law obsessively as side dishes to his signature chicken in lemon washing up liquid dressing.

This reminds me of my step dad. When I still lived at home in my 20s, if I said I was making stew he'd pull a face because he'd had awful experiences at boarding school of tough chewy meat. I'd call it casserole instead and he'd be perfectly happy 😂

Whenever my DH suggests mackerel my heart sinks. He loves the stuff.

Christmas pudding, bleurgh.

Coleslaw - gah! Or anything with mayonnaise in it. Can't stand the stuff.

Almost all lettuce. It’s pointless, tasteless, stuff. I don’t care how good your dressing is, put it on something else.

I will make an exception, sometimes, for radicchio. Which actually has some flavour.

Lamb
Venison or any game (always presented as a 'treat' bleugh!!!)
Offal
Mechanically retrieved meat of any kind - hot dogs, burgers, etc
Goat's cheese
Fennel, liquorice or anything aniseed flavoured
Turnips
Swede
Any kind of peppers - they give me the shits
Anything containing wheat (I'm intolerant)

But I love fish pie!

Goats cheese.

And I am a vegetarian so I am presented with goats cheese on a regular basis

Most of what's on this thread I really like - but marrow? The most watery and tasteless of all the vegetables? No thanks.

Chilli con carne - just horrible, and yet people serve it up with such fanfare.

Pasta salad. A depressing marriage of cold, gluey pasta, mayonnaise and sad raw veg, pleading to be cooked.

On the other hand, I love fish pie! (Minus the egg, obvs.)

The dreaded fruit strudel.

We always had a pudding growing up & when my mum or dad would say we were having it for pudding, I was always internally disappointed.

Mashed potato, steak.

As a vegetarian - mushroom risotto, it's usually all soggy and looks like a bowl of gruel from the film Oliver.
Anything in a pub with aubergine in it, they always manage to make it slimy. It's a travesty.

Beef in any form. Just bleurgh. Takes me back to childhood with braising steak and not being allowed to leave the table until my plate was clean. It was like chewing an old shoe.

Ditto pork chops!