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.

Oh yes and bloody cous cous and falafel especially when served together. I paid £80 for that in an expensive restaurant once, it was all they had for vegetarians - a nice plate of food so dry your tongue retracts in horror, the cous cous is always undercooked and the falafel as dry as dust.
Might be ok with half a pound of grated cheese on it and a load of gravy 😂

We once took DCs for dinner at DM's house. She served chestnut soup made with pureed chestnut and the brine she cooked a bacon joint in.

Dear God it was awful, bacony, salty wall paper paste. DM was most offended that I didn't insist on anyone finishing it. She and DB thought it was delicious with extra bonus points for making use of the bacon brine.

DM had been a school cook and the combination of economy and quantity had become part of her domestic cooking. Add to this post war rationing. DF had gone to sea in 1947 and so had always been cooked for.

DPs never engaged with the emergence of Mediterranean cooking. I don't remember ever having pasta before I left home in 1985. We had mainly overcooked boiled potatoes or plain white rice.

Good lord, I'd boke at boiled bacon too. I didn't think anyone ate that past about 1955.

Mashed potato. Hate the texture of it and remember being forced (not as in force fed) to eat it as a child. Every now and again, I can stomach it but only if I or DP do it.
As a vegetarian, fake meat. I use one type of mince in lasagne/bolognese but generally avoid it as it's full of crap. I enjoy a nut roast or curry with pulses/lentils/veg but please don't give me fake chicken.

Your description has made me genuinely laugh!😂😂

I must have been lucky throughout my life having been brought up by a mum who was a genuinely good cook!

Other than offal and most fish, the only thing I’ll cook for the family but avoid is mince-I’ll eat it as lasagne maybe once a year, but just as mince and tatties, it’s a bleurgh texture thing for me

Liver.....remember it from childhood, dry as a bone and I had to chew and chew building up to swallow it.

My piece always seemed to have the great big bile duct in it too. Vile.

All offal is vile and unnecessary!

I think a lot of these dislikes are because they have been made badly.....my fish pie is lovely, but then I make from scratch, only use cod and prawns, ditto risotto, seafood risotto is delicious.

I also love liver, but it has to be calves, and undercooked, ditto duck or any other game had to be served pink.

What I dislike is "sloppy" food. Like currys. Chuck unidentified meat or veg into a pan, and mask the ingredients with spice. All just looks like semi-digested food.

Meat, potatoes, root vegetables, most legumes. So glad I’ve found my people!

This, plus tagines. Oh, and chilli. Staples of family buffets because they're easy to do large portions of.

Taste like gack because it's not that easy to balance the flavour well in a big portion.

It's not the food which makes you feel sick, it's the food which makes you feel sad! Disappointment on a plate.

Plus not being allowed to say 'no thank you' and having to clear the plate.

DF didn't like having his main meal in the evening so we had a cooked lunch. We had to be there for it. Not allowed to miss it unless specifically invited somewhere else for lunch.

I'm on a dieting/healthy eating group on Facebook, but honestly some of the beige meals people post are so depressing and unappetising, and I want to shout where are your vegetables! But it's supposed to be a supportive group, so I don't say anything, and perhaps that meal is an improvement on what they ate previously, at least perhaps in terms of quantity.

At the other end of the scale there have been some restaurants featured on Masterchef where I don't think I would fancy any of their meals - again one chef didn't seem to ever serve vegetables.

And in the middle I often struggle to find something to eat if we eat at certain chain pubs. Not that everything I have has to be healthy or low in calories but just a bit of balance would be nice and not everything fried/three carb meals.

Boiled carrots.

Dried fruit makes me heave. Christmas is always fun because I don't eat meat (preference) or gluten (coeliac) either and am not really keen on alcohol.

beat me to it @princefamilypaper . Fish pie is rarely done well. Fish more often overcooked in a watery sauce. With a smell that lingers.
Much like a roast.
Risotto has to be bloody good too. Mostly done stodgily and with too little proper stock

Yes, reminds me of the awful curries at school in the 1970s with raisins.

@Onethingatatime23 my children used to say "Mum-if you want us to watch Masterchef with you, you've got to stop shouting "Why isn't there anything GREEN on that plate!!""

Yes. There are not actually that many foods I don't like but some of them come out at Christmas. Liqueur chocolates, jellied sweets, glace cherries, candied ginger, jelly and wobbly desserts in general, even turkey and Christmas pud I'm happy to have once a year only. Jams. honey, marmalade, weird flavoured hot chocolate etc given as gifts - I just don't eat them.

Pizza - it's cheese on toast. Unless I make it & the topping is 3 times more than commercial varieties.

Turkey - horrible childhood memories of a grey, dry, substance that had been in the oven since midnight.

With you on that. I think a well cooked vegetable should or can be be the star of the show- great to see Monica with a parsnip-based dish last night and am glad that some chefs are having to learn how to appreciate vegetables for discerning plant eaters! I do eat meat but love an interesting veggie option.

@Georgyporky my family have a tradition of roasting a ham for Boxing Day. It would be in the Aga overnight and the smell is so strong it’s made me physically sick several times in the past. I really dread the Christmas period partly for food reasons.

Egg yolk. Runny is worse, I couldn't eat runny egg yolk if you paid me a lot of money. My throat would involuntary close.

Hard boiled is almost as bad, chalky texture that sticks to your teeth and mouth. Gag.

Steak and kidney pie (or even better pudding) is the food of the gods. Morrisons do an amazing one. I love kidneys.
For me it's chicken/turkey. It tastes of nothing. It's like eating cotton wool.

Unpopular opinion, but a ‘picky tea’. It’s always deemed to be such a treat by my DH and MIL, but beige spring rolls, frozen pizza, and a big handful of crisps leaves me feeling bloated and distinctly unsatisfied.

Pasta bake. Nothing wrong with it, just SO BORING. For some reason I find it more boring than the same pasta dish served as pasta and sauce, but not baked. It's a DH favourite but when he says he is making it my heart does sink.

The same with quiche and salad, because it is another go-to DH option and we have had it so much it makes me disappointed.

There are plenty of boring meals/ meals we have a lot that I don't feel like that about - jacket potatoes for example - but those two just make me feel so meh. I don't say anything though.

Anything that flouts itself as 'deconstructed'