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.

Shepherd's pie. It's a combination of things that I really dislike, mince, gravy and mashed potato. I don't remember it but when I was little I was in hospital and apparently every meal was mince in gravy. DM says I wouldn't eat it there and nor for the rest of my childhood. I have occasionally forced it down, my DH is asian and sometimes when we were in the far East visiting misguided relatives would make it to make me feel at home.

Thatsshallot1967

As a vegetarian:

Risotto - grim especially if offered as a Christmas veggie option when everyone else is getting roasties, veg etc. it's not difficult to cook a protein meal eg nut roast or a Wellington of some sort.

Not a vegetarian myself but I have family who are and this is my biggest bugbear. We always go out for lunch on Boxing Day and finding somewhere where this is an option for vegetarians is a nightmare. Don’t get me started on the carveries which offer a veg only option for a ridiculously small reduction in price.

Have you only ever had microwave baked potatoes? If so I don’t blame you. The skin doesn’t get properly crisp and the flesh is hard rather than soft and fluffy like it’s meant to be. But proper baked potatoes, or even ones done with the dual cook function on a combi microwave - are lovely.

Oven chips - makes me sad.

As a lifelong vegetarian, my heart would sink at being invited to a BBQ. One half cooked quorn sausage, usually not separate to the meat, stale buns and limp salad. I'd always eat before I go.

New potatos

My dad used to grill tinned tomatoes on a tinned plate with a bit of water, Oxo, salt and pepper and ketchup mixed in then melt slabs slices of cheddar cheese on top. Then you eat it soaked up with slabs of white bread. That was my Tuesday night tea for quite some time.

I'd still happily eat it now TBH though I tend to make something tomatoey and cheesy in the form of pasta/gnocchi/pizza for my family's more sophistimacated middle class 21st century tastes!

Boiled fresh new potatoes in skins are lush. Obviously requiring salt, butter etc. Though I regularly grow Charlottes in the garden and I could eat them straight out of the pan, such a lovely earthy taste. I love potatoes though. Perhaps not the peeled and boiled efforts with black lumps of school dinner offerings, but other than that.

I quite like oven chips too done in the air fryer- there are some really good ones now that are just like proper French fries or big fat fluffy on the inside, crispy on the outside chips also.

Pizza is grim.
Hard to eat and covered in horrible things which fall off.

It's just nasty.

You could be a non-taster. It doesn't mean you can't taste things, but that they don't taste as strong to you and seem bland, so you have to add extra flavour.

There are proper tests you can do. This one is maybe not 100% accurate (I don't think there's definitive proof of a direct correlation between the number of fungiform papillae and the supertaster - non-taster status, but it has been proved that there's some connection) but it's the easiest one to do without access to any lab equipment:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/super-tasting-science-find-out-if-youre-a-supertaster/

I'm sort of with you OP on bacon and ham. I never really liked bacon until I had smoked streaky bacon not the thick back bacon we used to have at home- no fat? - no thanks. I never liked roast/boiled ham much but I bloody love cured/air dried ham from Spain and Italy. I never like the dried up pork chops we had at home but love belly pork. I never liked the dried up leathery topside we had for Sunday lunch but found out I do actually like beef in France, when it is not cooked to death.

I was always a wannabe foodie desperate for something tasty, fresh and different from the dull fayre we often had at home.

I started a tradition a few years back of having beans on toast on Christmas Eve. I had been making the dessert, stuffing and sauce for the next day and just CBA to cook really, but having something simple and plain before all that rich food was so good that we do it every year now.

Also it leaves plenty of room for a few glasses of fizz, cheese, chocolates, crisps...

Hot food in general. I don't like food that makes my nose run. It all gets a bit performative as well.

Rissoles. Aka dry mash with a few bits lurking in. Dry and tasteless.

I am veggie and personally not keen on everything having suddenly become vegan with mysterious vegan fake cheese/dairy/egg etc.

@KimberleyClark she's talking about boiled potatoes not baked.

Shepard's pie/ cottage pie

Bland, mushy, too much of it, served with peas ( which I do like) but just so uninspiring.

Always disappointing knowing it was on the cards that night haha

i love fish pie! But I am very pedantic about it. Poached cod and salmon (no smoked fish, no eggs, sometimes prawns) in seasoned milk. Use milk to make smooth white sauce, mustard and capers for sharpness, rice the boiled potatoes to make no lump mash, little hot milk, lots of butter and then vast quantities of freshly cooked green vegetables. I can’t bear eating readymade or badly made ones but mine is yummy!

Chicken wings or drumsticks
Tomato Ketchup
Branston Pickle
Gherkin

All colour of peppers. They seem to be in everything now. They repeat on me for days.

Any raw veg. Coleslaw I'm looking at you plus grated carrot, carrot batons, you get the picture. Crunch I do not like.

Tomatoes. Now how the hell am I supposed to like a red rubbery skin with watery insides full of disgusting seeds all over the place? I like purée and Passata a etc, They are not raw.

Mushrooms

Lovely with butter, and it's nice to slice them with the knife as you eat, fun to see how thin you can get the slices.

Oh yes, I hate that too. It doesn't make my heart sink in the way that memories of bad childhood food does, but it's still always disappointing. We were at the theatre recently and the ice cream flavour I wanted only came in 'dairy free', so it wasn't actually ice cream at all. I quite often eat vegan, just because the things I want to eat happen not to have any animal products in them, but I hate substitute products, especially dairy.

But I loathe all offal.
Hot tinned tuna. Actually i only like that really posh tuna that is jarred in olive oil.
Not keen on red meat.
No to mackerel, kippers and sardines.
Salads of long ago - my stepmother would make one with iceberg, tomatoes, cucumber etc, big chunks of raw white onion, chopped cheap ham, chopped eggs, grated cheddar and chopped nuts (from a little tub in the baking aisle), all mixed together and served with salad dressing, no salt. It was vile!

When my son was a baby the only thing I could get him to drink was Mulipa Fennel!

@fink thanks, really interesting! I’ll look at the link when I’ve replied fully. I have an eating disorder which can often make you crave more flavour as well.

boiled potatoes and boiled vegetables.

misery on a plate.

Corned beef hash

The beef turns into a hot red mess and so, so sloppy - or at least, that's how my mum made it!