DH doesn't want to eat our pumpkin because it had a slug on it!

[ElderberrySyrup]

He is insane, yes?

I have explained to him about pumpkins growing outside, where slugs live.

AIBU to want to sit him down in front of half a dozen episodes of Dirt Girl World, followed by a couple of Ray Mears programmes, until he gets the message about nature not being evil and disease-ridden but normal and in fact, the very environment in which we have evolved to live?

Presumably you wash fruit and vegetables before you eat them? And cook where necessay?

Yes indeed. And sometimes peel them too.

This makes me nearly cry in despair and frustration, where have we gone so wrong in our food culture?

I have an allotment and I hate slugs with a passion but I'm not scared of the vegetables after they have been washed and cooked.

Does he know where milk comes from?

I'm terrified of slugs, if I had a confirmed slug sighting on my food I would refuse to eat it too.

Wimp although I did take a lettuce back to tesco after a slug had clearly been living in it within the shrink wrap and in the fridge for days and the picture is still on my profile so I may be a hypocrite

Don't blame him!!

ha ha i found a caterpillar in my sons raspberries yesterday and i still fed them to him. does your DP not think that slugs and insects get on fruit and veg he buys from the supermarket. also the fact many people with their germ ridden hands have touched your food before you buy it from a supermarket. id rather have slug germs than unwashed several others peoples hand germs!

He is a bit funny about food sometimes. When our chickens got scaly leg mite he didn't want us to eat the eggs in case we all got scaly legs. I had to explain to him that it was a kind of mite that lives on scaly legs, not a mite that makes your legs scaly (and I'm not sure how he thought it would be passed on by eating the eggs anyway ).

Earthymama - I know. It is just bizarre. I hate this idea that anything that comes from a supermarket is somehow clean and safe and nothing else can be trusted. When in fact supermarket bagged salad is one of the most dangerous things you can eat.

He is a scientist so he has absolutely no excuse for this wilful ignoring of evidence.

Oh tell him not to be stupid.

My friend refuses to get piy strawberries as she can get them properly clean at home and blackberry picking horrified her

Tell your DH to man up!

OMGoodness...I wrote above as a joke as I thought you had put DH instead of DS. On re-reading you haven't. It IS actually your husband you are talking about; not a little boy. WOW.

Tell him to man up.

at catching scaly legs from your chickens. Bless him!

My mum is exactly the same - everything is washed or cooked into oblivion, as it might have a germ on it somewhere. I grew up terrified of eating lots of things, but then met my dh, who eats almost anything. He has mocked me quite a lot, but we have reached a reasonable middle ground now.

So don't be too harsh on your dh, but do cook and enjoy the pumpkin and encourage him to eat some too, once he sees you haven't keeled over/turned into a slug. (You could point out to him that even if he were eating a slug, it would only taste of pumpkin, if that is what it had been eating.)

Oh Honeydragon, I had forgotten how genuinely scared I was of blackberrying the first time too! However, we had such a lovely afternoon in the sun, and didn't want to offend my mil, who was with us, so just ate one or two.

I now eat them by the bucketload, but you can't rush someone out of a mindset that they have been brought up in. Maggots/germs/bird poo - I'd been brought up to believe that all fruit was scary unless washed very very thoroughly and preferably been bought wrapped in plastic

It's not a cleanliness thing for me - I'll happily pick raspberries off the bush in the garden and scoff them or whatever - it's an actual phobia of slugs. I can rationalise that there are probably quite a lot in the garden, I can rationalise that the odds are they've had a party in Mr Tesco's Pumpkin Patch - but I haven't seen them ON the food, therefore I don't have that mental image of the slug stood there tapdancing (as much as you can tapdance on a slimy muscular sluggy thing) on my lunch. Once I've seen a slug on them - that's it - I can't eat them - I couldn't eat a tomato off the bush I'd seen a slug on the pot of either.

Doubt that makes sense to anyone else though and the rational part of my brain knows it's screwed up.

Oddly enough dh doesn't object to foraging, I'm just realising how illogical that is. He's happy to eat blackberries and bilberries straight from the bush.

I'm with your DH. And pumpkin tastes vile anyway.

Rationally, we know that food from the supermarket has probably had lots of slugs and bugs on it, but it is far easier to disasociate that when it comes to actually eating that food because we haven't had to see it. When I have had to see a slimy slug on something I then have to put inside my mouth, all I can think aboutis the image of the slug on my food. If I haven't had to see it, it has no power to put me off.

I can't bear slugs, but this wouldn't bother me, it's not as though you'd be eating the outside of the pumpkin.

Slugs are vile and I have a nice sharp piece of broken pot for punishing them when I find them chomping my garden but they don't poison everything they touch!

My DH won't eat a piece of fruit or veg if it has dropped on the floor during preparation even if I have washed it, because the kitchen floor might not be clean .

Would he eat escargots? or snaily shellfish like cockles?

I've never seen him eat snails or cockles.

I got razor clams once and because the dcs were being a bit difficult, we agreed that he would cook the razor clams while I put the dcs to bed.
Cue shout of horror from downstairs - 'Oh my God! They're alive!'

"Does he know where milk comes from?"

Sod milk. Does he know where eggs come from?