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What is your weirdest eating/drinking habit you had as a kid?
Inspired by this very fun twitter thread and the very fun metafilter comment thread that came from it, I want to hear people's responses here as well:
What is your weirdest eating/drinking habit you had as a kid?
I'll start: I liked to fix myself a bowl of unsweetened whipped cream with a ridiculous amount of nutmeg sprinkled on top, or a bowl of plain yogurt with broken open pills of acidophilus or other probiotic powder scattered over the top of it. This is a texture I still enjoy, a soft cream covered in a dry, unsweetened powder.
Is it weirder if I still do it? Unless I'm in polite company, I make no attempt to eat the foods on my plate evenly. I eat all of one thing, and then move on to the next. It always seemed reasonable to me, but even as an adult my family makes fun of me for it sometimes.
I have to second this. I didn't even notice I ate one food at a time until I was 17 and my mum pointed it out. I don't always, as some foods I enjoy mixing up (corn or peas and mashed potatoes, or even chicken or pork pieces with mashed potatoes).
But the one that I thought of when reading this post was: peanut butter and banana sandwiches dipped in ketchup. It all started as an accident but was a delicious one.
Do you leave the most delicious part for last, or eat it first?
I usually eat the main part of the meal first, and then the sides, prioritizing things that will warm up or cool down too much if I leave them until later. After that it's ordered by deliciousness, though dessert are always the last thing unless I'm hit by surprise hunger.
That's not weird at all - it's the right way. Seriously, I'd do it by color order as well. And, I'm sorry to say, I still eat corn on the cob one row at a time. Drives people mad when they notice it.
This has always been my preferred way of eating. My justification is this:
I was able to articulate this at a Thanksgiving dinner when I was in my teens. Everyone could see the logic in it, and that was pretty much the end of it - thank goodness. I weep for anyone that this is still a discussed issue for as an adult. Remember: You're an adult and can eat food however you damn well please.
Eating pizza by carefully separating base, different toppings and cheese, and consuming them in order.
Did the same with cake, too.
I used to do that with lasagna.
Pickle juice. A cup of straight up pickle juice. If I was feeling "fancy", I'd throw a pickle in there and have a pickle juice "cocktail". I was obsessed with the flavor of dill pickles and my sense of taste was screwed up from years of high amounts of sugar in my diet. Don't judge.
Things I still do:
I must respectfully disagree! Clearly you've never lightly reheated your pizza in a microwave then tossed it into a skillet before or you would know the satisfaction of re-crisped crust! Cutting it up and frying the chunks of pizza is also a delightful option!
Most of the people I've known have never done these things, at least not in my presence. They tend to treat food as just a means to an end, not as an experience, so they don't really care.
In my youth I discovered the charms of salt and vinegar potato chips in a salmon sandwich.
Hahaha, I used to do that! I rarely buy pickles anymore so I don't partake of swigs from the pickle jar anymore. But what I will do is take a swig from the soy sauce. And maybe the Worcestershire sauce if I'm feeling fancy :-D
Apparently it's weird to eat cottage cheese plain? I love it plain and will defend my cheese-eating habits to my grave.
I think it's a bit out of fashion, but I know a number of people for whom that's a common thing to do.
I love it plain and could eat it by the carton that way, but since childhood I've also enjoyed it piled onto a piece of bread or a cracker. For fancy occasions, top it with a smoked oyster. Wait, how are you supposed to eat it?
All the people that were horrified at how I ate it either ate it with pineapple or grape jelly. Both of those sound nasty to me.
Oh god. They used to sell it in cartons with the pineapple already in it when I was a kid, and it was HORRIFYING.
I always think that any kind of sweet cottage cheese combination sounds bad! especially like a pineapple.. all that acid would make it seem like something curdled, which makes it gross when it's not gross!
I love it with pepper on tomato or peach slices. Actually one of the few things I miss since not eating dairy.
I would drain the water from a can of tuna, and then fill it with honey barbecue sauce.
Mixed it together with the tuna, and eat it with a fork.
I called it fish guts.
It's a poor man's bbq.
My brain skipped over the "barbeque sauce" when I first read this and I thought you were eating drained tuna filled with HONEY.
It made your actual fish guts much more palatable :p
Holy moly here we go:
When I was about 12-13, I would eat a raw hotdog, a dill pickle spear, and a slice of American cheese every night just before bed. I wouldn't wrap them up or anything (I thought about it but never did it), just eat them real quick in order. I enjoyed it but obviously got weird looks when I told people about it.
OOH also if school lunches count, our school had this thing called Beef Taco Pie, which I'm pretty sure was leftover hamburger, stale nacho chips, and who knows what else casserole'd and served. I'm pretty sure I liked it just for the name. Just thinking of it now gives me heartburn.
I really liked capers, and would settle down to read a book with a small bowl of them, just sort of slowly picking them apart with my teeth. Still love them, yet sadly haven't kept that part up.
Here's my recipe for the weirdest thing I made often as a kid...
Start with half a lemon. Place it in a mug, cut side up. Fill the mug with water to just barely submerge the lemon. Add a few spoonfuls of sugar on top of the lemon. Microwave it for a couple minutes. Eat the lemon with a spoon while sipping the sweet/sour broth.
I regularly ate sticks of butter. Just sticks. I'd grab it in my stubby little fingers and chew away like it was a god damm Snickers. It revolted my mother and embarrassed her immensely one time, when my uncle was over and I strutted out to where they were talking, stick of butter in hand, and asked my mom when we'd be going to the store to get more butter. Assumedly for my snacking pleasure. I think I was 7 at the time and it didn't last long
I don't know! I haven't been to a doctor in 3 years! :D
I used to whittle baby-cut carrots into key shapes with my teeth before eating them.
I always flipped frosted mini-wheats sugar-side-up before pouring in the milk, which I drizzled meticulously to make sure every piece received some. Bites with dry frosting were my pet peeve.
I think I have one.
We ate pastina (very small pasta, usually eaten by children or old people with some kind of broth or its own cooking water) often, especially in winter. My parents used to add oil to it, and it floated up, making "bubbles" on the surface of the broth.
Sometimes, they were not "spread" (there was some oil trapped under the surface), so I used to poke them with the spoon to make them "pop", and then dragged them around while eating, trying to make them join each other to make a single large olive oil "patch" on one side of the bowl.
Chili pepper on everything, starting around age 7 or 8. I got tired of Chinese restaurant trips where "sharing" dishes meant that I got almost none of my favorite items, so I started drenching things with chili paste.
My heat tolerance has just gone up over time, so it's ghost pepper sauce on otherwise unexpected things - salad, chocolate, breakfast oatmeal.
Honestly? Anything. Even stuff considered non-edible. Undiagnosed ADHD and it's tendency to make you crave impulses is pretty shit. I'd devour food like it was nothing, then chew on whatever was closest(paper/pencils/bits of plastic) for a good 19 years after birth. Then meds happened and all is well. Teeth aren't too bad surprisingly, got them checked out and patched up just in case.
In terms of actual edible food l'm not that abnormal l'm afraid.
I used to go to the soda fountain and put every single flavor of soda and in my drink and drink it. All I remember was it tasting sweet.
We called that Jungle Juice.
What part of the world were you in? Where I grew up it was a suicide.
Ontario, Canada, in the 1970s.
I used to do that as an adult before giving up soda (did it as a kid, too, learned it from my father). Coke and Dr Pepper was especially good.
Two: I liked to mix my school's orange juice and bags of chocolate milk. It tasted good, and (distrubingly, now) didn't curdle. My school almost kicked my brother and I off the free-lunch program.
I really liked ketchup. My favorite sandwich was ketchup and american cheese.
I use to eat seeds and shells to things, assuming I could reasonable do it. So I would eat shirmp with the shell still on (removed the legs first though).
I uswd to eat the shrimp tails, just poppimg the whole thing in my mouth, when I learned they won't hurt you.
Hehe I still do that.
I used to pretend I was a horse and eat uncooked oatmeal. I did it for years, off and on, even as a teenager (though I no longer pretended to be a horse lol). In fact, I have made muesli using raw oatmeal - I always mix yogurt into it and yes, it's actually quite good.
Not sure if weird but I really like eating cheese (hard cheese of some kind) dipped in mayonnaise. Also, I used to eat apples in the shower.