There are a few foods my wife refuses to eat, Brussels Sprouts, any kind of Pea, cooked Carrots, biscuits and gravy, Okra, Meatloaf, Lamb, Duck, and sadly for a girl who has NEVER lived outside of the South, Grits. She has a reason, or excuse depending on your point of view, for not liking each of these and after thirty plus years of marriage I have given-up trying to change her point of view…..mostly.
Last night I made barbecued baby-back ribs, twice baked potatoes and grilled Brussels Sprouts that I marinated in sugar and soy sauce. Not to toot my own horn but everything was delightful and very tasty. She tried two Brussels Sprouts but they were doomed for failure because they are Brussels Sprouts and on her fifty plus year old list of foods she simply doesn’t like.
There aren’t many foods I don’t like or won’t at least try. I don’t like raw celery but will eat it cooked. I don’t like raw Sushi, or as I refer to it, bait, but will eat those Sushi items with grill marks. And I don’t like liver. Any kind of liver, chicken, goose or beef. My wife says she doesn’t eat Meatloaf or peas because growing up her mother served them all the time. No one understands her disdain for Grits. Honestly given her pedigree it is sacrilegious, but as a family we have dealt with it and simply worked around it.
All of us go through life with preconceived notions about many things. Growing up one of our neighbors was anti-Jew. I am not sure why given that the guy he worshiped every Sunday was a Jew. But I remember a few of the characteristics he used to describe Jewish people; cheap, money-grubbing, big noses, with nagging fat wives.
Growing up I didn’t know any Jews and we certainly didn’t talk about Jesus’s Jewishness at the Southern Baptist Church we attended for a short while. What I did “learn” from my enlightened religious leaders was that the Jews killed Jesus which combined with the facts that they were cheap, money grubbers, with big noses, and nagging fat wives could have or should have clouded my perception of the Jewish race for the rest of my life.
Fortunately it didn’t because my parents wouldn’t allow it. Jews, Blacks or Asians wouldn’t become my Brussels Sprouts because of the efforts my Mother and Father undertook to educate their children through their example. We were thrown out of our Church because my Father brought a black man to the Sunday service he was interviewing for a job. One of my Mother’s co-workers invited us to Synagogue during Passover, a visual and oratory feast for a young southern boy unlike any I had ever experienced.
Each of us has our Brussels Sprouts and that’s okay. But when our Brussels Sprouts become people, a race of people, a religion of people, a sexuality of people, a nationality of people then it becomes more than a dislike for a vegetable, it becomes hate.
Hate is a learned behavior, cultivated on ignorance and extended through generations. Hate is not extinguished through tolerance but with education, understanding and love. You may tolerate Brussels Sprouts because your mother will give you a cookie if you clean your plate. But when you leave your mother and the cookies end how tolerate will you be then?
LOVE IT! LOVE Brussels Sprouts! My friend hated them without trying thembecause they smell bad! I told her that her mama boiled them! MINE DID AS WELL. They taste and smell good tossed in seasoned EVOO and broiled! She loved them! No room for cookies!
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Great post, and very true, we’re not born hating and we don’t hate as children…it’s something we learn..
I am totally with your wife on the Brussel sprout issue..it took me twenty years to confess to my mother I hate them and even if you coated them in chocolate I will NEVER eat them again. Ever.
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Thank you.
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Commenting on the food section of your post … your wife sounds much like me and you sound much like my other-half except he likes EVERYTHING! I kid you not. I’ve yet to hear him say, “I don’t like _______.” But me? My frequent refrain is “I really don’t care for ________.”
Different strokes for different folks. 😉
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Or shortsighted versus adventuresome 🙂
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I have a friend who does not life fruit period, not in jam cakes in anything, now for me that is weird, it anything vegetables would have the one. I love bait myself and like most foods but I love the way you write about your wife I had to wonder what your wife did like to eat.
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She will eat most everything else. It does take her an extremely long time to order at a restaurant though. She gets menu paralysis.
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Fantastic post again!
XxX
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Thank you!
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