Foods Your Family Ate Growing Up You Never Learned To Like, According To The Takeout Staff

All of us have those recipes that our family makes year after year. They bring us comfort, a sense of nostalgia with every bite, and holidays wouldn't be the same without them. This article is not about those cherished foods. 

Nope. This feature is dedicated to those foods that everyone else in the family loves and reaches for seconds of, but send us retching into the bathroom with just a whiff. These foods don't necessarily deserve the scorn we've given them, and in some cases, the disdain is a mystery. It could be the texture, the smell, or simply the appearance. Whatever the case, we can't stand them — regardless of how much love grandma puts into the recipe. 

Some foods you're just not going to vibe with and there's no getting around it. These are the foods beloved by other family members that The Takeout staff absolutely refuse to eat.

To be clear, we're not talking about stuffed banana peppers, or poppers — I would be perfectly happy having either one of those with every meal ... or for every meal, to be honest. I'm talking about the sweet red, green, or yellow peppers that get stuffed with meat, tomato sauce, and rice to create an almost Lovecraftian abomination.

And no: I am not exaggerating, and that annoys me to no end. Why? Because it feels like I should like these. I like all the ingredients separately, but together? Put them together, and it just makes me want to Do An Angry over the waste of perfectly fine ingredients in a monstrosity of a dish. Does that make sense? Maybe not, but it's how I feel.

Stuffed peppers were a semi-regular dinner, especially in the summer when we had a seemingly endless supply of peppers from the garden. And I just ... still can't do it. There's something just wrong about the oven-warmed roasted peppers, the tomato sauce ... is it a texture thing? Maybe, but not entirely. I've slowly come to accept the fact that I will never be able to reconcile warm peppers, indeterminately-textured filling, the dampness of the sauce, and the melty cheese coming together in a way that's not the least bit pleasant. Actually, I think this is the perfect use for this word, and I'm totally going there: This whole dish is just way too moist.

Southern cooking is one of my favorite meal styles, and my grandmother was an expert at making it. Her family traveled across America and settled in Northern California, and so did her recipes. They were all good, but there was one that I didn't appreciate at 8 years old, and sadly, don't appreciate now.

That meal was chicken and dumplings, which I'm sure many people still enjoy. It's a belly-warming comfort food, but for me, it did neither. That wasn't my dear grandma's fault, since it was a favorite among other relatives. Her generation was used to preparing meals on a budget, having survived a Dust Bowl and two world wars. One time, I saw weevils in her container of rice. To my horror, she sifted out the tiny bugs and put the rice back in rotation for future meals. I swore I'd starve before eating rice again.

Her chicken and dumplings were homestead core to the nth degree. At the time, my young, unrefined palette was in coercion with my visual appetite, and boy, this dish made me gag a few times. What I saw was a bowl of broth with clumps of dough surrounded by vegetables and boiled chicken with bones sticking out under the simmered pale skin covered in tiny bumps where the feathers had been (yes, she left in the bones). Just like back then I cannot stomach to look at this dish without revolting.

I grew up in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn, a wonderfully diverse neighborhood. Just walking the streets, you would frequently hear several different languages spoken. Naturally, with the various cultures came several cuisines. Whether having a home-cooked meal at a friend's house or visiting a local restaurant, it was a dream for a budding young foodie.

Among my favorite restaurants was a local Jewish deli. I was delighted by corned beef, pastrami, tuna and chicken salad, and the incredible knishes. I get hungry just thinking about it. Naturally, you needed a beverage to wash it all down. One of the most common was cream soda. My parents loved it. I could not stand it. Whenever we got takeout, a bottle of the despised carbonated drink would make its way home. Fortunately, we usually also got a bottle of orange and my favorite, root beer.

The flavor of cream soda is supposed to be vanilla. Now, I like vanilla. Not my favorite ice cream flavor, but I do enjoy it. However, my taste buds told me, this does not belong in soda. In my entire life, I have only ever had one sip of cream soda. That minuscule amount was enough to swear me off it forever. If we ever run into each other and you want to buy me a drink, you know what not to get.

Growing up, every Southern potluck had its heroes ... and its villains, and no villain loomed larger than the gelatinous crime scene that was the lime cottage cheese vintage Jell-O salad. The color alone was the first red (or lime green) flag. It didn't whisper refreshing citrus delight. It screamed radioactive coolant. This thing glowed like it had escaped from a science lab and landed smack on the folding table next to the fried chicken.

Then, the jiggle. It made my stomach wiggle (and reel). You ever try to stab something with a fork only to have it shimmy back at you? And then, the nail in the proverbial potluck coffin? The LUMPS. Now, do not get me wrong, I love me some cottage cheese. LOVE IT. But from the jiggle of the Jell-O to the lumps of dairy lurking in its innards, it was like a haunted treasure hunt no one asked for. The minute my tongue hit one of those chewy cottage cheese curds, let's just say my stomach curdled.

I learned to not spoon that on my plate at any potluck, unless I wanted my skin to match the sickly green of the church Sunday supper club "salad." To this day, if someone even mentions "lime" and "cottage cheese" in the same sentence, my fight-or-flight response kicks in. "Bless its heart"... but may that salad recipe stay buried in the church basement where it belongs.

Every North Carolinian has their culinary hill to die on — the fierce devotion and defense of Southern barbecue, Cheerwine, Krispy Kreme among the most popular — but one item I just can't get behind is a mound of ground-up mystery meat, cornmeal, and I honestly shudder to discover what else. I said it. I draw the line at livermush. Maybe it was the name that did it in from the start. "Liver." "Mush." Separately? Already sus. Together? Absolutely not.

I was born in North Carolina — home of the famed Shelby Livermush Festival (yes, a whole festival for that mess) — and my grandparents scooped that stuff up like it was California gold. Fried up, served with a buttery biscuit and Nana's eggs, I can still remember her eager expectation of good eatin´ as she'd hum while cooking it, bless her. Me? I jokingly dubbed it "whatchameatcallit," much to their chagrin, and the smell alone could clear me from the kitchen faster than a cottonmouth can coil.

And the texture? Oh, honey. Imagine if meatloaf and wet sand had a baby, and that baby was somehow ... proud of itself. But the taste? That was the worst. I tried — really, I did — but no ma'am. So while I'll wave my NC pride flag high for pulled pork and hushpuppies, livermush is one Southern "delicacy" I'll gladly leave to the grandparents and those brave souls at the Shelby fairgrounds.

So, full disclosure: This writer just had a bit of an epiphany while thinking about split pea soup, but ... we'll get to that. Getting this writing prompt from the powers-that-be immediately brought up memories of walking in the house from school — usually some time in December, when fall was on its way out and winter was really getting underway — to that smell. You know the one — that toe-curling, cringe-inducing smell that meant split pea soup had been simmering away on the wood-burning stove for hours. (And no, I did not grow up in a little house on a prairie, or in the 1920s.)

Sure, a lot of people probably also like it. It's filled with vegetables and that's great, it has a reputation as a cold-weather comfort food that's perfect on long winter nights, but even now, that's a hard pass from me.

"But why?" I asked myself. I love all other vegetable soups, so why does this one continue to make my jaw spasm at the thought? And here's where the epiphany happened. I'm pretty sure this comes from the fact that one of my earliest memories — from about the age of five or six? — was watching "The Exorcist" in its entirety. (It was a different time.) So yes: I'm now pretty sure I can blame my hate of split pea soup on the same thing I credit for my love of all things horror. Many thanks, Linda Blair.

The most beautiful phrase in the world to signify one's insignificance is "What am I? Chopped liver?," which may have been gifted to us by a one Vera Shea, sometime during the 1940s. For some, the question may be, what is chopped liver to begin with? How does the culinary idea of broiled chicken or beef livers mixed with caramelized onions, egg, and schmaltz (rendered chicken fat), and formed into a soft, brownish-pinkish mound reminiscent of calamine lotion, sound to you? It's essentially a Jewish version of pate, and a spread you'll find on the table for holidays like Passover and Rosh Hashana, and ordered up at some of my most beloved NYC eateries.

Chopped liver has long been present at my family's table, and it's something I've never longed for. Besides the sight of beef tongue on a deli platter, nothing has forever repulsed me quite like chopped liver has. It starts with the smell, which is the kind of odor you run from, not towards. My palate has expanded much since my childhood, and especially since my Mrs. came into the picture, but I have never been able to grapple with chopped liver's taste. How is this something people enjoy? I love onions, but somehow the onions make the nasty flavor of the liver even nastier. My wife often tries to goad me into trying it again year after year, and somehow I abide like a good husband, and am always instantly ready to gag. Some dishes are best left in the Old World, and this is one I'd be happy if it were lost to time.

I used to feed my childhood cat wet food, and the fishy odors they emanated out of those 9 Lives cans is how I see tuna fish through my eyes, and how I never see it enter my mouth, ever. I know I'm in the minority here, but tuna fish salad is not only a non-starter for me, it's a NEVER-starter. 

I like tuna steaks, and raw tuna, especially utilized in sushi. I love chicken salad, as my mother made one of the best chicken salads ever — chunky pieces, with walnuts and celery.  Yet, when super oily and stinky wet tuna gets meshed in mayo and becomes a gloopy mass, it just doesn't gel for me. Just the sound of it being stirred together sounds and smells like awful farts. Whenever tuna salad was on the table or a family member ordered a tuna salad sandwich at a restaurant, I wanted to find a clothespin to seal my nostrils closed.

I think the day tuna fish salad became cemented on my s-list forever was during a class field trip to downtown Washington D.C. Everyone was told to bring a bag lunch, which were left on the bus while we enjoyed the fine cultural riches of the Smithsonian. It was a warm day and when we returned to the bus to gather our brown bagged lunches, someone's stank to high heaven, and that person's mom had packed them a tuna fish salad sandwich. That's one food memory I wish I could forget. Don't even get me started on a tuna melt. More like tuna meh.