Eat Arkansas

Beautiful cake. I tried to comment on your blog, but Wordpress locked me out for some reason. Almost all of my food dislikes have to do with texture rather than flavor, so to me, the pumpkin pie thing isn't really that irrational. I'd much rather eat pumpkin in almost any other form than the traditional pumpkin pie.

Beautiful cake--are you going to share the recipe with us?

As to food dislikes, and I may be shot and strung up for this, but I cannot abide catfish. I love every other kind of fish--crappie, bream, trout, flounder, grouper, etc., etc., but not the whiskered fella. The taste is horrific to me!

Don't like peanut butter and chocolate? This is almost ground for expulsion.

But welcome to Eat Arkansas, Jenny. You can pass the Peter Pan Pie to me.

The cake looks terrific, but then I like pumkin pie. I like not only peanut butter and choclate and peanut butter pie, but peanut butter a lot of other ways. Peanut butter malted milkshakes (anyone remember Shorty's in Conway?)

Don't knock this until you try it...peanut butter with your cold cereal -- just put a schmear on the rim of your bowl of whatever cereal, and take a little pb with every other spoonful. It doesn't sound very good and it doesn't look very good, but it tastes good.

Oh, but you were asking about food dislikes. That's more difficult for me.

Boiled eggs are good in tuna salad, but please don't put them in chicken salad. It just ain't right!

Jenny:

Checked out your blog the other day- it looks great. I think it rocks that you love cooking so much.

Major food dislikes: Fast food: do I have to explain? And I'm totally with craighead gal: no way, ever, could you get me to touch catfish with a ten foot pole. Forgive me for the following tangent, but I HATE farm-raised salmon: terrible for the environment, higher in toxicity, just unnatural, in general. Anyone who tells you that you're dining on "Atlantic" salmon is lying to you. Atlantic Salmon is so over-fished, it hardly exists anymore. It's a horrible thing to support. Buy ALASKAN. Or better yet, fish for it yourself. And finally, American Cheese. The smell of it makes me wretch. Again, it strikes me as grossly unnatural.

Pretty cake.

My family always asserts that I was adopted when I bring this one up: nuts in baked goods. Give me a bag of peanuts and I'm a happy camper...put them in a salad or in something savory and I'm content...but put nuts in my brownies, cookies, cakes, candy or pies, and I won't touch them! Not at all rational, just the way it is!

There are somethings I've eventually come to like...homemade quacamole being one...but I just can't eat nuts in my sweets!

CAN'T ABIDE CATFISH?!!
Get a rope!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
"Angels On Horses";
smear p/butter (thick) on
Ritz cracker, top w/ a big
marshmallow, put under
broiler till browned.
Messy but sooo good.
Can't stand english peas.

Sorry, jazzy, but I just cain't abide it. When I was a little gal, my family got aholt of some bad, bad catfish--didn't smell bad, but tasted awful. We all got sick, sick, sick. I cain't even put it in my mouth without gaggin'.

Well, Gal, that makes
sense. When I was a
little girl I stole an egg
from a nest, broke it & a
half formed chick was
there, made me sick of
HAM....go figure.
I kant abide thick pieces of
fish, the best are small
filets from so. Louisiana.

Most people who know me would say I have a thousand irrational dislikes, but the one I'll leave here is bananas. Not a fan. I like banana nut bread and for some reason, I will eat banana rounds dredged in dry red Jello, but not by themselves, in banana splits, frozen and covered in chocolate, nada.

I cannot remember a time when I ever liked any kind of fish, buy my Mom insists that I ate fish all the time until I saw a spoonbill catfish that my Dad caught. She says that from that day on, I wouldn't touch it. From time to time, I'll try a fish dish and I still don't like the texture or taste, some 30 years later.

First, that cake looks to die for. I've got to get a matriarch with more cooking skills than I have to get on that for the holidays.

I hate raw onions, but I love cooked onions or even onion rings.

I hate coconut, but love the flavor (in cakes, mixed drinks, candy, etc.)

I don't care for nuts of any type, but because they are usually found in such delightful foods (read desserts) I will usually tolerate them.

My kids don't like tomatoes, but they'll eat just about anything under the sun that has tomatoes in it - salsa, cheese dip, chili, caseroles, etc.

Jenny, I spent about 45 minutes reading your blog this a.m. Good stuff. Great recipes, fabulous pix and restaurant reviews that are in line with my experiences. Thanks for the heads-up on Ferneau lunch. Agree on Vieux Carre. OK but nothing exceptional or that interesting

I have to agree that sometimes it is a texture thing. I love chocolate in the form of cake, cookies, candy but don't like to eat chocolate in forms like pudding, milk, ice cream, etc. And it's even better if there are nuts mixed in to the chocolate candy, brownies etc.

I don't like pumpkin pie and never make it. I tell my kids that if they want pumpkin pie at Thanksgiving they need to bring it with them. Pumpkin bread is fine.

Peanut butter is OK if it is the crunchy kind but I don't like it mixed with chocolate. And when my kids were little, I'd make them peanut butter cookies but could never eat one because by the time they were made the smell of peanut butter was too much.

I don't like the taste of coconut in any baked goods and can spot it in there even when no one else can. However, I've been known to eat an Almond Joy which is filled with coconut (maybe it's the chocolate & almonds that mellow the coconut taste.). And I have eaten a piece of raw coconut on occasion.

I'll eat bananas, but only if they are a little green tasting. I hate bananas that are too ripe and can't stand banana pudding, banana chips, etc. In this case it has more to do with the ripe flavor than the texture.

This has been an interesting topic and I enjoyed your recent posts.

How relevant - I just purchased some peanut butter chocolate fudge from The Fudge Factory in Hot Springs yeseterday. Yum!

I can sympathize with the dislike of catfish.. some are just handled badly or whatever and it can taste dirty. I will not eat gritty fish, however - I have yet to have a bad piece of catfish at Flying Fish. Double yum!

As for my irrational food dislikes - asparagus. It's got nothing for me. When I was young my mom always ate canned asparagus which both looked and smelled nasty. As an adult, I have tried fresh asparagus, and yeah, I just don't like it.

Also (and I don't think of these ase irrational), but I cannot stand mustard or pickles. Pretty much anything pickled comes under this heading - only exception is pickled ginger with sushi.. I love that stuff. I don't mind if there is a little brown mustard or something pickled cooked into something, but it can't be a main flavor.